Rip off Marlborough is how the town has become regarded by visitors and local people who have to pay some of the highest parking prices in the county, the area board was told on Tuesday.

Wiltshire Council is in the process of harmonising parking charges right across the county because each of its four predecessor councils had different parking rates.

However, instead of agreeing to bring down the prices in Marlborough, Wiltshire’s Cabinet has agreed to keep them high until gradually over the next few years the cost of parking in other towns catches up.

On Tuesday Coun Rich Pitts told the area board that Hilliers Yard and the Polly Gardens car parks (both behind Waitrose) were the dearest in the town and should be reclassified as short term parking.

The current cost of parking in Hilliers Yard and the Polly Gardens ranges from 55p for the first hour to £7.30 for five hours and £17.30 for all-day parking.

“The council should redesignate them as short stay car parks with a maximum parking allowed of three hours rather than financially penalise people via the imposition of a stealth tax,” said Coun Pitts.

“While locals may understand some of the rationale behind discouraging people from using these as long term parking, and park elsewhere, the casual visitor will not and will go away with the impression that Marlborough is a rip off town.”

Coun Nick Fogg said the high cost of parking was gradually forcing more town centre workers, many of them low paid, to ‘ooze’ into the residential areas to park.

Cabinet member Lionel Grundy, who attended the meeting, said that parking charges in other towns in Wiltshire would gradually catch up with Marlborough’s.

Yesterday shoppers parking in Hilliers Yard agreed with the rip-off claim. Clerical worker Elizabeth Burry, from Wotton Bassett, who works in Kingsbury Street, said: “If my boss did not help me with parking I could not afford to park here.”

Hungerford pensioner Peter Dobson, 84, and his wife Sheila, 78, said they travelled to Marlborough by bus because they could not afford the parking. Mrs Dobson said: “The cost of parking in Marlborough is outrageous.”