Back on 7th July 2014 the Isle of Wight council’s Executive voted to change what was previously free car parking into places where you will have to pay to park.
OnTheWight has been pursuing the Isle of Wight council to discover how much this will cost to implement and run.
After a week of waiting, OnTheWight re-promoted the council, to finally receive the details.
Three areas of cost
The expenses involved are three-fold – the equipment that will take your money, the costs of collecting the car park fees and the on-going maintenance of the equipment for the full lifetime of the meters.
The council have revealed the new parking meters are ‘approximately £3,000 each’. Eight of them are required, totaling £24,000.
In addition twelve new signs are required at approx. £300 each, coming to £3,600.
Bringing the money the council will have to layout up-front to £27,600.
Cost of collection
The council state that it will not cost any more money for them to collect cash from the new meters as they will be ‘covered by the existing workforces’.
This is despite it being commonly understood that the number of staff in that department have been reduced.
On-going costs? Unknown!
Of course, any new expense in equipment is joined by the cost of maintaining the equipment for the full-lifetime of those items.
So, how much will maintaining conversion of the currently-free-to-use car parks to pay for be, OnTheWight asked.
Guess what? The council doesn’t know. Surprisingly, IWC haven’t worked out how much it’s going to cost (us all), on an on-going basis, into the future.
They admitted that, “Maintenance costs are yet to be finalised” seeking to re-assure by concluding, “they are not expected to significantly impact on the projected car parking revenue”.
Image: © Tax Brackets
