Worcester Street parking goes cashless

Oxford City Council’s Worcester Street car park is due to go cashless from 1 July.

The move to cashless payments follows a successful trial at the Gloucester Street car park, which started in January.

The Council approved the move to going cashless for all its services in February 2021. Since then work has been ongoing to eradicate cash payment across Council services. The change at Worcester Street is part of the City Council’s plans to move towards offering cashless services.

With the facility for cash removed, payment at the car park’s machines can be made using cards. Alternative methods of payment, through pay-by-phone provider RingGo or via Hozah, the automatic payment provider, are also available.

The trial at Gloucester Green ran smoothly and showed that cashless payments in car parks can work well. Many car park users have already ceased paying by cash in favour of the other methods. A change to a cashless system across all sites would see an annual saving of around £12,000.

The change to cashless payments will not affect car parking run by other operators, for example at the Westgate or the County Council’s on-street parking places.

The City Council will install new signage in advance of the change at Worcester Road car park to make sure users are aware of the change.  

For more information on Oxford City Council’s plans for going cashless visit the going cashless page.

For information about parking in Oxford visit the parking in Oxford page.

Councillor Louise Upton, Cabinet Member for Health and Transport, said:

"Cashless payment is quickly becoming the norm – whether it’s in shops, in pubs, or when using council services. Already only around 3 per cent of payments at our Worcester Road car park are cashless, with most users paying for parking by card at the pay machine, by phone provider RingGo, or through Hozah the automatic payment provider."

“For the Council, this represents a way to reduce the administrative cost of operating our car parks at a time when our finances are stretched.”