The Dunedin City Council has apologised after a car park barrier arm malfunctioned, preventing vehicles from leaving.

The problem occurred at the Mataukareao car park in Great King St, Dunedin, for about 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon.

“We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this unfortunate incident,” a council spokesman said.

Anyone left out of pocket by the incident could ask the council for a refund, he said.

The issue at the barrier arm was part of a wider outage affecting the car park, he said.

The cause was being investigated.

A motorist told the Otago Daily Times on Saturday the council ended up hanging up on people who called for help.

The council spokesman said on Monday the after-hours customer services contractor received five calls in relation to the incident and all ended amicably.

One of the calls was transferred to security firm  Armourguard, he said.

“This call with Armourguard did end prematurely, but this was due to poor cellphone reception at the time and was not intentional.”