Worcester City Council is planning to take legal action against the car park operator Flowbird over delayed customer repayments.

Over 200,000 duplicate payments have been taken from customers’ accounts. It has impacted 15,000 car parking sessions and has resulted in around £400,000 of income being incorrectly received by the council.

The council informed their car park operator Flowbird of the duplicate payments at the end of September and asked it to cease processing, which they subsequently did. However, the money has yet to be returned.

Council officers have met with the operator on a twice-daily basis over the last two weeks, but the situation has still not been resolved.

Shane Flynn, director of finance at Worcester City Council, said: ‘This is a frustrating situation. The fact that the issue of delayed payments has risen again, despite assurances last year that it wouldn’t, is bad enough, but this has been compounded by duplicate payments being taken from peoples’ accounts and refunds having not been processed for two weeks.

‘In some cases, people have been left hundreds of pounds out of pocket – this is completely unacceptable and, in our opinion, a gross breach of the contract we have with Flowbird and for that reason we have issued a contractual breach notice.

‘The council is not absolving itself of responsibility in trying to get this issue sorted and we are doing all we can to keep customers updated with accurate information on the situation, but despite our best efforts, Flowbird has offered little information over the past week.’