YOUR correspondent James Roberts of Greenpeace asks about the reasons for a new multi-storey car park near the Cathedral (Letters, Wednesday, October 12).

After many months of trying to prize information on this item, the Tory Group on the council has had to come clean. They are planning to build a multi-storey car park on King Street and are going to spend £30,000 on getting an 'expert' to tell them it is OK to go ahead.

Labour members on the city council have opposed the continual increase of car parking in the city since 2000 because of the environmental damage that is caused by CO2 emissions and other pollutants, and the traffic jams that are created morning and evening, plus the congestion at other times.

Although the county highway authority (also Tory run) wishes to remove excessive car parking from the city by building car parks on the edge, and using car park-and-ride, city Tories are determined to ignore the county and build or enlarge car parks wherever they can fit them in - Croft Road, Cripplegate Park are examples.

A policy of improving bus routes and timings has just been introduced as part of the county plan as has been well reported in the Worcester News.

Labour councillors support the county policy and during debate in the council it was suggested by the ruling group that car parking in the city needed reorganisation because the places to park were not where people wish to park and King Street would be the very place to build.

The real reason? Mr Roberts is correct in his assumption - more money of course. City Tories are so stuck with their policy on keeping rate increases below the rate of inflation that they are desperate to find other income to fund the already much-reduced delivery of services from the city council. So the motorist pays, and we all suffer the consequences of increased pollution.

COUNCILLOR ROB PEACHEY,

Worcester.