Costs at Croydon's town centre car parks increased last week in an experiment to see if prices influence where motorists park.

Operator NCP, which took over the operation of town centre multi-storey car parks from Croydon Council last year, raised prices at all its town centre car parks, except the Whitgift multi-storey.

It is hoped the experiment will reveal whether there is a correlation between the price of parking and where people decide to leave their cars.

Parking costs at the Allders multi-storey car park have risen from £1.70 to £2.00, the cost of parking at Fairfield Halls' car park has gone up from £1.70 an hour to £2.50 for a minimum of two hours and at the Dingwall Road car park prices have increased from £1 an hour to £2.40 for two.

Councillor Mike Fisher, leader of the council, said: "Parking costs have long been a contentious issue in the town. We believe that offering competitively priced parking is vital to Croydon especially when places like Bluewater promote themselves with free parking.

"Our fear is that higher charges could send the wrong message about Croydon's appeal and we are pretty certain that businesses will be unhappy about customers having to pay more to park.

"However, the pricing experiment involving the two shoppers' car parks does interest us. It will be very interesting to see the effect of higher parking prices at Allders in comparison to Whitgift."