A fitness studio with 35 bays watches the same scene every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon: half the spaces taken by employees from the office building next door. The owner arranged for a parking warden on Monday mornings. Nothing changed on Tuesday. This is the problem nearly every private car-park operator without an automated system runs into sooner or later: enforcement that only works when someone is standing there watching.
Revtek · 30 June 2026
On private land, the police have no authority to enforce parking rules you have set yourself. That may sound counterintuitive, but it is the legal reality: parking fines are a local-authority instrument on public roads. If an unauthorised vehicle parks on your site, you — as the owner or manager — are the one responsible for dealing with it.
That leaves three options: speak to the driver directly, contract a private enforcement company, or deploy a system that enforces itself around the clock without anyone needing to be there. The first two are labour-intensive and expensive, particularly on larger sites or outside your staffed hours. A private enforcement company charges for its visits regardless of what it finds when it arrives.
An ANPR camera at the entrance or exit reads every passing plate and compares it in milliseconds against a list of authorised vehicles. If an unrecognised vehicle has been on site longer than the configured time limit, the system automatically triggers an action — what that action is depends on how your location is set up.
On gated sites with a barrier, the mechanism is straightforward: the exit won't open for vehicles that haven't paid or aren't on the access list. An unauthorised car cannot leave until the matter is resolved — no staff presence required. On open sites without a barrier, the camera records dwell times, flags overruns, and if you choose, initiates a post-charge via the Dutch Vehicle Licensing Authority (RDW) owner lookup.
For sites where short-stay visitors are welcome but long-stay parking is a problem — a neighbourhood shop, a sports club, a hospitality venue — time limits are the most practical first step.
You configure a maximum stay: 90 minutes or two hours, for example. Vehicles that overstay receive a WhatsApp notification. Most move on after the first message. Those that remain can be addressed via the RDW owner register.
Time limits don't have to apply equally to everyone. Members or regular customers with a known plate go on the whitelist and are exempt. Casual visitors fall under the default rule. The system distinguishes between them automatically, plate by plate — no manual checking required.
Alongside the whitelist, you can maintain a blacklist. Plates on it are denied access at the barrier, or receive an automatic notification on every visit — even if the stay is still within the time limit.
This is useful for known problem situations: a vehicle from a neighbouring property that parks on your land daily despite repeated complaints, or plates with outstanding charges. Adding a plate to the blacklist takes a few seconds in the dashboard and takes effect immediately. The list stays active until you change it.
A practical side benefit: the system logs every entry and exit with a timestamp. If you need to pursue a violation through legal channels, you have a complete record of when that vehicle was present on your site.
For open sites, a post-charge is the most direct enforcement option. Using the RDW owner lookup, you send the registered keeper a charge for exceeding the time limit or for unauthorised use of your site.
The prerequisite is clear signage at the entrance: every visitor must be made aware that parking is subject to rules and that violations may result in a charge. A well-placed sign is generally sufficient. This is not legal advice — for the specific implementation of a systematic recovery process, consulting a specialist is sensible.
In practice, the deterrent effect of a visible ANPR camera at the entrance already does much of the work. Once it is clear that plates are being read and recorded, unauthorised parking drops significantly on most sites — often before a single charge has been issued.
A private parking warden visiting your site several times a week costs, depending on the contract, indicatively €800 to €1,200 per month — for presence only, not for administering or recovering violations. A fully managed enforcement contract that includes recovery costs considerably more.
The one-off hardware cost for a two-camera ANPR setup — entry and exit — is typically €800 to €1,800 for cameras from Axis, Hikvision or Bosch. The Revtek platform subscription starts at €175 per month per location, covering the dashboard, time-limit enforcement, the notification module and any barrier integration. Full details are on the pricing page.
The difference is not only financial: a warden enforces on the occasions he is there. ANPR logs 24 hours a day.
On busy sites, or where parked vehicles cause immediate harm — blocked loading bays, obstructed emergency exits, occupied residents' bays — reactive enforcement doesn't resolve the problem in time. A car blocking the fire access route will still be there when a letter arrives two days later.
For these situations, a barrier is the measure to consider first. Barriers and ANPR work well in combination: the barrier controls access on entry, ANPR provides the identification and logging, and time-limit enforcement catches vehicles that overstay once they are already inside. How that combination works in practice is covered in our article on barrier automation by plate.
For commercial car parks and residential complexes currently operating without a barrier but experiencing a real problem with unauthorised parking, ANPR-based enforcement is the lowest-friction starting point. Cameras installed, time limits configured, known plates imported — in most cases the initial setup takes less than half a day.
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