40 YEARS OF THE BPA
I
exhibition of itself
Making an
n 1990 the BPA was 20-years-old but it was over the next fi ve years that the foundations were laid for the BPA’s current stature as the voice of parking. Peter Bewsey became President
in 1991 and insisted that the BPA should develop ways to stand on its own feet. In response a ‘ways and means’ committee
was established from among the council members and other interested parties. From this committee the idea of a product guide and an exclusive Parking Exhibition evolved. At that time many of BPA’s commercial members were exhibiting at the expensive Traff ex show. Council accepted these ideas and late in 1991
John Heasman was appointed as exhibitions offi cer. He quickly recruited Jane Hack and David Chesterfi eld to assist. With the three of them working from their homes, BPA seminars were quickly upgraded. T e fi rst Parkex Conference, Exhibition and Dinner was held at Telford in 1993. T is conference was titled ‘T e Great Parking Debate’ and it was a great success. Over the years since then Parkex has contributed very strongly to the growth, reputation and fi nances of the BPA. In 1993 the BPA structure consisted of the
Council supported by a part-time secretary, a newsletter editor and an honorary treasurer. It was becoming obvious that the Association needed a more formal management structure. Tony Sedgwick and myself, as vice president, proposed such a structure to Council and won acceptance.
The BPA takes shape John Heasman took on the role of fi rst director general and with his team of Hack and Chesterfi eld, and support from the honorary treasurer Mike Murphy and John Foster, editor of Parking News, the new BPA began to take shape. Reputation, capability, turnover and asset-base have grown steadily since. Two nationally signifi cant parking issues arose
in the early 1990s. One was the high level of crime associated with parked vehicles and the second was the enactment of the Road Traffi c Act (RTA 1991).
30 SEPTEMBER 2010
ALASDAIR MACMILLAN EXPLAINS HOW THE NINETIES SAW THE BPA FIGHTING TO BECOME THE MAIN PARKING BODY IN THE UK
RTA 1991 enabled London Boroughs to introduce
decriminalised parking enforcement (DPE) and, during the early 90s, they were working hard to develop suitable teams of on- and off -street personnel to implement this major change. DPE, which was to be
extended nationwide from 1996, had a major impact on BPA’s future development. During the early 1990s National (and Scottish) Vocational Qualifi cations
(NVQs and SVQs) were being
successfully developed for a wide range of industrial activities. By 1994 local authorities were asking whether parking vocational qualifi cations should be developed for the growing numbers of parking attendants, that DPE would require. During my presidential year in 1994/5, BPA
investigated how such qualifi cations might be realised, and obtained authority from the NCVQ to proceed. We were directed to work on this with SITO (Security Industry Training Organisation) and we started out on the long and diffi cult road to qualifi cation development. Vehicle crime was another problem – both on the
street and in multi-storey car parks. In response, the Association of Chief Police
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alasdair Macmillan was BPA president in 1994/5. He was awarded honorary life membership of the BPA in 2003 following 16 years of active council membership.
Offi cers (ACPO) charged T ames Valley Police in 1990/1 with the development of a ‘Secured by Design’ car park scheme. T is was sponsored and guided by several BPA commercial members and, during 1991, BPA became involved. T is was the beginning of today’s Safer Parking Scheme (SPS). In the early days the SPS was administered by the Automobile Association (AA). Latterly, it has fl ourished under BPA administration. In summary the early nineties saw the fi rst formal
BPA management structure, the birth of Parkex, the initiation of vocational parking qualifi cations, the birth of the Safer Parking Scheme and the start of BPA’s long period of sustained growth.
www.britishparking.co.uk
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