The council is set to receive more than a quarter of a million pounds less than expected from its car park income.

It was announced at a Bracknell Forest Council meeting that the authority could see a potential "overspend" of £260,000 in car park provisions.

And officers informed councillors that this was not because residents are not using the council-owned car parks.

Andrew Hunter said: “Car parking revenue is not where we thought it would be.

“The numbers of people parking has gone up but the length of stay is shorter than anticipated.

“The majority of the parking is up to two hours. We had anticipated more longer stay parking.”

The figures were announced at a meeting of the environment, culture and communities committee where councillors discussed the revenue shortfall.

Councillor Sandra Ingham also highlighted there is (2 hours) free parking at The Point and added that she sometimes parks there herself.

Chairman of the committee Cllr Robert Angell said: “At the moment it is costing us more to run it.”

However officer Andrew Hunter added that more income is anticipated once summer receipts had been counted and that more people would use the car parks for longer at Christmas time.

This comes after a council committee voted against increasing car park charges by up to 30 pence an hour in early September.

The council is also set to overspend by more than £60,000 after a trial scheme which didn’t charge residents for parking permits ended.

The scheme became a paid-parking system and as a result the number of permit applications dropped and the scheme was deemed not to be self-financing.

The council also received £25,000 less in parking penalty charge notices in the previous year.

Collectively the council lost £345,000 from its parking revenue.

These figures were discussed by councillors at a meeting on Tuesday, 18 September.