Shoppers have been given an extra hour of free parking at the Forster Square retail park in Bradford as the management of the car park has changed hands.

A spokesman for managing agent Savills, representing the retail park’s owners British Land, said the policy of no more than two hours’ parking at the site had been changed to three hours after a review.

It had been decided that it would be better to extend the hours.

The changeover coincides with the management company monitoring the car park changing from Excel to Parking Eye.

Earlier this year the Telegraph & Argus reported that West Yorkshire Trading Standards had received complaints about Excel and what appeared to be examples of overzealous enforcement of parking charges.

And last year the company back-tracked on a rule which had seen it enforcing the issuing of tickets to those parking in the car park and walking off the site. Excel initially insisted the car park was solely for those shopping at the retail park, but it later emerged that the controversial tickets were to be reviewed after the park’s owners revealed there was a clause in the original planning permission for the retail park, agreed in the 1990s, stating it could also be used by those shopping in the city centre.

British Land ordered Excel to review any of the fines it had imposed in contravention of this rule.