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NEWS


PUBLIC PARKING Unity Advert 90 x 128:Layout 6 26/11/09 15:08 Page 1


cryptic) over Sudoku and the like. Nowadays, there are very clever machines at car parks that display the number of available spaces. Indeed, this invaluable information is transmitted to screens on the edge of town so that you can ascertain


Even now my


We currently supply and have vacancies around the UK for:


 Civil Enforcement Officers  CCTV Operators - Btech Qualified  Parking Customer Service Officers  Parking Appeals Officers  Parking Notice Processing / Correspondence Officers  Parking Supervisors (Both Enforcement and Back Office)  Parking Management (Both Enforcement and Back Office)  Contract Managers / Heads of Parking / Directors  Project Managers  Parking Consultants


Looking for staff or need employment? Please contact our experienced parking consultants.


Tel: 0208 429 7444 Email: parking@unity-recruitment.co.uk www.unity-recruitment.co.uk


***Parking Experience Essential***


FILLING SPA C ES IN PARKINGR E C R U I T M E NT


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heart sinks when I arrive at a pay-and- display park and realise I have only notes


Lost inspace I


One person’s useful information is another person’s dangerous distraction. Cathy Duhig gives her take on car park information signage


’ve always been more of a word person than a numbers person. Hence, my preference for crosswords (preferably


whether there are any parking spaces before taking your journey any further. I am sure this is meant to be helpful and reassuring, but to me it is just a cause of panic. ‘50 spaces available’, in a parking area with a capacity of 800, maybe. What if I go in and can’t find any of them?


A needle in a haystack


Even worse is the moment when I approach a car park queue and the screen keeps changing from ‘FULL’ to ‘SPACES : 1’ as a car is seen to leave via the exit barrier and another is admitted. ONE space in a whole huge multi-storey car park, and I’m supposed to find it? I could be in there all day, driving round and round and never locate it. And then I’ll still have to pay to get out. How far we have come since the first pay-and-display machines hit our streets, and we thought them wondrous examples of progressive technology – until we realised we had to have the right change to use them. Even now my heart sinks when I arrive at a pay-and-display park and realise I have only notes, and the machine bears a notice warning me: ‘No Change Given’. How much these machines have become


a part of our lives, to the extent that we think they have been with us for ever, is illustrated by the fact that towards the end of the film The Damned United (2009), when Brian Clough goes to see Peter Taylor at his house in Brighton in the mid 1970s, there is a pay-and-display ticket machine visible in the car park in the background. The film makers have done a good job at placing period vehicles in shot, but seem to have forgotten the anachronism that is the shiny black, new (solar powered?) ticket machine…


MAY 2012 www.britishparking.co.uk


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