ANTON BALAZH / SHUTTERSTOCK
MONTHLY ROUND-UP BPA ACTIVITIES
She went on to say: ‘Those powers need to be used responsibly, with discretion and wisdom. And I have every confidence in the ability of local authorities and their contractors to do so.’
This is a fantastic objective and one which every parking professional aspires to. But do we understand how difficult this is? It requires a partnership between government, local government and the motorist.
In it together Importantly, as professionals we all want to do our job well, but we need others to work with us. We need others to understand what we do and why we do it; we need everyone, including government, the media, MPs, councillors, motorists and, yes, adjudicators to understand the importance of effective parking management and just how difficult it is to please everyone all of the time. In the build-up to the Traffic Management Act (TMA) – with its three main strands for traffic and local authorities: a network management duty; integrated transport policies; and fair and transparent enforcement. The stakes were raised as motorists were encouraged to believe that fairer and more transparent parking enforcement was around the corner.
For civil parking enforcement to be a success there needs to be a degree of trust all round
Differential penalties would enable the punishment to fit the crime and enforcement would become more proportional. Everything would be okay by March 2008. The media had a field day. Here is the ‘old
enemy’, parking services, promising to clean up its act. TV programmes, and newspapers are full of stories determined to make a story out of it and continue its the ‘anti-parking’ lobby. Parking enforcement is unfair and draconian. After all, it’s believed that we are only in it for the money. Could this be the same media that was fined for operating those illegal phone-in scams?
What is the reality? In reality, the TMA is primarily the way we administer it all. On-street, little has changed – apart from the new differential penalties – so were the public duped? Was it all false hope? Was the parking profession on a hiding-to-nothing? Remember Aberystwyth in 2011 when parking enforcement stopped? It wasn’t long before people were calling for the ‘wardens’ to return as daily life ceased to function. There is an ever-increasing demand to manage more of the network’s kerb-space to ensure proper provision for the needs of residents, shoppers and commuters, plus of course servicing and deliveries; not to mention pedestrians and that overriding factor of road safety. Now here’s an idea. Local authorities should set a goal at reducing the number of complaints it receives. How will they do this? They are going to reduce the number of tickets they issue – seeing this as an improvement in its own right – maybe they should be changing parking regulations to reduce the likelihood of drivers being in contravention. But then what? Turn some systematic blind eyes to some of what remains? All this achieves is the stated objective of reducing the number of complaints, but it also makes parking more difficult and increases non-compliance. In fact to take this to its logical, or should I say paradoxical, conclusion, why not give up on parking enforcement altogether and then we’ll get no complaints? For civil parking enforcement to be a success there needs to be a degree of trust all round and what is apparent is that polarisation is taking
place.It is time for common sense to be reintroduced and the BPA is taking up this mantle in earnest.
www.britishparking.co.uk MARCH 2013 17
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