Two more problem barriers at Chichester’s Avenue de Chartres car park

The Avenue de Chartres car park had an exit barrier stuck down today, with an engineer on hand trying to fix the problem.

Meanwhile one of the two entrance barriers was not accepting season tickets. Cars were spotted backing up from the barrier as they had not realised they were in the wrong lane until too late.

A Chichester District Council spokeswoman said the council would not be removing the barriers and returning to a pay and display system.

In addition, the council has previously spoken of plans to install more barriers at other city centre car parks, such as Northgate.

“We have experienced a slight technical problem with a camera on one of the entry barriers to the Avenue de Chartres car park,” she said.

“This was only affecting season ticket holders, but to prevent delays we took the decision to temporarily suspend it.

“We are also experiencing a minor issue with one of the exit barriers, but this is currently being fixed onsite by an engineer, and we hope that this will be resolved very soon.

“We were able to make some amendments to the system to ensure that any delay was kept to a minimum and there is 24-hour support through the intercoms situated at all payment machines and barriers.”

She said all of the payment machines were working normally and everyone had been able to enter and exit the car park throughout this period. When the barriers were installed in January, the faults were labelled as ‘teething problems’ but ten months on the problems are persisting.

The spokeswoman said the barriers were still experiencing teething problems.

“Unfortunately, with any new systems there are always teething problems, but when these happen we always respond to them – regardless of time or day,” she said.

“In the main, the new system has worked well and has meant that people have not had to worry about returning to their cars within a specific period of time.

“We would like to apologise for any inconvenience that has been caused and want to reassure customers that regardless of these technical issues that the car park is still fully operational.”

Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.

Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be amongst the first to know what’s going on.

1) Make our website your homepage at www.chichester.co.uk/

2) Like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ChichesterObserver

3) Follow us on Twitter @Chiobserver

4) Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here.

And do share with your family and friends - so they don’t miss out!

The Chichester Observer - always the first with your local news.

Be part of it.