FI15425

Request

Parking income on a daily basis for Sandwich pay and display machines. For the years 2022, 2023 and as far as possible 2024.

Response

The Council does not hold the information in the format you have requested as we only hold and record the data by financial year.  We are unable to access data from 2022. 

	2023/24	2024/25 (to date)
Guildhall Car Park	£63,153	£46,286
Quay Car Park	£61,334	£47,192
Gazen Salts Car Park	£7,889	£6,254
New Street – on-street	£3,277	£2,368
Market Street – on-street	£14,358	£9,689

Attachments

Attachment

Internal Review Documents

Internal Review Request:

I must request a review of your response as it is completely contradicted by the ability of the Head of Finance to illustrate a point by using the exact data that I had asked for, also, the fact that she was able to gain that data from a third party within DDC on the spur of the moment within at most 5 minutes, clearly shows this information in the form that I have requested under an FOI request is available either directly in a day by day data set, or in a more raw format that can be rapidly reformatted or similarly released,   

On your earlier response, "we only hold and record the data by financial year." prior to the Head of Finance's clarification that the data is available at the granularity I requested, I was surprised that only annual data is stated as held as it certainly has to be accumulated on a routine basis along with a time and date stamp to allow for parking management and possible fines.      

To repeat: "Parking income on a daily basis for Sandwich pay and display machines. For the years 2022, 2023 and as far as possible 2024".  

So, accepting that there is no data held for 2022, please can you provide data as per my initial request or as  bulk raw data that I would be able to generate that information myself. I would be happy to receive it as a CSV or Excel or just about any file format that works with your system. 

I would be grateful if the release of this data could be expedited as it is highly relevant to the ongoing discussions on event parking fees and considering the initial request was made far in advance of these recent discussions and decisions, the latter no doubt based on lack of, or erroneous "facts". By expedited, while the 5 or so minutes that it took to generate an out of the blue response for the Head of Finance might not happen for me, I would appreciate a rapid turn around. 

Further, the information will be used to benefit and inform DDC on the impact of local voluntary festivals on parking income where parking spaces are used. I was stunned that this exercise hadn't been undertaken beforehand (it hadn't) in order to present a considered way forward in dealing with this issue. 

Internal Review Response:

I have discussed the matter with the Head of Finance and Investment and she has provided me with the attached data, as far back as the system holds it.  

Please note that this data is the download from the pay and display machines and therefore not necessarily the income finally received due to reconciliation differences, refunds, etc which may impact the final level of income received from the machines. 

The finalised levels of income received in our car parks are held in our financial management system and are not available on a daily basis due to the quantity of data held, data received from different sources and systems, timing differences and other adjustments and therefore the answer provided in response to your request was factually correct. 

The Head of Finance and Investment has also advised that that the data referred to as being produced in the meeting had been reviewed and produced prior to the meeting at her request, it was not produced “out of the blue” as stated below. 

I trust that this clarifies the Council’s response, and the data now provided is of use to you.