Members of City Gate Church, Bournemouth were enraged to discover that they will have to pay to go to church.
New parking meters were placed on Gervis Road, Lansdowne, charging 60p an hour from 9am till 5pm, every Monday to Sunday.
The meters were put on the roads surrounding St Swithuns’ Centre two weeks ago, but had been covered with black bags saying ‘Not in use’, so members assumed that the meters would charge on Mondays –Fridays as most others do.
On Sunday 6th December, the members arrived to their morning service unaware of the new charge and had to be informed by the welcome team at the door so they would not be fined £60.
As some members can be at both the 9:30am and 11:30am service every Sunday morning, they will now have to pay an additional £125 a year just to go to their church. This could cause problems for those who have already been hit hard by the recent financial crisis as well as all the students and elderly members of the church.
Jurgen Kusel, 45, a regular member, states “I don’t understand why the council would put meters here and charge on a Sunday morning when they know that there is a popular church in the area”. He then went on to comment that maybe the council are exploiting the fact that the church members can be a regular source of money and he claimed that if that is true he would be very disappointed that the council think like that.
The overall concern from the church members was how this is going to affect their Christmas events. They feared that it would hinder the attendance levels for the carol service they were having the next week as well as the Christmas services later in the month.
We contacted the local council and they are yet to make a statement about the matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment