THE Lanes Shopping Centre will issue tickets in its multi-storey car park 'until further notice' as work to introduce its new ticketless Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system continues.

This comes a matter of weeks after the Carlisle Shopping Centre announced that it would be 'temporarily' reverting to a ticketed system following initial teething problems with its new ticketless system.

The ticketless ANPR system initially went live at the Lowther Street car park on Friday, October 13, but was subsequently taken offline to allow further 'enabling works' to take place, with it being hoped that these would have been completed by Monday, November 20.

Speaking after the system's initial removal, The Lanes centre manager Susan Young said: "We realised reasonably quickly that further enabling works were required with the ANPR operating system and, as a result, temporarily re-introduced the issuing of tickets.

"We are working with our contractors and are confident that these works will be resolved week commencing 20th November."

However, Ms Young, in the latest update on the system's installation, confirmed that tickets will continue to be issued to shoppers whilst these works continue, with a timeframe for the new system's introduction now unclear. 

She said: "Although we have been working closely with our contractors over the course of the last few weeks to resolve the ongoing problem, the issuing of tickets on entry will remain in operation at The Lanes Car Park until further notice.

She also reaffirmed that the local shopping centre will give notice to customers ahead of the system's full introduction.

She said: "At the point that we can move to the ANPR operation, non-ticketed entry, we will ensure that we provide our customers with advance notice of the switch, and also ensure the full support from the site team for our customers."

Despite the delays to the introduction of the Lanes' ticketless system, the car park has now begun accepting contactless-only payments at its site.