FUNDING looks set to be approved for the trial of contactless payments for deckchair hires at one site on Weymouth Beach, despite accusations of ‘grandstanding’ between councillors.

Councillors are recommended to approve £15,250 of funding; £250 to be spent on a contactless card reader and associated costs alongside £15,000 for replacement deck chairs, parasols and sun loungers.

The matter will be discussed at Weymouth Town Council’s full council meeting on Wednesday, February 15.

It is proposed that one of the four beach equipment hire ‘stacks’ trials contactless-only payments from May 1: a move that some councillors say will make hiring deckchairs, parasols and sunbeds a simplified process.

But the planned trial isn’t without controversy with a war-of-words breaking out when the matter was discussed last month at the town council’s services committee.

Cllr Alex Fuhrmann, who introduced the proposal to the committee, claimed fellow councillors had been ‘grandstanding’ over the proposal.

He said: “A lot of feedback we’ve been getting (on social media) is that cash is king. I want to re-emphasise that this is one stack (out of four) for one summer to test what we can do with it. The remaining stacks will still have cash as an option: by no means is this a path towards complete  contactless. We want to have a balanced mix.

“If we could not get into any grandstanding -’oh people use cash’, we know that, this is an opportunity to modernise our service. The points have been made.”

Cllr Christine James said it ‘wasn’t grandstanding to have a difference of opinions’, which prompted laughter from Cllr Fuhrmann whilst Cllr Tia Roos raised concerns over the reliability of signal along the seafront.

She said: “I can’t support cashless. There are people who do not have bank accounts and there are quite a few risks mentioned in the report about signal (needed for contactless payments)."

Questions were fielded about why the trial ‘stack’ would be contactless only as opposed to a blend of both contactless and cash payments.

Weymouth Town Council’s resort manager Will Holmes said: “I definitely think we could attempt to do both cash and card; I think it would give us a good understanding of how many people pay by card and how many people pay by cash.

Councillors will discuss the release of funding at their next meeting on February 15 with the recommendation that the committee agrees to release the proposed funding alongside £2,000 for access matting.