Councils across England will be ordered by the Government to adopt a single parking payment app designed to cut confusion at car parks and reduce the risk of drivers receiving unexpected fines, The i Paper can reveal.
Ministers are pushing to more than double the number of local authorities using the National Parking Platform, which allows drivers to pay for parking using any one of six approved apps at participating council car parks, removing the need to download a different application every time they park somewhere new.
Fifteen local authorities have so far signed up, with more in the pipeline, and the platform already handles more than half a million transactions a month.
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The Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, said the system – which has processed more than 10 million transactions since its launch in May 2025 – should now be expanded beyond parking to cover electric vehicle charging and road tolls, so that drivers can manage all on-road payments in one place.
“Parking shouldn’t be a faff,” Alexander said. “The fact that this platform has already handled more than 10 million transactions shows just how much people value a simpler, more straightforward way to pay.”
She added that the Government’s forthcoming Better Connected transport strategy, due to be published later this week, would encourage more councils to adopt the platform and explore how it could be extended to cover EV charging points and road tolls.
The National Parking Platform was developed by the Government before being handed to the British Parking Association (BPA) to run on a not-for-profit basis, at no cost to taxpayers.
A consortium of industry providers – including Ring Go, JustPark and PayByPhone – delivers the service, with the Government retaining oversight by monitoring the sector’s compliance with agreed terms.
The i Paper understands that the platform is currently in active discussions with more local authorities to encourage sign-up.
The announcement comes against a backdrop of widespread frustration with existing parking apps.
RAC research published in October 2025 found that nearly three quarters of drivers – 73 per cent – who had used a mobile app to pay for parking in the previous 12 months experienced difficulties.
Poor mobile signal was the most common complaint, cited by 70 per cent of those affected, followed by apps failing to recognise the correct car park and apps crashing.
Nearly two thirds of drivers who use mobile apps to pay for parking have at least two installed on their phones, the RAC found, while around one in ten have four or more.
Nearly half of UK drivers – 47 per cent – have been unfairly fined while using parking apps, according to research from the price comparison site Uswitch last year.
Rod Dennis, senior policy officer at the RAC, said the roll-out had the potential to simplify an increasingly fragmented system. “Paying to park a car should be one of the simplest tasks any driver does, but with a plethora of different mobile parking payment apps now in existence things have got a little more complicated,” he said.
Dennis added that the platform’s success would ultimately depend on how widely it was adopted. “We now need as many operators as possible to join the scheme to make parking easier for everyone,” he said.
The Better Connected strategy, to be published on Thursday, is expected to set out the Government’s broader ambitions for integrating road, bus, rail and tram travel across England.
The parking platform forms part of a wider package of measures the Government says will improve the day-to-day experience of drivers.