More cash could be squeezed out of drivers in Dorset – according to a councillor for the rural area around Dorchester.

Cllr Roland Tarr told a meeting on Thursday that the council was missing out on the potential for extra income.

"The general parking situation is total chaos. We have the worst parking arrangements in our towns compared to anywhere I have been in the last five or six years. Everywhere else if you park on the street, you pay money, you dial it in on your phone or if you are local, or elderly you have a permit.

"Our parking policy should come up for review… We're missing millions of pounds of income," he said.

Cllr Tarr, the Liberal Democrat councillor for Winterborne and Broadmayne, is a long-standing campaigner to increase the levels of safe cycling in the county and believes more should be done to discourage unnecessary car use.

He told the meeting that even switching to electric cars was not necessarily an answer as people "too lazy" to walk even half a mile to work would continue to do so – although he was reminded by Cllr Noc Lacey-Clark that some people had no option but to drive, no matter what the distance.