Agenda item

So as to provide the best opportunity for the Committee to provide the public with the fullest answer, questions from the public should be submitted by 12.00 noon on 28th November 2024

Where relevant notice of a question has not been given, the person presiding may either choose to give a response at the meeting or respond by undertaking to provide a written response within three working days.

Questions should be submitted to Democratic Services democratic.services@adur-worthing.gov.uk 

(Note: Public Question Time will operate for a maximum of 30 minutes.)

A resident asked, “In the report it names a company called flowbird who installed the ANPR system at a significant cost in 2014. and the council have quoted a figure of £198,241 to upgrade the ANPR system.

Can I ask that during this period of scrutiny how many different, if indeed any, ANPR operators have the council engaged with for differing cost quotes to see if this can be done at a lower cost and have they extensively investigated costings of any other ways of pay as you leave technology which is available to cover our fear as business owners of loss of dwell time and ease of customer parking?”

The resident was informed that officers had undertaken market testing exercises prior to the decision being made.  They had not made further contact with suppliers during the scrutiny.

The procurement for the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system was in excess of £300k back in 2014 and additional machines were subsequently purchased under the framework. The Council’s maintenance contract with Flowbird (the incumbent supplier) was extended under the procurement rules a number of times (now expired September 2024).

In 2017  the council  undertook a 'soft market test' with 8 suppliers in relation to the provision of ANPR across the three Multi-Storey Car Parks (Buckingham, Grafton and High Street).This was in conjunction with Procurement in 2017.  As part of this exercise suppliers were invited in to present their technology and subsequently submitted costings.

The result from the soft market test was that the suppliers would not take on the existing equipment and would in effect want to remove the existing equipment and replace it with their own, all would cost over £300k.

For competitiveness and without in effect writing off the monies previously spent, the conclusion was to have a new contract with Flowbird (formerly known as Parkeon). This meant no new equipment would be required and the contract would only need to cover maintenance of the existing equipment and the server hosting.

The Council made additional enquiries in 2024 with suppliers to replace the ANPR system and although the costs had reduced slightly from 2017, the costs were still ranging from £260k to £300k. The costs for ANPR remained expensive as did the maintenance contracts costs. 

The costs for the ANPR system and maintenance remained high as well as the fact it did not address the staff resource time being spent in the office to resolve the misreads. 

The council had been monitoring the costs over a number of years and as members of The British Parking Association regularly discussed parking technology within the industry and spoke to suppliers, the costs for ANPR even in 2020 had not reduced since the 2017 soft market testing.

Due to the issues experienced with the ANPR system of  number plates being misread, barriers not raising, customers being overcharged as well as the expensive maintenance costs the council considered alternative options to a new ANPR system which included a pay on arrival system. 

The new pay on arrival system was simpler to use, cheaper to maintain and purchase; as well as being able to utilise staff resources in a more efficient way providing a better customer experience, giving greater flexibility to customers by also being afforded the option to pay by phone/app if they wished to do so.

The council had also been informed apart from those listed in the JOSC report that Chichester Council were also moving away from barrier ANPR system and would be reverting back to pay and display. This was now increasingly commonplace with councils reverting back to pay and display with the offering of pay by phone/app technology. It was cheaper, more convenient, more reliable and gave more flexibility to its users whilst still maintaining payment machines for those who did not have a mobile phone or did not wish to pay by app.

A Resident asked, “We have been informed by officer Jan Jonker that Parking is down at Grafton road since re-opening. What % of parking visits is Grafton Road car park down on since the changeover from ANPR /pay as you leave parking to Pay as you park / pay on app technology?

The resident was informed the number of transactions at Buckingham Road (not Grafton) was lower than before it closed.  

This was believed to be due to a number of factors:

Buckingham Road car park had been closed since March 2022 and all the previous customers had migrated to different car parks and had not changed back at the time of reporting.

Parking numbers were down across carparks in Worthing following the pandemic due to changes in working patterns and consumer behaviour

The Council had also not reintroduced town centre workers permits at Buckingham at this stage to provide opportunity to encourage higher footfall in this part of town.

The promotion of the re-opening of Buckingham Road had been limited, pending this review. Buckingham Road was more difficult to find than Grafton and High Street, particularly for visitors to the town. The Council would promote the site more heavily going forward.

The below table shows the number of weekly transactions which were growing since the car park had been reopened which showed that people were becoming aware that the car park was open.

The monthly number of transactions in October and November 2021 were much higher than current levels, (8612 in October 2024 and 8363 in November 2024) but for the above reasons they did not believe this was attributable to the change in technology.  The increase in usage of the site, in the absence of promotion of the site suggests drivers liked parking there.

Members of the public also asked questions about tackling the sale of drugs and drug use in Victoria and Amelia Parks in Worthing and what training was given to officers with regards to hate crime and hate speech. With their agreement, the Chair invited the Chief Inspector and Superintendent from Sussex police to answer. They said that it was important for people to keep reporting crime when they saw it and that some new funding had been acquired for this particular area of policing; they also informed the resident that a lot of work had been done over the summer to provide officers with the training required to identify and correctly tackle both anti social behaviour and hate crime.