The council has refused to accept full responsibility for the failed ANPR parking system as members once again faced calls to resign yesterday.

Labour councillor, Khalil Ahmed, urged leader of Wycombe District Council, Katrina Wood, to “accept her own party’s culpability’ in the parking fiasco at a meeting of the full council on February 23.

This comes after WDC announced it had been forced to ditch ANPR in favour of pay-and-display following the government’s decision to restrict data held by the DVLA.

However cllr Wood insisted that no-one will be resigning over the failure, and the system was “thoroughly investigated” before it was rolled out.

Councillors were also asked by a member of the public “how much money has been wasted” in the “debacle” and why the car parks weren’t handed over to private operators so the ANPR system could continue.

Cabinet member for environment, cllr Jean Teesdale, said the initial parking review into the ANPR system cost £11,400 and rolling the system out across Wycombe’s car parks amounted to £678,000.

Fewer staff were needed to facilitate the system so redundancy costs amounted to £30,000, according to cllr Teesdale, however there was no fee for the removal of the old pay-and-display machines.

Further installation of five new parking machines across the district, following the breakdown of ANPR, required an investment of £80,000.

The cabinet member went on to say transferring the car-parks over to private operators, like Dovecot and Bridge Street car parks in High Wycombe, “was not an option”.

She said: “I can assure you we have done everything in our power, the problem is the DVLA is the legislation.

“We have gone to the ministers to try to get this situation sorted out. I truly believe that ANPR is the best system for our customers and town and I am disappointed that we are in this position.”

Cllr Ahmed called for the cabinet member and leader to“do the honourable thing and resign” after “miserably failing the people of High Wycombe”.

However Cllr Wood passed blame over to the DVLA, after insisting the WDC had thoroughly investigated the parking system.

She said: “We took advice on the lawful way of using ANPR enforcement and a conversation with DVLA who at that time saw no problem with us rolling the system out.

“It was then they subsequently removed access to registered keeper data which has obviously impacted on how we have been able to run the service.

“Following that we worked very hard trying to resolve the issues with the government and have been led to believe they are working on a parking package with includes wider ANPR usage for the public sector.”