Powys County Council is "exploring options" to cut waiting time for parking tickets in Machynlleth.

Following instances where some visitors to Machynlleth’s Maengwyn Street car park have been left queueing for upwards of 20 minutes in order to get to the ticket machine, Powys Council has been looking for ways to reduce the waiting times.

The car park gets particularly crowded on Wednesdays - market day - which was noted by former Oswestry Town Clerk David Preston, who posted a photo of the long queue to Facebook on Wednesday, August 26.

Machynlleth councillor Michael Williams said: “While I have not personally heard from a lot of residents coming to me with complaints about wait times in the car park, I know that Powys Council are aware of a problem there.

“Relevant officers from Powys Council have been assigned to investigate if there is any specific issue in Machynlleth that is creating longer waiting times, or if it is an issue with the ticket machines within the car park.”

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A spokesperson for Powys County Council said: “Although there are two pay and display ticket machines in Machynlleth’s Maengwyn Street car park, it experiences high levels of use every Wednesday due to the town’s market day and especially during the school holidays.

“Other factors which would have contributed to the delay is the need to put in registration plate details and the ticket machine’s 4G signal.

“If the registration plate details are not provided in good time, then the ticket machine will re-set and the process will have to start again. If the 4G signal is weak, this can delay the process time of purchasing a parking ticket using contactless card payment.

“The council is currently exploring a phone payment solution so that visitors can pay for to use our car parks through their phone instead of using the car park’s ticket machine.”