CAR Parks across York may soon be going cashless.

City of York Council is to consider whether to consult on such a move at a meeting next week.

This follows a Full Council budget meeting in March 2021 deciding to explore the removal of cashless payments across its estate.

A council report says such a shift will save the council money.

In recent years, the council has seen a steady decline in cash payments for car parking.

Since the pandemic this has amounted to 14 per cent of total payments and is expected to fall further.

Many of York’s older pay and display machines only take cash, but where people can pay by phone,  people are more likely to pay this way.

Now you can text to park

Cash payments totalled £970,000 in 2022-23, some 12 per cent of the total, compared with £3,113,000 for phone payments (39 per cent of the total). Card payments remained relatively stable at the highest overall with £3,915,000 (49 per cent) of the £7,999,000 raised from such parking charges that year.

The report says another reason for cashless payments is that York has seen attacks against parking ticket machines to steal the cash inside them.

Machines taking cash are also harder to maintain as coin and paper selectors wear out and coins can be jammed.

Card and contactless only machines are also cheaper to purchase and maintain, it continued.

The report also says collection costs of £45,000 will go, plus further costs of staff time reconciling the payments and travelling around parking areas to collect the money.

Furthermore, most Local Authorities nationally are considering moving to a cashless system for their parking, with most having a mixture as York has now. .

A council digital strategy set in 2014 to digitise services led to the council not to accept cash payments from customers in its buildings.

The report also says the council can also decide to go ahead with going cashless without consultation.

York parking is set to go online and cashless | York Press

It concluded: “The report is clear of the financial benefits to go cashless but as the decision is simply to consult on this there are no disadvantages of this, but this will be a factor in the next report and the decision to adopt a cashless payment policy. However, it should be noted that this decision to explore going cashless and subsequently agreed to the cash collection savings to be taken following the budgetary decision in 2021, that the ground for moving to a cashless system has been set.”

It added: “In view of the high percentages of mobile phone users and bank debit/credit card holders it does not seem unreasonable to expect customers to pay using this method in view of the theft risk keeping high volumes of cash on street creates.”

The issue comes before the decision session of the executive member for economy and transport Cllr Pete Kilbane on Tuesday (July 11).