The leader of Wycombe District Council (WDC) has been slammed for her “appalling” comments after she branded a failed parking experiment which cost the taxpayer thousands as “old news”.

At a full meeting of WDC on Monday, Labour’s councillor Khalil Ahmed demanded to know why the council had not carried out a full investigation into the failed Automatic Number Plate Recognition parking scheme.

This comes after the Bucks Free Press revealed this month that almost the same amount of money has been raised in fines in three months since the scheme was scrapped, compared with two years of ANPR.

The investigation sparked backlash from leader of WDC, Cllr Katrina Wood, who bushed the revelation off as ‘old news’ at a meeting of the cabinet last week.

Addressing Cllr Wood at the first full WDC meeting since the shocking figures came to light, Cllr Ahmed said: “You refer to the Bucks Free Press article last week. I must say your comments regarding this fiasco as ‘old news’ are appalling to say the least, the amount of figures involved, considering you decided to reshuffle your cabinet and replace the cabinet member of environment services.

“Clearly that was an acknowledgement of failure within your team. Wouldn’t it have been fairer if you too had considered your position as leader to a belated sense of duty.”

In February this year WDC was forced to replace the £680,000 camera-operated system with pay-and-display after the failings were uncovered by the Free Press.

During Monday’s meeting Cllr Wood was once again forced to defend the council’s decision to revert back to the old parking payment method and insisted ANPR is still a good parking system.

She told Cllr Ahmed: “This is not a fiasco – I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that, I think perhaps your hearing is a little problematic.

“I have said that we have been clear about the reasons and costs of changing ANPR. We are not in the business to make money from our residents with parking fines.

“I want our residents to be able to come into our towns and shop, and use the facilities we provide. We have always been clear that ANPR would result in fewer fines and I am disappointed that the labour party seems to think that making money out of our residents and impacting on their experiences in our towns is the right way to go.”

Cllr Wood also insisted her cabinet reshuffle in April this year, which saw the council boss responsible for the ANPR scheme walk away from her role, had “nothing to do” with the parking fiasco.

She added: “Essentially we installed ANPR because it is a good system – it is still a good system. It was extremely effective in allowing people to pay for what they used – as shown in the reduction of number of fines.

“People paid what was due. The reversion was caused by a government change in policy at DCLG after we successfully completed the pilot and implemented a complete rollout. Changing my cabinet had nothing to do with it whatsoever.”