Wrexham Council spent £175,000 on faulty digital parking signs which have now been scrapped

Wrexham Council spent £175,000 on faulty digital parking signs which have now been scrapped, a new Freedom of Information request has shown.

The signs showing how many spaces are available in city centre car parks were first installed in 2013.

Funding was provided by TAITH – a now defunct joint transport board of the six local authorities in North Wales.

The figure spent has long been the subject of debate as we previously noted a TAITH report (now deleted) from 2011, when the works were first planned, which showed a cost of £535,000.

However, we were later told by the council that the figure was actually £76,000.

A Freedom of Information request was recently submitted by Wrexham.com, with the response showing a total project cost of £175,000 and annual maintenance costs of £2,000.

The digital signs have been out of use for a number of years and have been on and off since they were installed.

They were switched off for a period in 2017 before briefly being turned back on in 2019, then later becoming obsolete.

The council said it essentially formally gave up on the system in 2022 when it moved over to a new server system, despite the signs still being in situ.

The authority did consider refurbishing them at one stage, or potentially buying new LCD screens, but the latter option was abandoned after Wrexham’s UK City of Culture bid for 2025 failed.

The full FOI response states: “The tender was awarded in Jan 11 to two vendors at a total project cost of £175k with an indicative maintenance cost of £2,000 pa.

“The maintenance cost escalated around 2021/22 which led to WCBC engaging SWARCO to look at revamp/replacement options.

“This was not taken any further due to funding and broader town centre transport strategy plan immaturity.

“The signs were turned off in the summer of 2022 and we left the units in situ.

“We understand that the Ty Pawb signage recently had a ‘bus strike’ and we are looking at uninstalling that signage and passing the cost to the bus company.

“SWARCO gave us a number of options to refurbish the existing signs, but it was felt a broader town centre strategy needed to be considered with the potential use of LCD style screens that could be multi use.

“With the failure to be awarded the City of Culture bid; the issue has been parked since.

“We don’t have any proof of when the current system started to fail, but the survey work that was carried out in 2022 suggested a number of units had not been working correctly for some time.

“The rationalisation of the WCBC servers in 2022, which hosted the management solution was the final death knell for the system.”