THE "bonkers" policy which forces the company part-owned by BCP Council to replace all parking spaces on the site it is developing could be changed to provide a "viability solution".

At present schemes carried out on public car parks by Bournemouth Development Company (BDC) require all spaces be re-provisioned at the same location.

This has taken place in the four projects carried out by the company, which is a 50:50 partnership between the local authority and private firm Muse Developments, so far.

But BCP Council deputy leader Cllr Philip Broadhead said this did not always make sense and could delay projects.

Cllr Broadhead said the policy written into the BDC agreement to re-provide every single space on site was "bonkers".

He said talks were ongoing about addressing the issue, with this possibly solving problems some regeneration plans currently faced.

“If you have two sites close to each other, one has 100 spaces and one has 200 spaces, why don’t you just put 300 on one of them to keep the parking provision," said Cllr Broadhead.

“We are now unlocking that solution so we maintain the public parking because it is really necessary in a town centre and tourist centre location, but have a much more pragmatic solution about how it goes.

“Wouldn’t it be better to have one bigger car park, well located, than a lot of little ones. That will unlock a viability solution, potentially including for the Winter Gardens because at the moment we are replacing all of the public parking on the Winter Gardens site, which is making it quite expensive. Would it be better to have it next door rather than on site or replaced as part of the BIC?

“That is what we are doing on that at the moment.”

Initially 16 council-owned sites around Bournemouth town centre were identified for development by BDC.

To date, four projects have been completed with Madeira Road, The Citrus Building, Berry Court and St Stephen's Road schemes.

Many people have questioned the approach of building on car parks, with perceptions parking provision had been reduced.

Cllr Broadhead said parking space numbers had increased through the four BDC schemes to date.

"One of my huge frustrations is around the reality of public parking provision and the perception of public parking provision," said Cllr Broadhead.

“No matter how many times I said in the Bournemouth Borough Council days, when the Bournemouth Development Company was set up to build on public car parks it was always written in that any public parking had to be replaced.

“With the four sites that have been done to date, by the time they were developed there was actually more public parking than when they started.

“If you stop most people in the street, they think Bournemouth removed all its public parking, when there is actually more than there was in the beginning."