THE letter headed ‘Cash up in smoke’ from Mr Whittard is misleading and I feel it is important to correct a couple of the statements.
Parking machines are technical pieces of equipment, with electrics and delicate mechanical parts and require a specialised repair contractor to deal with machine breakdowns. 
Obviously, it is inconvenient for the parking public when a machine breaks down, but I would not want someone without the specialist knowledge to start tinkering with the delicate parts.
I can assure your readers the council does not have any directly or indirectly employed staff driving around just monitoring equipment; that would be a waste of limited resources.
The council has not bought any new parking vehicles for a number of years. However, the consultation proposal identified that Automatic Number Plate Recognition vehicles can bring many efficiencies and the council would like to buy one of these for on-street residential parking management. 
This would be a vehicle with all the technical camera equipment installed which will cost circa £50,000; it is not an ordinary vehicle, otherwise I too would baulk at the cost. 
The advantage of the vehicle is that the driver can check parked vehicles at speeds up to 30mph, far quicker and more efficiently than a walking enforcement officer. 
Mr Whittard claims that the vehicle would take officers off the street and reduce patrols; in fact it will increase the ground covered each day.
Parking officers do not maintain any grounds areas as this is undertaken by the council’s grounds contractor, the probation service, local councils and volunteers.
I hope that these types of comments were submitted during the recent consultation and we will endeavour to answer all these questions on the conclusion of the review.
CLLR BRIDGET WAYMAN
Wiltshire Councillor for Nadder & East Knoyle
Cabinet Member for Highways, Transport & Waste