A NUN has pleaded for yellow lines outside her York convent to be included in a proposed review of evening parking restrictions.

Sister Mary Walmsley says carers looking after elderly nuns at the Bar Convent at night are frightened to walk there from Nunnery Lane car park because of rowdy and unpredictable behaviour from drinkers on the Micklegate Run.

Sister Mary, who is Sister-in-Charge at the convent, says she can see no reason why a number of parking bays could not be recreated by City of York Council on the cobbled area in front of the convent in Blossom Street.

The nun, who said earlier this year that she was willing to take part in a march and rally against evening parking charges and restrictions, was giving her reaction to a series of proposed changes being recommended by officers to councillors.

The authority has named a dozen city centre streets where evening parking restrictions could be replaced by parking bays with meters.

But Blossom Street, where the yellow lines were painted earlier this year at the same time as evening charges were introduced, is not on the list.

Sister Mary welcomed the suggested cuts in evening parking charges, which would see York residents paying a flat-rate £1 fee to park all night at Nunnery Lane car park, and non-residents paying £2.

While she had wanted the complete scrapping of evening charges, she accepted the council had financial difficulties and hoped the £2 fee would cause considerably less damage to the convent's bed-and-breakfast business than the current hourly system, which often involved guests paying £3.90 for a night's parking. "I think £1 is fair enough for local residents," she said.

Convent business manager Bernadette Oliver said the reduction was an improvement, and meant that guests paying £28 for bed and breakfast would face a total bill of £30, instead of £32 as it had been for the past few months. A flat-rate fee would also be less confusing.

However, she still had concerns that there would be some resistance to any charge from some customers.

Coun Ann Reid, the council's executive member for planning and transport, said councillors were being recommended to consult on the possibility of introducing metered evening parking instead of city centre yellow lines.

"I will be discussing with officers ways in which we can consider any additional requests such as these," she said.

Updated: 10:01 Friday, September 24, 2004