Number plate parking
Image: Bronte Beach Cutting Car Park
Waverley parking meters will soon ask for your number plate details, should a new Council proposal be adopted.
The move comes as an attempt to crackdown on the misuse of disability parking permits to avoid paying for parking.
Waverley Councillor John Wakefield said the key aim of the new system is efficiency.
“Firstly, we need to replace the parking meters – they have reached the end of their life. Secondly, [Council] are looking for more efficient ways of operating the system. Efficiency is the core answer,” he said.
Councillor Leon Goltsman said Council is currently seeking tenders for new providers of parking meters in Waverley before they implement the new system.
“By law, we as a Council have to update our equipment and provide other facilities like credit cards and specific monitoring if we are going to deal with … new field technology or anything that is going to be current in terms of communication,” he said.
As part of the new process, the tenders would supply, install and overlook the ongoing maintenance of new parking meters. The tenders would replace and expand the existing meter network.
All parking permits would then be centralised and incorporated into an online database to be integrated into Council’s parking meter and beach car park management systems.
Permit holders would then be required to provide the parking meters with personal details such as their vehicle registration number. But Mr Goltsman maintained Council would strictly adhere to privacy and database maintenance protocols in its enforcement of the new system.
“Any Council organisation would have to abide by the privacy policies that are there,” he said.
“Parking in any shopping centre these days, [the centre] is already recording details about us. This is the day and age we live in.”
Mr Wakefield called into question the method through which Council would enforce the policy, raising concerns over the function of the online database.
“All councils, including ours, are covered by data privacy regulations and policies. Once the data is collected, it will allow [us] to know how often a person parks in a location,” he said.
A Waverley Council spokesperson said access to the database will be restricted to Parking Services Administration staff members, with information stored only to be discussed with the vehicle owners it pertained to.
Mr Wakefield said the new system impinged on the privacy of its motorists.
“If Council protects the data, I don’t see any problems on the legal side of things, but at the same time, I just don’t see why we should have such an intrusive data collection process,” he said.
