Around £30,000 in cash was taken at Keswick’s main car parks in the first week after the machines were adapted to accept coins and notes again.
Councillor Sally Lansbury updated her town council colleagues on the controversial no-cash system which has been scrapped at the Allerdale Borough Council’s Central, Bell Close, Otley Road and Lakeside car parks in Keswick after a wave of complaints.
Mrs Lansbury, who is also an Allerdale councillor, said the borough’s parking wardens had been dealing with a “lot of hassle” from frustrated motorists who had been struggling to pay by card or phone via the MiPermit app.
She said it had become a staff welfare issue as well as having financial and customer service implications made worse by poor mobile phone reception and automated shortcomings.
“The amount of cash that has gone through the machines is enormous,” said Mrs Lansbury via Zoom at last week’s town council meeting.
“It was £30,000 in the first week. We need to keep the cash payments for the foreseeable future. Residents and visitors are not ready to move to non-cash payments only,” she added.
Allerdale had brought in the no-cash system for its pay and display car parks earlier this year but was forced to do a U-turn this summer once large numbers of tourists started returning to Keswick after lockdown, many being unable to use the machines.
Keswick’s mayor Paul Titley said: “Cash-free is fine if you have a system that works. Allerdale seem to have chosen one that obviously doesn’t.”
Allerdale makes around £2 million a year in pay-and-display fees from its Keswick car parks, which have nearly 800 spaces for vehicles, with standard payments of £3.30 for two hours.
Charges had been suspended in March when lockdown started but were restored in May.
The no cash policy had been introduced to help protect Allerdale staff from possible infection from coronavirus on coins an banknotes.
Allerdale’s chief executive Andrew Seekings and the council’s head of financial services Catherine Nicholson had taken the decision to restore cash payments and have said they will review the situation.
