FREE parking returned to Petersfield this week, after thieves disabled both pay-and-display machines in the Festival Hall car park in the early hours of Monday morning. The vandals walked away with an estimated haul of between £300 and £400 and after decimating the two machines. And they even stole the doors to the machines' cash boxes. The specialist parts are on order, and Alisdair Tweddle, East Hampshire District Council's project engineer for parking and highways, said at least one machine will be working by "the start of next week". "They stole both cash boxes and cash box doors, which is a problem for us as we don't hold a stock of doors. We are rather bemused as to why they stole them," he added. "One machine was broken into at 2.39am on Monday. We know this because when the cash box is pulled the information is stored as an event on the machine. "However, the other machine had seven bells kicked out of it," he continued. "They attacked it through the base compartment, which holds the motherboard and the terminal strip. The motherboard shorted against the metal casing of the machine, so we have no idea what time it was broken into." "I would have expected it to be noisy. The engineer took two hours to break into a machine and said that the noise was immense. And it made a heck of a mess," he added. Mr Tweddle said there had been a spate of similar incidents throughout the country. "There are gangs of people who go around targeting pay-and-display machines, and we've had several notes about organised gangs doing this sort of thing recently. "We had a similar incident in Alton a week ago, but by and large we've been lucky as it's a predominantly rural area, and the thieves realise they are not going to go away with a fortune. "I would estimate that they got away with no more than £150 to £200 in each machine," he added. "We've put yellow signs on the machines, and that's how it will have to stay until the parts are in. "Realistically, both machines will be out for the rest of the week, and fingers crossed we will be back and running on one machine by the start of next week," he said.
