Tourist angry at car park's old-coin ban

Bob Haywood travelled from his home in Stourbridge at the weekend to visit Ludlow.

He parked on the town's Smithfield car park, but was annoyed to find that the pay-and-display machines in the car park had been converted so that they did not accept the old, round pound coins.

The old-style coins were replaced by a new 12-sided design in March this year.

They officially cease to be legal tender on Sunday, but Shropshire Council began the process of converting its pay-and-display meters over to the new-style coins in August.

There are thought to be about 500 million of the coins still in circulation. There have also been reports of self-service checkouts in supermarkets no longer accepting the coins, although customers can still use the coins at manned tills.

But Mr Haywood said it was unacceptable that the council had chosen to stop accepting the coins, and was even more surprised to find that some machines had not been accepting them since the summer.

"We brought a number of the old pound coins with us, because we knew we had to get rid of them," he said.

"I was very surprised to find that the machines would still not accept the old pound coins which are still legal tender.

"The coins are still legal tender until Sunday, and I find it very strange that an organisation like Shropshire Council would stop accepting them before the deadline day."

Zoe Mortimer, engineering and contracts manager at Shropshire Council, said: "Parking machines have now had the old £1 coins turned off in Ludlow as per the note on the machine.

"It is impossible for these to all be changed on the last day the coin is accepted, and therefore we have programmed these at a point we believed reasonable for the customer and the council.

“The last of our machines will be changed to accept only the new £1 coin from October 10, which will complete this work.

“There are, of course, many ways to pay for parking in all Shropshire Council car parks – including by phone."