A large hospital in the Midlands required a system that would enable them to issue parking permits to more than 3,000 members of staff, send renewal reminders and identify the owners of illegally parked cars. They previously had a simple system for tracking payments, but it was very inflexible and could only be used a single person.

This meant that it was virtually impossible for parking enforcement staff to identify the owners of vehicles that were parked in the wrong place or which had expired permits. Staff had become aware of these shortcomings and there were many who simply ignored the parking rules.

This resulted in a loss of income from permits and difficulties with illegally parked vehicles. In addition many of the penalties that were imposed were never paid, because of the difficulty of tracing the member of staff responsible.

Quinata supplied a multi-user system that allows four staff in the finance department full access to issue permits, send reminders and process parking penalties. The system produces mail merged renewal reminders and prints the permits on specially designed stationery. It highlights members of staff with outstanding parking fines so that these can be collected before a new permit is issued. In addition the site security personnel who are responsible for enforcement have limited access to record enforcement notices. They can also use the system to identify the owner of any vehicle if they need to be contacted because the vehicle has been damaged or is causing as obstruction.

The system produced a considerable increase in the numbers of staff buying permits and the proportion of parking fines that are paid.

Since total income from permits is approximately £140,000 a year, a 10% increase in permit payments collected results in a payback period for the system of less than six months, without taking into account the benefits to the environment of the hospital or the savings in staff time.