The Tories running West Berkshire Council evicted the club last month, and meet tonight to approve plans to turn the Faraday Road ground into a 300-space car park for council staff.

The Tories are selling off 10 council car parks to developers, so Newbury will lose 622 parking spaces by the end of next year. Although two multi-storey car parks are promised by 2010 to restore the status quo, council officials have spent the last nine months looking at how to make up the shortfall.

As newbury.net predicted, an option to use Victoria Park has been discarded due to “major opposition from the local community”, as has a six-storey car park next to the Cross Keys pub in Pelican Lane, on financial grounds.

Also, there are 680 free parking permits issued to council staff, who from next autumn will be required to park in Faraday Road, and then walk to the council’s Market Street HQ. Union officials have not yet ruled out industrial action over the move.

A town centre survey found that there are 442 spare spaces at any given time on a weekday, with just 340 at weekends. By using the Bayer car park and council staff car park in Market Street, this can go up to 600 spare, which should be enough to deal with all but the last two weekends running up to Christmas.

However, the survey includes an extra 145 spaces at the yet-to-be-built Sainsburys split-level car park, which the store insists will be full of new customers, and not people nipping into Newbury.

In the event that the parking system will overload, an emergency park-and-ride scheme will be put in place from Vodafone HQ on Saturdays.

But a major drawback of the plan looks certain to be decent signposting, as the council said it had no money left to pay for new parking signs – as requested by Newbury Retail Association.

In April, the Tories slapped an extra 10p an hour on parking rates in Newbury, and have paved the way for dozens of sidestreets to go resident-only, which could force hundreds of commuters to find a space in the town centre.