Douglas Borough Council has applied for planning permission to use the TT paddock as a pay and display car park, outside of motorsport events.

Douglas Corporation’s planning application [21/00528/B] cites the need to eliminate the parking of ’inappropriate vehicles’ (such as unauthorised trailers) at the area in Noble’s Park, while also trying to reduce traffic movements in areas of the park with lots of pedestrians.

The application is part of the council’s wider ’Noble’s Park Traffic Management Strategy’, which also aims to eliminate through-traffic and improve routes for pedestrians, runners and cyclists.

Outside of the TT and motorsport events, the council describes the paddock as having ’no formal use’, but as being used unofficially as informal car parking, particularly by staff from police headquarters.

It said that it also suspects that the area is used by members of the public car sharing into Douglas town centre, although it has ’no objection to this in principle’ as it ’helps reduce town centre congestion and pressure on town-centre car parking’.

Last week, Douglas councillor Andrew Bentley raised concerns that nothing was being done to address the fact that Douglas has more cars than parking spaces, and pointed to residents in parking zone ’W’ having to resort to Noble’s Park ’20 minutes walk away’ if they cannot find parking spots in their zone.

The Noble’s Park Parking Places Order 2021 introduced disk zones into the majority of the park which was accessible to vehicles, with a maximum stay of six hours.

However, the council recently concluded that six hour stays were not sufficient for police staff who may work 12-hour shifts, or commuters using the park to care share or walk/cycle from the park into the town centre.

The order also permits parking in the paddock for 24 hours for cars, vans and motorcycles, but the council notes that this is difficult to enforce - hence the proposal for a pay and display machine with a £1 tariff.

In a second planning application (21/00527/), the council is proposing to operate a pay and display motorhome parking area in another part of the park.

This hard-standing area, known as the ’Bone yard’ and located by the BMX track, is already used for motorhome parking during TT and the Festival of Motorcycling.

In this planning statement, the council referred to long-standing issues of motorhomes and heavy goods vehicles being parked/stored in Noble’s Park - which it says has hindered setting up for the TT, as well as damaging the aesthetics of the park. An order came into force this year to tackle this problem by prohibiting motorhome parking.

However, the council said it recognised the benefits of an official site for overnight motorhome parking, referring to a German-style ’Stellplatz’ - where motorhomes can park either free of charge or with a much lower tariff (and level of facilities) than a traditional campsite.

Douglas Corporation says that it hopes by providing a Stellplatz-type facility for visitors and tourists, the local economy will be stimulated and the issue of vehicles being stored long term will be eliminated.