THE rail firm responsible for running Colchester North Station has been branded “morally bankrupt” by a leading councillor after a third annual successive parking price hike.

Martin Goss, Colchester councillor responsible for transport, called on Greater Anglia to provide proof of investment at the station’s car park.

The firm decided to increase the cost of a year’s parking by almost 10ten per cent for the third year running.

Mr Goss and Colchester MP Will Quince penned letters to Jamie Burles, Greater Anglia’s managing director, lambasting the decision to raise the price of a season ticket to £1,716.

“Your cost base as a company is clearly out of control, so please do share with me examples of other commercial organisations who can heap such significant percentage rises onto their customers over successive years,” said Mr Goss.

“In a more competitive market, your organisation would be bankrupt and out of business.

“I would state your company is certainly morally bankrupt to toll out these price increments.

“You simply cannot justify it.”

Greater Anglia justifies the rise by pointing to plans to invest in its stations and infrastructure across the country.

But Mr Goss branded the car park at North Station an “unattractive concrete dump”.

“It is always full of litter and the new camera technology simply does not work,” he said.

“I have seen and received successive complaints about wrongly-issued tickets on multiple occasions.”

In his own appeal to Mr Burles, Mr Quince asked the Greater Anglia boss to point him towards investment made at Colchester Station.

“I am not sure when it was you last visited the car park at Colchester Station but, had you done so recently, you would have noticed it is a mess, with weeds growing all over the car park and faded white lines,” he said.

“The car park has clearly not seen any investment recently, other than the ANPR cameras.

“This latest hefty price hike for parking has added insult to injury.”

The Gazette approached Greater Anglia for comment, but the firm referred the newspaper to its previous statement on the issue.

A spokesman said: “We have made some adjustments to parking prices at some of our stations.

“Some prices have been frozen or gone down.

“All money raised from car park charges is used for improving and maintaining our car parks.

“We are investing over £25million on car parks at our stations, creating an extra 1,782 spaces, fitting LED lights, installing Automatic Number Plate Recognition, improving CCTV and security and re-surfacing.

“This high level of investment on improvements exceeds our projected extra revenue generated by increased prices.”