A DOZEN PEOPLE are to be made redundant as Cork City Council’s contract with a clamping firm comes to an end tomorrow.

A spokesperson for APCOA parking told TheJournal.ie that the contract between the company and the council comes to an end on 4 January and will not be renewed. APCOA has operated a vehicle clamping service for the city authority since 2003 and said that 12 people would be made redundant as a direct consequence of the end to clamping.

The company said they wanted to thank the staff who had “worked dilligently” for the past eight years. It also said that it looked forward to “working again with the City Council in the near future”.

However, motorists in Cork city should be aware that parking restrictions will still be policed. The council intends to take the monitoring “back in house”, with local authority traffic wardens responsible for administering fines to non-compliant parkers. No-one from Cork City Council has yet been available to comment on exactly what measures it is putting in place to police traffic from tomorrow.

Eoin Weldon reported in the Cork Independent last month that the City Council was going to have to manage on €11m less in 2012 than it did in 2011. One of the cuts highlighted was the non-renewal of the clamping contract – something which will probably concern citizens less than the cuts to local authority housing and maintenance of local infrastructure.