Kettering Borough Council has replaced its aging pay and display machines with new Metric Aura Elite Pay and Display meters as part of a programme of updating to provide customers with the best available choice.
The new solar-powered meters are equipped with chip and pin and contactless credit / debit card facilities, along with providing the council with updated coin validators.
Metric have provided their ASLAN back-office reporting system which gives access to a wide range of transaction, performance and system management data in real time.
The Elite solar-powered machines will accept all UK coins including the new 5p and 10p coins. They will also accept payments by credit card.
Chris Stopford, Kettering Borough Council’s Parking Manager, told Martin Channing, Metric Sales Executive: "The new meters are part of an ongoing improvement programme aimed at providing customers with a choice of payment methods for their parking session; the provision of chip and pin, and contactless technology which allows the Council to offer new payment methods beyond the previous coin only payments."
Kettering Borough Council has taken advantage of Metric’s WebASLAN back office suite. This allows the Council a full audit and monitoring facility of all their pay and display machines via web access.
"Metric hosts the service and Kettering Borough Council uses it as a reporting tool for statistical analysis and also as an operational tool – they can see the status of their machines in a real-time environment," continued Martin Channing.
All events are automatically logged on to the system and email messages are sent directly to the Council’s dedicated staff, depending on the event reported. If the tickets are getting low in a town centre machine, the event is sent to the WebASLAN back office, then an automatic email is sent to the maintenance staff advising them the tickets are low in that machine.
Added Chris: "I am most impressed, both with the ease of the WebASLAN system and the power of the reporting capability."
