Police on Thursday said they will start issuing electronic penalty tickets for illegal parking and speeding offences from June 15.

At a press briefing, the force said the electronic version will include all the information on hand-written tickets, such as car licence and e-payment numbers.

It said the new system can save around 15 minutes of an officer's time.

“When using traditional hand-written tickets, officers are required to make a very detailed record of the ticket, and send them to the back office for another group of officers to manually key in such information,” said chief inspector Nip Hoi-kwan.

“After the digitalisation, the information will be synced real-time to the back-end system, which saves approximately 10 to 15 minutes,” he added.

Under the new measures, drivers or vehicle owners will receive any penalty notice via SMS or email.

During a transition period, paper tickets will be issued alongside the digital versions.

The force warned people to check the authenticity of electronic tickets, in case of scams. It said it will not send any hyperlinks for people to click on, and messages will begin with “HKPF-eTT”.