Sussex wrote:
grandad wrote:
After more emails and phone calls we got the plates yesterday afternoon.
Why doesn't your council invest in one of the machines that print their own plates and badges?
It could be added to fees, and would make all this messing around a thing of the past.
They do make them up themselves. The problem is that the system used, Lalpac, is so old and slow that to do the administration for the simplest of tasks takes ages. The software does not seem to be able to transfer data from one place to another so the information needs to be transferred or inserted several times. I have a copy of the process flow chart and it is cringe worthy how many stages have the step "transfer to database". It takes 2 hours to process a simple drivers renewal application. It takes over an hour to process a vehicle application without actually producing the plates.
The problem seems to be the "it has always been done this way" attitude and of course job presevation, if they had a better system then maybe they could manage with less staff and the unions don't like that idea.