You can now pay for council parking in Watford with six apps, including JustPark and PayByPhone. The council's own pages still name RingGo alone.

Six different apps can now be used to pay for parking in Watford Borough Council car parks. The council joined the National Parking Platform on 7 September, but it has never published which apps that actually gives you, and its own parking pages still tell drivers to use RingGo.

The six approved for Watford are named on the National Parking Platform’s own page for the council:

  • APCOA Parking
  • AppyParking
  • Caura
  • JustPark
  • PayByPhone
  • RingGo

The council announced the change without naming a single app

Watford Borough Council’s announcement of 7 September says drivers can use “a range of approved payment providers”. It does not list them.

Elected Mayor Peter Taylor is quoted in it saying that “being able to use a preferred parking app rather than having to download a different one for different locations will make parking simpler and more convenient for residents and visitors”.

That is the benefit. The release leaves out the part a driver needs, which is the names.

The council’s own pages have not caught up

We checked watford.gov.uk on 19 September, twelve days after the go-live.

The council’s pay and display page still reads: “You can also pay for parking via the RingGo app”. It lists eight car parks where it applies:

  • The Avenue
  • The Town Hall
  • The Hall Visitors
  • Longspring
  • Harebreaks
  • Timberlake
  • Oxhey Activity Park
  • Cassiobury Park Car Park

The individual car park records say the same. The entry for The Avenue gives its payment types as “Cash / Debit Card / Credit Card / RingGo (Location Code: 5312788)”. The entry for the Town Hall gives “Cash / Debit Card / Credit Card / RingGo (Location code: 5312789)”.

Neither mentions the other five apps. So a driver following the council’s own instructions would still conclude that RingGo is the only app that works.

What the National Parking Platform is

It is not an app, and this is the point most easily missed.

The platform is a piece of plumbing that sits between councils and parking apps, so that any connected app can sell parking in any connected council’s spaces. It was created by the Department for Transport and is now run independently by National Parking Platform Ltd, a company registered in England under number 16282865. Its home page says it is governed by local authorities, service providers and the British Parking Association, and that it is not for profit.

Its published totals are 1,630 parking locations, 23 live parking operators and 16,148,014 transactions a year. The council’s release put the figure at “more than 1,500 parking locations across 24 local authorities”; the platform’s own list of participating councils names 23, Watford among them.

Watford is one of four Hertfordshire councils on that list. The others are East Hertfordshire, Stevenage and Welwyn Hatfield, and their pages name the same six apps.

What it means for you

You do not have to download anything new. If you already use JustPark or PayByPhone somewhere else, those now work in the council’s Watford car parks. That is the whole purpose of the change.

The location codes have not changed. The Avenue is still 5312788 and the Town Hall still 5312789. If an app asks for a location number, the one on the sign is still right.

Cash and card still work. Both town centre council car parks still take cash, debit card and credit card at the machine. Joining the platform has not removed that.

It does not cover every car park in Watford. The platform applies to the council’s own spaces. Church, Gade and Sutton car parks are run by CitiPark, and the Harlequin’s car parks are the shopping centre’s, so their payment methods are set by those operators, not the council. Our parking in Watford page sets out who runs what and what each one charges.

Treat QR codes on parking signs with suspicion. The platform carries a notice on its home page reading: “At NPP, we will never use QR codes on our signage.” Take it at its word. Open an app you already have and type in the location code, rather than scanning a code stuck to a sign or a machine.

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