A SHOPPING street suffering a dramatic downturn in trade could be saved after councillors agreed to cut the hours it is closed to cars.

Thursday’s meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council agreed George Street in Hove will be pedestrianised only until 4pm rather than 6pm for seven months of next year.

The vote gave the go ahead to a similar decision by the transport committee last month and means the change will take effect from April to October.

Conservative group leader Tony Janio said he hoped the alteration would save independent traders on the street who have been struggling since the nearby Tesco in Church Road stopped offering two hours’ free parking.

He said now the pedestrianised street frequently “looks like the Marie Celeste” especially late in the afternoon.

The meeting heard a petition of traders and residents had 2,600 signatures, and a survey of 1,300 people showed 74 per cent in favour of the change.

A report showed the parking change at Tesco has been very damaging, with traders reporting a ten to 32 per cent decline in takings since it happened in February.

The proposal from the transport committee sparked fierce debate in Brighton Town Hall on Thursday.

Councillor Pete West (Green) said: “The committee has agreed to something which is, to be frank, quite ill considered and it doesn’t carry fairly determined public support.

“And it will, most importantly, create danger for pedestrians plus congestion and air pollution.”

He called the plan a backward step which called the city’s commitment to sustainable transport into question and said it had been made “without formal consultation”.

He referred to a 2015 consultation which had a negative response from some traders who would have to bring in outside tables and chairs earlier in the day were the change to go ahead.

Councillor Andrew Wealls (Con) hit back, promising to show Cllr West “What a real consultation looks like”.

He and Conservative colleagues held up a stack of papers almost a foot thick, which represented the positive responses from traders and residents to the proposal, and contrasted it with a three-inch pile of negatives.

The latest consultation was undertaken by Cllr Wealls and others, on foot in George Street, using the council’s own election ballot boxes to collate responses.

He said there had been no accidents or evidence of road safety problems.

But Simon Cooper who owns Cooper’s jewellers in the street said it would not help.

He said: “It’s not to do with pedestrianisation, what we need is parking – unlike every other town in Sussex we’ve got nowhere for people to park.”