Surrey Heath Borough Council selects ADVAM and NewPark to deliver a leading edge parking solution
Posted 9 September 2015, UK
ADVAM (UK) Ltd is pleased to announce, in partnership with NewPark Solutions, the agreement with Surrey Heath Borough Council (Surrey Heath) to deliver a new parking solution that aims to make parking easier and reduce congestion around Camberley Town Centre.
The service has been in trial with a small group of local residents for some time, but following the success of the trial, Surrey Heath Borough Council are now launching to the wider community.
The new service provides a completely frictionless solution, enabling customers to enter and exit the car park, without the need to collect a ticket or to make payment at a machine.
Leigh Thornton, Executive Head of Business for Surrey Heath Borough Council explains, “We continually look at ways in which we can improve efficiency with all of our public services. We were looking to upgrade the existing equipment, so we thought that it was a good time to have a real look at what technology is available and how we can make the whole experience of visiting Camberley even better for our customers”.
As town centre congestion can often be caused by queues into the car parks, Surrey Heath wanted to not only look at a solution that made it easy for customers to park, but would make the entire process more efficient. In addition to this, it was important that Surrey Heath could understand how consumers were using the car parks, which will help to continually improve the service for residents, visitors and local businesses.
Following the evaluation of a number of services, Surrey Heath selected to work with NewPark Solutions and ADVAM to provide a frictionless solution, using Ticketless Barrier Controlled systems and ParkCharge, a membership account solution to seamlessly enter, exit and pay for the car park session.
To benefit from the new service, customers register for the Surrey Heath prePAY Parking service via the surrey heath website, providing the required details and add credit to their account. When the customer uses the car park, their registered number plate will be recognised, providing them with seamless entry and exit. The correct parking fee is calculated at exit and deducted from the balance of their account.
The added benefit for this membership service is that, for the first time, Surrey Heath will be able to get real insight into how the car parks are being used. This will enable them to further improve the service offered to customers and to also provide additional loyalty bonuses or parking promotions that are relevant to the individual users.
Leigh Thornton continues, “We’re really excited to be offering this new solution, making it a lot easier for residents, visitors and businesses to use the parking facilities. Not only is it easier for people to park, which will in turn reduce congestion around Camberley Town Centre; but we will be able to use the electronic system to provide additional services to our parkers such as special promotions and discounts”.
To further improve the experience for those looking to park in Camberley Town Centre, Surrey Heath has also launched a new online service, Car Parks Live. This web page updates every 10 minutes to show how many spaces are available in the car parks. In conjunction with the PrePay solution, people can now see where a space is available and enter and exit the car park without the need to pay at a pay station.
