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New £1 coins will cause parking chaos as thousands of ticket machines will not accept them

The introduction of the new £1 will spark chaos for people trying to park their cars, as tens of thousands of machines will not be ready to accept the coins in time, the British Parking Association has warned.

The organisation told the Daily Telegraph that a "big queue" for modification means around a quarter of Britain's 100,000 parking meters will not have been updated in time for the new pound's debut.

The 12-sided coin will enter circulation on March 28, six months before the current £1 is phased out in October. During this time both coins will be accepted as legal tender.

But this newspaper has established that the Royal Mint has already begun the process of withdrawing round £1's meaning they are already reducing in number. 

Since Christmas it has so far withdrawn 50 million coins, representing 3pc of the total in circulation, meaning people are already less likely to find them in their wallets. 

From the end of March drivers trying to pay with new £1 coins at outdated machines face the inconvenience of having to leave their cars to swap notes for cash or finding somewhere else to park.

Machines which are not updated by March 28 will have to carry signs warning customers that they are incapable of accepting new coins. 

The British Parking Association said machines in rural areas were at a greater risk of not being ready for the change. This is because they tend to be older, would be less likely to be modified in time with some designs at risk of being too archaic to modify at all.

Dave Smith, a spokesman at the organisation, added that some councils were considering making parking machines cashless instead, as introducing tap-and-go technology may be cheaper than altering the shape of coin slots.

Richard Boultby, marketing director at Metric, a major manufacturer of parking ticket machines said older machines would cost hundreds of pounds each to modify. He said a "backlog" of requests meant most machines would be upgraded in May or June, several weeks after the new coins come in. 

It has also emerged that consumers buying snacks and drinks from vending machines could also run into problems from March. 

Around 40pc of the UK's 500,000 machines will not be updated in time for the new coins, the Automatic Vending Association said.

Vending machines in offices and gyms, which are maintained by private companies rather than big suppliers are likely to be slowest to adapt to the change, with around 5pc expected to reject the new coins in October when the old ones are phased out.  

Jonathan Hart, chief executive of the Automatic Vending Association  said: "It's just a question of getting round to it. Machines run by private companies are likely to be slower to adopt as they might need to get permission to do the modification, which is more time consuming."