A PROMOTIONAL shopping voucher found attached to parking tickets in Skipton's Waller Hill and Keighley Road car park left one visitor scratching her head.

Jean Robinson parked her car in Craven District Council's bus station car park, paid 60p for a ticket and was pleasantly surprised to receive a shopping voucher that "may be redeemed at some shops in Skipton in part payment for goods".

But Miss Robinson, of Embsay, explained: "I went into a number of shops and produced the voucher with each purchase.

"No-one would accept it and in one I was told the voucher could only be redeemed in Sunwin House."

Once in Sunwin House. Miss Robinson kept her fingers crossed when she produced the voucher in the hope of redeeming the 60p against a gift voucher.

"Sadly I still could not get my 60p back as I was informed it could only be used in the store itself, a gift voucher obviously not being 'goods' I gave up."

Not one to admit defeat, Miss Robinson decided to take advantage of the Brewers Fayre offer of "five pound off a meal for two" on the reverse of the voucher.

However, closer inspection revealed that not only were there no Brewers Fayre outlets in Skipton - the closest are in Gargrave and Colne - but that the offer ran out on December 13, six days prior to Miss Robinson's visit.

She said: "As a tourist I would have viewed my experience as an insult and not a welcome to Skipton. As a resident, and if the information was correct about Sunwin House being the only shop which refunds the voucher, then I would be wanting councillors to be asking questions about a public utility being linked exclusively with one company.

"The council should either sort it out or just continue to charge without resorting to pointless incentives."

Linda Bradley, Craven District Council's customer services manager, said the shopping voucher scheme had been in place for many years - she had inherited the running of it six years ago but had had no cause to alter it.

She thought that at one point more than one store had signed up to the scheme but believed the Co-op was now the only one. She agreed that because of Miss Robinson's complaints the wording on the ticket and the whole scheme needed reviewing.

The council has not received any complaints about the scheme in the past and Mrs Bradley thought local people understood that the voucher could only be redeemed in Sunwin House.

Mrs Bradley said that it was unfortunate that the Brewers Fayre offer had run out but that the tickets were ordered in bulk and new ones were due.

Tony Barrett, from Skipton's Chamber of Trade, said it was not a scheme that the chamber was involved in. He had had a similar complaint from a tourist about six months ago.

A visitor had tried to redeem a voucher in his furniture shop on Belmont Bridge but Mr Barrett had to confess that he knew nothing about it.

It was raised at a chamber meeting where members recalled that a scheme had been launched several years ago. They had not been consulted about it recently and assumed the council was using up old parking tickets.