NEWS
LOCAL AUTHORITY NEWS
BLUE BADGE BUDGETS
TUNBRIDGE WELLS GOES CONTACTLESS
Motorists in Kent are at the forefront of a technical revolution as contactless payments have become a reality for people seeking alternative methods of paying for parking. The local authority in Tunbridge Wells has introduced near field communication (NFC) contactless technology in all 15 council-run car parks, meaning motorists now have more choice in how they pay, instead of having to search for the right change every time they park their vehicle.
Customers using the PayByPhone service can already choose from seven ways to pay: text, online, mobile web, phone call, Android, iPhone and Blackberry apps. Those who have NFC-enabled Android or Blackberry phones now have another option, to use NFC and pay for their parking without going near a payment machine.
The NFC contactless parking technology has been launched by PayByPhone, which has placed stickers embedded with secure NFC tags onto all pay and display machines in council-run car parks in Tunbridge Wells. Proving how easy PayByPhone is for
10 MAY 2012
motorists to use, since taking over the phone parking contract in February, the number of motorists regularly using the service has increased by 21 per cent, and the number of phone parking payments by 14 per cent month on month.
Emma Pell, parking manager at Tunbridge
Wells Borough Council, said: ‘We are very excited about working with PayByPhone and being the first council in the UK to roll out the new NFC parking technology. Having seen how quick and easy it is to use, we are sure that it will make paying to park even easier for our residents and visitors.’
‘NFC payments are set for rapid growth in the UK during 2012, when millions of NFC-enabled smartphones will become available,’ explains Robin Bevan, commercial chief executive at PayByPhone. ‘Using this technology to further improve our phone parking makes the service so much easier for customers to use.
‘That is why we have invested in developing this technology and will be rolling it out to all of our clients during 2012.’
Motorists who qualify for a blue badge are to be charged for the badge to be renewed under a new scheme introduced in three council areas in Devon. From this month, Conservative-led Devon County Council and Torbay Council are to charge £10 for people to renew badges every three years, while Plymouth City Council, which is also Conservative-run, said it was to charge £4.95 every three years. The councils said government changes to the scheme, introduced to cut down on fraud, meant increased administration costs. Blue Badge fraud is estimated to cost the UK £46m a year, so measures – including more stringent measures to determine eligibility and enhanced security features – were introduced by the Department for Transport earlier this year. Rob Parkhouse, head of business strategy and support at Devon County Council, defended the charges, saying it would cost about £334,000 a year to administer and that £10 for a three-year pass was still good value for money.
SIGNED-UP TO SI-DEM
East Hertfordshire District Council, in partnership with Stevenage Borough Council and Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council, has switched to the back office system, Si-Dem, to manage its parking operations.
East Herts encompasses a mix of rural and urban areas and issues around 30,000 penalty charge notices a year. NSL provides the parking management service, and the inclusion of Stevenage and Welwyn will account for another 15,000 PCNs.
The adoption of Si-Dem, which is the primary operating system from ACS (formerly Spur), has simplified the ticketing process for back office staff by bringing three separate systems together onto one platform.
www.britishparking.co.uk
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