County council spending £20,000 on parking meters for new pound coins

The new 12-sided coin is entering circulation on March 28, and the old one will not be accepted as legal tender from October 15 this year.

Because of this, parking meters around the country are having to adapt to the new pound.

Each on-street parking meter will cost East Sussex County Council (ESCC) around £67 to reprogramme – and there are more than 300 in East Sussex, adding to a total of £20,567.

But this is cheaper than the alternative of replacing the machines, which, at £4,000 a pop, would cost more than £1.2m.

Meanwhile, Eastbourne Borough Council is recalibrating 30 off-street car park machines, costing it £3,200.

An ESCC spokesperson said, “We started planning for updating our parking meters some time ago, as soon as we were informed by the Royal Mint that the new one pound coins would be coming into circulation.

“We have been able to get our contractors to reprogramme all of our parking meters to accept the new pound coins, which is considerably cheaper than replacing these machines.

“This process is nearing completion and all the machines will have been reprogrammed by the time the new coins come into circulation on Tuesday, March 28.

“The meters will accept both types of coin until the old ones cease to be legal tender, after which time they will be reprogrammed again to stop accepting the old coins, but this won’t incur any additional cost to the council.”