Car park machines planned at Bannau Brychneiniog beauty spots

Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Cash-strapped Bannau Brycheiniog National Park Authority plan to introduce car parking machines at beauty spots around the national park, in a bid to make more money from tourism.

Last month the National Park Authority (NPA)’s head of commercial operations Wayne Lewis lodged four planning applications with Bannau Brycheiniog planners to install car park machines and associated signage on the edge of four car parks.

The sites are the car park at the bottom of Llyn-y-Fan road, Llanddeusant, the car park at Carreg Cennen Castle, Trapp, Llandeilo, the Fox Hunters and Keeper’s Pond car parks, both off the B4246 road near Blaenavon.

Documents with the applications state that these machines are there to: “collect donations and car parking fees.”

A spokeswoman for BBNPA said: “The authority has submitted planning applications to install donation‑based parking machines in several car parks it owns, with any funds raised reinvested directly into caring for these sites and maintaining them for the future.”

However there are concerns that visitors will clog up the nearby roads in an attempt to dodge paying for parking.

On the Keeper’s Pond car park proposal NPA planning officer Luke Woosnam said: “We’ve had some concerns relating to these ticket machines from third parties.

“The concerns are that people will just park their vehicles on highway verges instead of paying.”

He asks Monmouthshire council’s Highways Authority (HA) to comment on this specific point.

Monmouth HA’s Benjamin Lewis answered: “People can already do that at present so it’s not really a fundamentally change for us.”

Consultation on all four proposal is set to end on Friday, May 8.

Back in March at a meeting of the NPA, members agreed the budget for 2026/2027 which will see it use just under £700,000 this year from its reserves.

This year Bannau Brycheiniog requires £5.227 million to run its services but will only receive £4.528 million through the Welsh Government grant and local authority levy it receives.

Finance chiefs have warned that if the NPA continues to rely on reserves it could exhaust them and go bust by 2029.