Shoppers in Helston should be able to park for free in the four Saturdays leading up to Christmas.

It is thanks to a scheme being run by the Helston Business Improvement Partnership (HBIP) to lure more people into the town.

Members asked the town council to transfer a previous unused grant of £2,206 to this project, together with an additional £1,062.97.

All the money comes from a dedicated pot set aside for HBIP projects, but administered by the town council, using funds given by Tesco and Sainsbury’s when they built new stores in the town.

The majority of this money will be spent on paying Cornwall Council the revenue they would otherwise miss out on by giving free parking in three of the town’s car parks: Trengrouse Way, the Trengrouse Way extension and Tyacke Road.

The remaining £603 will go on advertising the free parking and producing promotional banners and posters.

The scheme is set to run on Saturday November 29, December 6, December 13 and December 20.

In its application to the town council, HBIP wrote: “Car parking has long been a contentious issue in the town.

“An application for funding of £2,206 was previously granted to the parking project group for projects which have not come to fruition.

“It is requested that these monies now be used to fund free parking for the four crucial trading Saturdays leading up to Christmas.”

Councillors agreed to the transfer and extra funds, but insisted on a report back from HBIP after Christmas.

It followed a discussion over the lack of information given by HBIP back to the town council, about the results of projects money has been allocated to.

Councillor John Boase said there was a lot of money “not being used at the moment”, with the aesthetics group of HBIP currently holding onto £26,000, and he questioned why some of that could not be used for this project.

However, town clerk Chris Dawson pointed out that HBIP was unable to reallocate money that had already been earmarked for entirely separate projects. This transferral was to a very similar project.

He did agree, though, that deputy mayor Mark Upton’s request for a report back from HBIP afterwards was “exactly the same kind of statement I’ve requested for all the projects for the last couple of years.”