Parking payment progress!
Buckinghamshire Council has recently installed a series of new parking payment machines which offer greater reliability of payment for those parking in the county. The works have been carried out over several phases across the county, in line with our Parking Strategy adopted in February 2024, and are on-going.
In September 2024, the council had 273 parking payment machines – 109 machines on-street, and 164 machines located in car parks. Unfortunately, many of the machines didn’t work as they had been damaged, and the ones that were still operational were unreliable - suffering from communication failures, hardware/software issues and payment faults.
Our teams were regularly made aware of these issues with the payment machines, meaning those wishing to park their cars were unable to pay for parking. The issues often led to lengthy downtime of the payment machines (sometimes in key locations) while our teams worked with the suppliers to find cost-effective resolutions.
The Parking Strategy sets out our aims and objectives around payment options for parking, including focusing on digital payment options (e.g. using parking payment Apps), and supporting this transition with card-enabled payment machines. It was understood that there was still a demand for payment machines in car parks, but there was much less demand for payment machines to support on-street parking, other than in key areas. In fact, most on-street machines are no longer in use in Buckinghamshire as 95% of all transactions are digital!
With this in mind, it was agreed that the number of machines should be consolidated down and replaced with new machines that could more effectively perform to the standard required for those using our county’s car parks and paying for parking in Buckinghamshire.
An old payment machine being prepped for removal
It was over to our Parking Project Team who undertook market engagement and assessment to understand what alternative suppliers and procurement options were available. This led to a detailed specification and robust contract being produced with procurement of 76 new machines from IPS Group UK – experts in providing innovative parking technology solutions. The new IPS payment machines are solar-powered, card-only, ticketless machines. This has resulted in some carbon savings and has allowed a consistent income stream to be maintained whilst having little or no impact on the environment.
The work to replace non-operational payment machines began in October 2024 and were delivered on time and in line with the agreed programme across several phases in December 2024, January 2025 and March 2025.
Collage of old payment machines being removed
Most of the parking payment machines that were removed and replaced with new models were off-street (i.e. in car parks across the county). This included, but isn’t limited to:
- Cornwalls Meadow (Buckingham)
- Wendover Library (Wendover)
- Star Yard & Catlings (Chesham)
- Amersham Multi-Storey car park (AMSCP)
- Sycamore Road (Amersham)
- Pound Lane (Marlow)
As part of the works, some car parks saw the removal of multiple out-dated pay and display machines in place of a smaller number of pay-on-foot machines.
Pay and display parking means you purchase a ticket from a machine and display it in your vehicle to prove you've paid for parking. You can also use specified parking Apps to pay. This requires people parking their vehicle to know exactly how long they intend to park to cover their whole parking period, or return to their vehicle to update their parking or use the App to increase their parking duration.
Pay on foot parking is a system where drivers pay for their parking at a machine, usually located near the exit, after they've parked and are ready to leave, rather than upon arrival. This means people parking don’t have to know exactly how long they intend to park, as they are charged for the parking period when they leave.
An example of this can be seen in Amersham MSCP where the 14 payment machines (pay and display) at the start of the project, have been reduced to five payment machines (pay on foot) located at key exits.
Collage of new payment machines installed in Amersham MSCP
The new machines were purchased for just under £500,000 and have to date taken more than £850,000, with a robust 5-year maintenance agreement to ensure as close to 100% uptime as possible. The maintenance contract also includes financial penalties for any non-performance. We are seeking to reinvest this income into the purchase of more IPS machines, removing and replacing the remaining non- IPS machines in the near future. Most council owned car parks across the county now have at least one new payment machine, with any remaining machines due to be replaced by the end of 2025.
A reminder that you can always let us know about any parking issues we need to investigate through FixMyStreet. This includes:
- a vehicle parked in an area where there are restrictions (for example, on double yellow lines
- problems with a council car park
- spillages or fly-tipping in a council car park
- problems with payment machines in a council car park
- problems with on-street parking payment machines
- dangerous parking
- general parking problems not listed here