Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to undertake a communications campaign to inform local government audiences about the government-backed National Parking Platform; and what assessment they have made of the benefits to local authorities of adopting the National Parking Platform.

The Department for Transport has already invested £1.2m in the development of a National Parking Platform (NPP). The platform will digitise parking services and allow road users to choose one app of their choice wherever there is pay-by-phone parking. The funding has delivered user research and a prototype platform as part of a pilot led by Manchester City Council. Building on this research, the Department is working with the parking sector to establish governance and funding options for delivering the full production platform.

The user-research demonstrated the benefits that a publicly-owned platform capable of managing standardised data exchange across local authority parking operations would provide. The platform would enable any local authority to contract directly with all service providers via the NPP and thus remove the need for several hundred local authority parking contracts and the burden of local procurement. The platform would enable collection of digital payments facilitating both digitised methods of operation, including automated payments, and improved data on the parking market.

The Department and the British Parking Association (BPA), the parking trade body, have already undertaken significant engagement both with local authorities and service providers. Further engagement plans are being developed and will include the Department communicating the benefits of the parking platform to every local authority.

The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) reassessment of the platform’s alpha stage was held on the 10 March 2022 and the requirement was met. The report was published on the CDDO website on 23 March 2022.