BPA FOCUS SAFER PARKING SCHEME
Putting a tick in the box
The white tick is springing up on car park signage across the country. Sarah Juggins investigates just what it takes to achieve Park Mark and whether the public recognise the significance of the award
W
ith costs that can run into
hundreds of pounds, depending upon how many car parks an operator enters into the scheme, many private and public car park owners will be asking themselves whether the benefit of being in the Safer Parking Scheme is worth the cost when it is still largely anonymous. Mike Bibby, BPA
development manager for the south east, has 850 car parks under his care. He is very aware
of the potential impact of local authority belt- tightening measures. ‘If local authorities
want to save money, they may well cut Park Mark costs. It won’t be a great saving in the wider scheme but it is a little shaving off the deficit.’
Straight-forward approach
After 33 years in the Metropolitan police, Bibby enjoys his role within the BPA and has strong views on how the scheme can be run effectively. For him it is all about
taking a pragmatic approach and working with the assessors and the car park operators to ensure that, while the Park Mark standards are being met, assessments are not so draconian that people are driven out of the scheme. ‘I went on an
assessor training course and while there we inspected a National Trust car park in a remote area. It was not lit, it had no markings, there was little signage – there is no way with my police training that I would have passed it as a safe car park,’ he said. ‘But the instructor
explained that the car park was perfectly adequate for the purpose it was built for and should pass.’ Bibby now uses that
principle when advising car park operators on achieving Park Mark. He explained that to
Keith Bartlett explains his decision to Mike Bibby (centre) and Stewart Schleip
get the white tick, car parks should suffer one or less crimes per every 25,000-car throughput but: ‘If we look at a car park crime figures and find that they had no crime over a year and then one night a group of youths went on a drunken spree and
54 SEPTEMBER 2010
BPA development manager for the south east, Mike Bibby, open space manager, Stewart Schleip and police accredited assessor, Keith Bartlett
smashed wing mirrors on a number of cars, we would take that into account when it came to assessment.’ Te awarding of Park
Mark is down to police accredited-assessors and here Bibby finds there is some variation in the attitude taken towards reaching Park Mark status. ‘For some assessors it is a black and white case, while others will allow certain things to pass on the condition they are improved by the next visit. We find that if a parking operator has worked hard to improve a car park and then gets failed simply because a line needs repainting then that operator is likely to withdraw that car park from the scheme.’ Police-accredited
assessor for Suffolk is architectural liaison officer Keith Bartlett. Like Bibby, he has spent most of his working life as a police officer and has the same attention to detail, combined with
HOSPITAL PARKING CHARGES LIKELY TO REMAIN The Park Mark
development officer and the police- accredited assessor offer their five tips for operators hoping to
gain a Park Mark: l The car park should be clean and well-
presented; l There should be clear signage, including arrows indicating the flow of traffic and information such as help numbers and contact details for
the operator; l Ensure regular patrols and where possible a human
presence l Pay attention to the perimeter, clearing overgrown foliage and repairing fences;
and l Ensure the parking team has good management practices in place, with comprehensive staff training, well-documented procedures and attention to customer care.
www.britishparking.co.uk
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