It’s back and better than ever. We’ve revived our text message alert system for traffic wardens on Stonecot Hill which was discontinued a few months ago when Twitter stopped sending text messages to mobile phones.

Now the Twitter text message service is back on for O2 and Vodaphone customers and we’ve revamped the alert system to make it much faster and more reliable than before.

The new system also monitors Transport for London’s CCTV camera at the junction of Stonecot Hill and Hill Top which also issues parking tickets (though bizarrely TfL claims to have no idea how many).

If you’re already a Twitter member, just follow @stonecotparking and enable text message alerts for that account. If you’re not, here’s how you get going:

1. Join Twitter

Go to the signup page and create yourself an account.

2. Connect your mobile phone to your Twitter account

Now you’re signed up and logged in, go to the Devices page in your account settings and let Twitter know your phone number. You can leave the “device updates” setting Off as you’ll just be enabling text messages coming from a single account (@stonecotparking).

3. Follow @stonecotparking

Go to @stonecotparking’s page and click the big Follow button at the top. You should see a green tick and the word “Following”.

4. Turn on device updates for @stonecotparking

Click the circular mobile phone icon next to where it says “Following”. It should turn green, meaning you’ll get text message alerts whenever there’s a new update from @stonecotparking.

That’s it. While we can’t guarantee this system to be 100% reliable, when there are wardens about or the CCTV camera is working you’ll probably get a text message to let you know.