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Southwark Council today (21 July) announces positive payback from its Borough-wide implementation of RingGo phone parking. Full roll out of the service occurred just 7 months ago, but despite that, the service is generating incremental income and providing tangible savings to the Council, cutting departmental expenditure in some areas by a third or more. The first major benefit has been for machine maintenance. Since RingGo was introduced, cash levels collected by the Council through pay and display machines have dropped by 30 per cent, leading to much lower requirements to repair and maintain machines. In May 2009, the Council received 258 machine fault reports; but within 12 months, this level more than halved to 114. As well as improving customer service, this cut in machine faults also enabled Southwark Council to save substantially on its costs. When one of its three-man technical team retired, the Council was able to take a strategic stance and not replace the individual. In the process they saved 35 per cent of recurring direct costs against their machine maintenance expenditure. The Council has also reduced spend relating to cash collection. Pre-RingGo, the Council operated a twice weekly roster; but the transfer to digital parking has enabled a substantial proportion of the collections to move to weekly, with only machines in high cash/lower adoption areas still being gathered twice a week. Even with a less frequent timetable, Southwark's incidences of theft and vandalism is lower than pre-RingGo, because of the reduced levels of cash held in the machines. A further benefit of RingGo for the Council has been to provide incremental income. Overall, revenues have risen by 6 per cent since RingGo was introduced across the Borough. This is due to a number of factors, including:
"The full roll out of RingGo has been a great success for Southwark. It's enabled us to save a substantial proportion of our parking expenditure. We are particularly pleased, especially against a backdrop of economic austerity where savings have to be amongst our very highest priorities." |
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