COUNCILLOR Stuart Currie, leader of the opposition SNP group on East Lothian Council, has promised to tear out the ticket machines at East Lothian’s coastal car parks and “put them up for sale on eBay” if his party is voted into power after May’s council elections.

Speaking at the council’s budget-setting meeting this week, Mr Currie repeated a promise to scrap coastal parking fees if his party takes control of John Muir House.

And he went one stage further, promising to sell the machines on the internet bargain site.

He said: “I will stick the machines on eBay and the advert will say: ‘Hardly used, one careful owner’.”

The controversial car parking fees, introduced by the council in the summer of 2015, have failed to raise the revenue expected.

During the meeting on Tuesday, it was suggested that the SNP had decided against their pledge to scrap the fees because they appeared to have kept £100,000 of coastal car parking revenue in their alternative budget plans.

And it was claimed that they would not be able to scrap the fees anyway because the revenue had been used by the council as part of their business plan for introducing private parking attendants on the streets of the county’s towns and villages.

East Lothian Council was granted an order decriminalising parking in the county on the basis of a plan which said coastal car parking fees would fund the new parking attendants.

However, Mr Currie dismissed the claims, insisting the charges would be scrapped by an SNP administration.

He told the Courier: “The order cannot be undone, parking cannot be recriminalised. We fully intend to scrap these charges.”