Source: Porirua City Council
Porirua City Council is introducing licence plate recognition technology to efficiently enforce parking around the city and to keep parking officers safe.
Licence plate recognition (LPR) was introduced in Wellington and Hutt City in 2024 and 2025, respectively, and is also in use in Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga.
In Porirua, from 4 May, the technology will be attached to one of the Council’s cars and, for the first month, be used to monitor parking around the city’s schools – checking if cars are parking on broken yellow lines, across driveways, or on footpaths – to make sure children are able to walk safely in and out of school.
The camera records information about vehicles and visible parking signage as it drives around and then, on its return, can register whether a car should have moved or whether it has paid for the parking. The information is sent back to Council and a staff member reviews it before issuing a ticket.
The technology allows our parking staff to stay in the vehicle. Down the track, LPR can be used for checking warrants of fitness and registrations and whether a car is stolen, along with data collection of parking and road use around Porirua, informing future decisions and city development by our transport team.
Council’s Manager of Policy, Planning & Regulatory Services, Nic Etheridge, says the camera operates within the requirements of the Privacy Act and people’s faces will be blurred in any images. Council will use images only for evidence gathering and enforcement – LPR information will be stored on the same system our current infringement information is stored.
“We’re embracing up-to-date technology which allows us to do a job safely, fairly and efficiently,” Nic says.
“This is the next step we’re taking in terms of enforcing parking, but our message will always be that if you park correctly, you have nothing to worry about.
“We’re rolling this out around schools in the first instance, because we know that unsafe parking around school neighbourhoods creates a very real danger for tamariki, limiting visibility and making them hard to see.”
Budget for the technology was approved in Council’s 2024 Long-term Plan.
There are FAQs on the Council’s parking webpage, answering the most likely queries the public will have. Go to https://poriruacity.govt.nz/services/parking-transport/find-carpark/
