Douglas councillor Andrew Bentley raised his concerns last week that there were more cars than parking spaces in the capital.

We asked people if they feel the parking provision in Douglas is good enough.

Mike Mathews, 76, Douglas, agreed with the councillor, saying the parking situation was ’atrocious’.

’We park on the prom, [but] when everybody’s in town there’s no parking.’

Ann Mathews, aged 77, also thinks the level of traffic has increased in recent years.

She said: ’You look at some of these houses, and there’s two or three cars in one house.’

Mike added: ’Naturally, as soon as [young people] pass their test they want a car - so there are more cars on the roads.’

They both agreed that the disc car parking at Chester Street car park was very useful for stopping into town.

Gail Corrin, 48, of Laxey, doesn’t think the parking provision is good enough at all, either.

She said: ’Particularly for people coming into town to work, the parking is hideously expensive.

Gail explained that while she had a parking space from her company, this was not the case for all employees, some of whom have to pay ’£6, £7 a day’.

She added: ’There’s no park and ride, there’s nothing.

’On a weekend, if you want to pop in, it’s £4, unless you can get disc parking.’

She suggested that there could maybe be provision for parking at Summerland (such as a multi-storey car park) where a park and ride had been proposed before.

’Ideally, you want something at either end of the prom,’ Gail said.

When we asked Neil Moore, 48, if parking was good enough in Douglas, he said: ’Not at the moment, not with the promenade [works].

’They should be more concessions to the public with everything that’s going on there, they should be making parking cheaper.

’And there’s not enough of it in good locations.’

He added that people should be encouraged to visit Douglas, to help the shops out rather than people resorting to shopping online because parking is too expensive.

Asked about the government’s push for more active travel, he said that he thought the Cycle To Work scheme was a good idea, but it had not been advertised enough since its launch, and that it should be promoted more.

Julia, 55, and Ashlea Murat, 22, of Ramsey, both agree that parking is not great at the minute.

’It’s a real shame because it means coming down to Douglas is an actual chore, you have to think it through, Ashlea said.

Julia added that needing to make a ’special plan of it’ puts them off coming into town as much as they used to, and they find themselves shopping online more.

As someone who works with people with learning disabilities, Julia explained that the parking accessibility for them as well as those with mobility issues used to be much better in the town centre, but there is ’very little’ now, which meant they had to walk further.

She said disabled access closer to town is needed to enable them to go shopping and easily visit the bank as even parking at Marks and Spencer or Chester Street could be too far for people with disabilities to walk.

Ashlea added that this was really isolating for these individuals, who are unable to walk from one end of the prom to the other.