Trial for New Car Park Technology

St Peter's Street car park is the first car park in Bedford Borough to be fitted with advanced camera technology, at no cost to Bedford Borough Council.

The system is called Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and records vehicles in and out of the car park, 24 hours a day. This is a trial before the technology is rolled out across other town centre car parks.

The Lib Dems at Bedford Borough Council have frozen car park charges for three years in a row, despite inflation and increased running costs, in order to support shoppers and Bedford town centre. ANPR cameras could help to reduce the costs of running town centre car parks, make them more efficient and quicker to use as well as allowing them to be open for longer.

Lib Dem Mayor of Bedford Borough, Dave Hodgson, said: "We want to encourage as many people as possible to use car parks in Bedford town centre and we are using the latest technology to modernise and improve our car parks for all.

"We will closely monitor the impact of the ANPR technology in St Peter's Street and we hope to be able to roll out this technology across our other car parks in the near future."