Cafe's fury over double yellow plan

Ellen Wilson, boss of Creation Café on Chapel Street, said councillors needed to “wise up” after they revealed proposals for a clampdown in more than 20 streets.

She added: ”They wonder why independent businesses fail? We need help, we don’t need something to make our lives more difficult.”

Salford City Council chiefs are proposing a mix of double and single yellow lines and ‘no returns’ signs on the streets to stop commuters from Manchester city centre flooding the area for free all-day parking.

Mrs Wilson, whose cafe is regularly used by people suffering learning difficulties, blasted the move as "daft".

She said: “People wonder why there is such high unemployment? There’s no help, that’s why. We help our community. This will also put off our disabled customer, though.

"We are struggling, we want people to be encouraged to come here, not put off because they think they'll get a ticket.”

Mrs Wilson also warned the restrictions would force customers to neighbouring stores with free parking.

“If people couldn’t park here or had to pay, they will think, let’s not bother going to the little café, we can go to Sainsbury’s or McDonald's and we can park there for free.' We’d have no chance."

Mrs Wilson added that café workers and staff from the neighbouring Angel Centre medical practice had endured tickets from wardens in the past.

She said: “One day we all parked our cars opposite the building. After finishing work we all had parking tickets on our cars, we had no warning from the council that we could no longer use the parking bays, and after attempting to appeal, we all lost and had to pay the full fine.”

Derek Antrobus, lead member for planning at Salford City Council, said the plans would free up space, not make it more difficult to park.

He added: “Each street in the area was looked at on an individual basis and orders were tailored to circumstance. A traffic engineer has spoken to the cafe owners and their concerns are documented within the proposal.

"On the whole we are talking about restricting parking to two hours. This gives people plenty of time to visit the hairdressers, shop locally or go to a café without worrying about obtaining a fine.”

He said: "When the staff were given tickets in the past, they perhaps could have been consulted better, but that is in the past and our plans are for the future