New rules have come into force to prevent people from parking on the Wellingborough Market.
The parking ban, which came into forced on Monday, September 28, has been introduced in a bid to attract more shoppers and make the area safer.
People are no longer permitted to park on the market between 8am and 6pm Monday to Saturday.
However, disabled drivers will still be allowed to park at the top of the square for a maximum of four hours at a time, and vehicles with permits and marked spaces can still continue to use their parking spots.
Stallholders will be able to drive on to the market to load and unload goods, but must make sure their vehicles are removed during the trading hours.
Cllr Martin Griffiths, chairman of Wellingborough Council’s market working group, told the Northants Herald and Post: “Wellingborough’s market place is not a car park, but increasingly it is being used as one.
“People have been driving through the stalls and parking wherever they want, even when there’s a market on. I’ve seen so many near misses, with shoppers having to jump out of the way.
“We’ve also had an issue with non-blue badge holders parking in the disabled bays, meaning those that genuinely need them struggle to find an accessible space.
“Enforcing these new rules should help with that too.
“No one wants to shop in a car park. We’re hoping that prohibiting vehicles from driving around and parking up will help the market itself, by providing a much more appealing and much safer environment to browse the stalls.
“We’re lucky to have a lot of free parking in our town centre, all within very close range of the shops and the market, and stallholders and shoppers should be using those instead of the market place.”
The county council’s parking enforcement team have started to patrol the market place and issue penalty charge notices to anyone in breach of the new parking order.