THE market leader in phone parking services has branched out at its Basingstoke headquarters.

Councillor Andrew Finney, leader of the borough council, opened the new wing at Cobalt Telephone Technologies – almost doubling the size of its headquarters at Daneshill’s Intec Business Park.

The company, which uses the RingGo trading name for its phone parking service, has enjoyed a period of substantial with the number of local authorities offering its service more than doubling in the last year. Cobalt’s commercial director Harry Clarke said: “We’re delighted to deepen our commitment to Basingstoke. The company moved here from Esher eight years ago and has quadrupled in size since that time. “As a technical company, the availability of local graduate talent from Reading, Bournemouth, Southampton and Portsmouth Universities is perhaps the biggest plus, but Basingstoke brings an impressive combination of low rents, modern infrastructure and good communication links.”

Harry said the new office space in Intec 2 will be used to sustain the burgeoning growth in operations, particularly in the areas of technical support and service development. With tens of thousands of new motorists using RingGo each month, Cobalt is increasing its headcount to cater for the growth in customer enquiries and to assist the coding of the new technical innovations planned for the service.

Harry said: “We are fortunate to be in a niche which is expanding, but we are acutely aware that not all companies are finding things easy currently. “We therefore make sure that, where we can, we place work with local firms. That can be professional service companies or indeed more practical companies such as Sureway Signs, Minuteman Press and Ripley Engineering, all of which are based within a mile of us, and each having played an important part in our success of the last few years. “Investing in our own community has paid dividends and has to be the right thing for us all to do at this difficult time.”