Decision details

Currently there are over 300 parking ticket machines in ESCC (East Sussex County Council) which are in need of replacement and there may be a further requirement of 200 additional machines in the near future. The new machines contract that has been put in place has appointed Cale Access UK to deliver the new Hardware. These machines are able to take credit/debit card payments through chip and pin and contactless enabled Hardware. In order to process these payments a third party needs to be put in place to act as the payment service provider. As no other payment service was accredited to Cale Access, and to accredit another contractor would be a lengthy, costly process, it was decided that the contract should be awarded to 3C Payment UK.

It was decided this tender should be directly awarded to 3C Payment UK (option 1) as they were the only provider that accredit Cale Access UK Machines.

Option 1: Award tender directly to 3C Payment UK

Option 2: Use Cale Access as a third party contractor to deliver the Payment service provider function.
Cale Access will act as a third party provider of Payment Services but their transaction fee is 0.25 fixed per transaction. This makes them dramatically more expensive.

Option 3: Carry out a tender for another party to deliver accredited payment service provider services to the Cale Access UK Hardware.
This process would take over a year wherein we would be reliant on the interim costs of using Cale Access UK as a third party contractor which are summarised in Option 2.