Hurrah! Some Mid Devon's parking machines not working

Council grumpy

A driver shortage has been blamed for some of Mid Devon’s car parking machines being so full up with coins that they’ve stopped working.

The district council’s deputy chief executive Andrew Jarrett revealed the problem is due to contractor G4S not having enough collection drivers to empty machines in Tiverton as scheduled, causing some to become out of order.

He told a meeting of the community policy development group the problem had been going on for the four-to-six weeks and the council had made it “abundantly clear” to the firm that “the current circumstances are not good enough.”

Mr Jarrett said G4S “have given us reassurances that collection levels will be going back to at least twice weekly with effect from this week, so watch this space.

"I fully appreciate it is far from an ideal situation, but we all know driver shortages nationally are a very challenging position at the moment with obviously ongoing absences due to the covid situation.”

Councillor Les Cruwys (Lib Dem, Cranmore) said the problem meant the council was losing out on even more revenue than usual due to the number of people receiving covid vaccinations near Tiverton Pannier Market.

“If you take that queue of people going to be vaccinated at £1.25 a time. If they can’t put it in the machine, we are losing a lot of extra money we should be able to collect from those machines,” he said.

The discussion came after Mr Jarrett revealed the council’s total car parking revenue is around £100,000 less than before the pandemic

He said the annual figure was around £900,000 before covid, but it is currently estimated to be between £750,000 and £800,000.

Mr Jarrett warned: “There is a high likelihood of potential future lockdowns or restrictions in the new year, and potentially even moving forward, which is bound to have an impact on car parking revenue and potentially some of our other revenue streams, especially from our leisure services."

The council’s senior officers are tasked with finding potential savings, with Mid Devon estimating a total shortfall of just over £1 million next year - rising to a projected £1.6 million in 2026/27.