Resident parking permits inc renewal, complaints and penalties for expiry

Where a question refers to a period, please provide figures for the financial years 2024/25 and 2025/26, and for 2026/27 to date, separately.



1) The number of resident parking permits administered through the council's permit portal (zatpermit.com) that expired without being renewed by their expiry date; and, if this is held in or derivable from an existing report, the number subsequently renewed within 30 days of expiry. If county-wide figures would exceed the cost limit, please limit this to Stamford resident permit zones.



2) If held in reportable form: the number of Penalty Charge Notices issued in resident permit zones to vehicles holding a permit that had expired within the preceding 30 days, and the number of those cancelled following a challenge or representations. If this cross-referencing is not held as recorded information or would exceed the cost limit, please instead provide the total number of PCNs issued in resident permit zones for the contravention of parking without a valid permit, and the number of those cancelled following a challenge or representations ' figures I would expect to be available from standard enforcement reporting.



3) A description of the permit renewal reminder process, including: the channels used (email, SMS, post or other); the number and timing of reminders sent before a permit expires; and whether the council or its contractor records delivery failures, bounces or spam-filtering of reminder emails.



4) Any policy, options appraisal, business case, decision record or committee report in which automatic or continuous renewal of resident parking permits (for example, renewal against a saved payment card unless the resident opts out) has been considered, together with the reasons for any decision not to adopt it.



5) The number of complaints recorded concerning the resident permit renewal process or the permit portal, if complaints are categorised in a way that allows this to be extracted; otherwise, confirmation of how parking-permit complaints are recorded.

The identity of the supplier operating the permit portal, the start and end dates of the current contract, its total value, and any contractual service standards relating to renewal notifications sent to residents. If you consider the contract document itself exempt, please provide these summary details.



6) The total income received from Penalty Charge Notices issued for parking in a resident permit zone without a valid permit; and details of (or a link to) the council's most recent published report showing how any surplus on the on-street parking account was applied in accordance with section 55 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984.

1. There is no report available within the Zatpermit system to inform us where a customer has not used the renewal process or renewed within the timeframe. To obtain the information it would take around 5 minutes per record to identify if the customer has renewed their permit or if they have started a new application. There are 671 records in Stamford to review which would take 3,355 minutes which would equal 56 hours. This would exceed the time under Section 12.

2. We are not able to give figures to show PCNs issued to vehicles specifically where a permit had expired. This would require us to review every PCN issued under the Contravention Code 12 (Parked in a residents’ or shared use parking place or zone without a valid virtual permit or clearly displaying a valid physical permit or voucher or pay and display ticket issued for that place where required, or without payment of the parking charge) and this would exceed the timeframe. This is because Contravention Code 12 is used to issue to any vehicle that is not displaying or has no valid virtual permit. Additionally, Lincolnshire County Council enforce the Lincoln resident permit scheme but we do not implement the scheme. This is undertaken by the City of Lincoln District Council. The rest of this question is available to the customer at Parking Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) | Lincolnshire Open Data. Each financial year has its own information.

3. The reminder is set 30 days before the expiry date. We are aware that Zatpark experienced some issues with reminders in August, however, all reminders were still sent prior to any permit expiring.
During the application stage the customer is asked “Would you like to set up an additional reminder”. On further discussion with our software provider, there is an option to ask for for more reminders within the system. This is customer request only and can be done through the booking on the permit system. We have been informed that if you choose a second reminder, you can opt for an SMS or Email or even both.
There is no information or report to show delivery failures.

4. We can confirm that our search covered the procurement, the specification and the contract aware document for the APCOA/Unity 5 contract and automatic renewal was not a requirement.

5. We can confirm that there has only been 1 recorded complaint.

6. The supplier is Unity 5 (Zatpark/Zatpermit) Contracted by APCOA Parking Ltd. APCOA Parking Ltd are the County Council’s Parking Enforcement Contractor. Contract is valid from Nov 24-Nov 29. Contract value which encompasses both Enforcement and Notice Processing as a full operational service: £1,605,995.84 per annum therefore £8,029,979.20 over 5 years. This figure may vary in line with any CPI increase.

7. Available at the link above. There was no surplus in 2025/2026. There was no section 55 report published. Any surplus income is kept to be offset on future costs.
The PCN income for Stamford for resident permit zones which are in relation purely to no permit or failure to renew a permit will not be accurate as they are not issued under Code 12 as mentioned in Q2 above. To obtain this accurate figure would take too long as per the details in Q2.