June 8 is being presented as an opportunity for more parking in the centre of Brighton.

How will encouraging central Brighton residents to own and keep a car by providing more on-street parking help improve our environment, reduce congestion, encourage the use of public transport or enhance architecture and tourism in our city?

All these aims are stated policies of the council.

Public highways are public highways, not private car parks.

If you wish to own a car, especially in the city centre, it is your responsibility to find accommodation for it, not the council's.

Residents' parking permits cost £80 per annum. A commercially provided car-parking space costs well in excess of £1,000 per annum.

Why does the city have to subsidise private car-parking in this way? From where does this selfish sense of entitlement come? Despite the inevitable outcry from our most self-interested residents, there should be substantial annual increases in the price of residents' parking permits until they cover the costs of the space they occupy and the environmental damage they cause.

prioritisation.

It could also provide better parking for the genuinely disabled, taxis, commercial vehicles and tradesmen who need proper access and the ability to park short term.

Car owners are not a majority of the people in this city and certainly not in the very centre of Brighton, nor in the majority of visitors to the city, so why do we continue to pander to them?

Brighton is well behind other British and continental cities which seem able to maintain dynamic economies and greatly enhanced townscapes and environments without freely handing out streetspace for the convenience of the relative few.

It is in the commercial as well as the environmental and health interests of this city to start to drive the car out of the centre of the city.

It is high time councillors started offering some leadership on this issue instead of peripheral tinkering.

-Thomas Mackillop, Russell Square, Brighton