HOLIDAY-MAKERS are failing to visit Watchet because they can’t find anywhere to park, angry traders claimed this week.

And the reason, they say, is that visitors’ parking spaces are being taken up by contractors working on building projects in the town who are not using the parking spaces they have been allocated elsewhere.

Watchet Chamber of Trade (WACET) has contacted the Onion Collective, developers of the £7 million East Quay community project, their main contractors, Midas Construction, and TMS Maritime Ltd, who are repairing the marina walls, pointing out that it had been agreed that no contractors would park in the Harbour Road car park.

"Unfortunately, this has not been the case," a WACET spokesman said this week. "The car park is often almost full of contractors’ vehicles - up to 30 have been counted on many days. With the car parks full, this is very bad for visitors. It is an intolerable situation.

"On many occasions, holiday-makers have seen the car parks crammed with vans and other commercial vehicles and have turned around and driven away. This is having a serious effect on business in the town."

This was confirmed this week by posts on social media, including several from holiday-makers who said they had been forced to queue outside car parks waiting for a vacant space and in most cases had given up and gone elsewhere.

"In the Harbour Road car park, men were sitting in vans listening to the radio and eating their lunch," one post said. "It didn’t look as though they had any intention of moving their vehicles in the near future."

The WACET spokesman added: "Sadly, there have been no meaningful replies from anyone involved in the East Quay project nor any visible attempt to restrict the parking. All we have been told is that parking requirements on sub-contractors can’t be enforced."

He said that there was an agreement that contractors’ vehicles would be parked on land at the former paper mill site on the outskirts of town.

WACET chairman John Richards added: "To be fair, Midas have paid for car parking at the paper mill site and some contractors do use that facility. Others don’t because they say that walking back to town along the busy Brendon Road breaches health and safety."

Mr Richards said that it was part of the original East Quay planning process that there would be efforts to ensure that no contractors parked in Harbour Road.

"Unfortunately, while the commitment was mentioned in the planning process, it was not included in the planning permission so cannot be enforced by anyone."

He added: "I understand the re-instatement of the roadway on the East Wharf will soon be finished enough for the piling contractors, TMS Maritime, to move their vehicles back on site. On having a word with them they have immediately agreed to sort out their parked vehicles and to not take up visitor spaces."

No-one at Midas Construction was available for comment by the time we went to press.