Peter O’Driscoll, Managing Director at RingGo, makes the case for an Open Market model for parking.

A parking space is often seen as a universal right. With over 35 million people in the UK living in a household with a car, parking is a point of contention for nearly half the country’s population, cutting across social, economic, environmental and development policies.

The government is striving to make parking easier across the UK. There are new national developments in the pipeline from the Department for Transport (DfT) to improve parking services and make it more convenient for motorists to pay, wherever they choose to park.

However, as most local councils control the enforcement of on-street parking and each has its own parking strategy, this is no simple feat.

Councils must be aware of the proposed changes and how new parking innovations could bring multiple benefits to their organisation and motorists in their area. So, what are the new developments and what are the advantages of moving to a new parking model?

Introducing the National Parking Platform

In response to parking concerns across the UK, the DfT has developed the National Parking Platform (NPP), a publicly-owned technology hub that facilitates data exchange, digital payments, and a new way of delivering better parking and mobility services. In 2024, the platform is expected to move from its trial phase to a full-scale national rollout.

If adopted by local authorities, the NPP will revolutionise the way phone parking services are delivered. For motorists, it will provide a simplified, improved customer experience. They will have easy access to parking location, price and space availability information, and be able to use their preferred app wherever they park.

The NPP has the potential to save local authorities money by eliminating lengthy and costly procurement processes. It will also help raise the ‘digital visibility’ of car parks and on-street parking areas, increase the efficiency of local authority services, and reduce the cost of compliance management and enforcement.

The platform will enable approved phone parking providers, such as RingGo, to integrate their services and access all available parking inventory in a specific geographical area - without needing to go through the current tender process. The NPP is a way of providing standardised technical and commercial interfaces, taking the burden off overstretched council staff.

The NPP will provide the foundation for an Open Market in parking, allowing multiple phone parking providers to operate alongside each other. This will encourage fair competition with lower barriers to entry for new parking solutions. Despite the huge opportunities of this scheme, news of the NPP and its benefits only seem to have reached a limited number of councillors and officers.

Are councils ready for the NPP?

To facilitate discussions around future planning and canvas opinion on existing policies and operations, the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) surveyed councillors and officers across the country in early 2023. The results are published in its Parking Strategies and Innovation report 2023 which found that most council decision-makers do not understand the potential changes to local authority parking.

For instance, over one-third (36%) of respondents had never heard of the NPP, with 44% having no awareness of the Open Market model. This lack of awareness and understanding led to almost 80% of respondents calling for the government to explain how the NPP will work in practice. However, this did not deter local authorities from being in favour of the new Open Market model. In fact, 44% of respondents preferred the idea of a publicly-owned platform over a private-sector hub, with only 30% stating that their current procurement model for phone parking providers is cost or time efficient.

The LGiU report revealed a strategy gap in local authorities that could prevent them from realising the benefits of the NPP and an Open Market model. Yet, there is an appetite to innovate in parking from councillors and officers. All survey respondents were interested in getting better access to parking data to help inform policy-making and 85% called for EV charging to be integrated with a parking app for a real-time view of occupancy – both areas that could be facilitated and accelerated by a transition to the Open Market.

The importance of the Open Market model

With an Open Market model, a choice of parking apps is available in a single location. This significantly reduces or removes parking challenges, while improving service resilience and incentivising innovation. It is already a standard model used across much of Europe and solves the problem of drivers having to download multiple parking apps to pay for parking. This Open Market approach was strongly supported by local authorities in the LGiU survey, with 83% of respondents favouring the use of a single parking app.

In the UK, councils in Manchester, Oxfordshire, Coventry and Cheshire West and Chester have piloted an Open Market model with much success. After Manchester City Council became the first local authority to use the NPP in 2021, it immediately saw appusage grow and expanded the rollout from 5 to 15 sites. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council offered three parking providers for motorists to choose from in its new unitary status. With more choices for drivers to pay digitally, the council reduced cash payments by over 30%, saving money on machine cash collections, banking and machine repairs.

Choice and competition are vital to the UK economy, and this is something that should be reflected in parking. The pilot schemes clearly show that a national rollout of the NPP and move to an Open Market model will bring significant advantages to local authorities and motorists. We look forward to the government closing the information gap so councils can benefit from cost savings and less protracted procurement processes, while giving motorists the choice of hassle-free parking payments.

This article is sponsored by RingGo.