BPA ACTIVITIES MONTHLY ROUND-UP
Kelvin Reynolds gives local authority parking managers a good reason to publish those annual reports
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The law does not allow local
authorities to use parking enforcement to raise revenue
arking Mad was the name given to a BBC1 documentary, broadcast
in January, which featured what it called the ‘parking industry’ in all its glory: Parkex 2012, local authorities, the adjudication services and CCTV enforcement vehicles (or spy-cameras as the programme called them) were all there. I’m not sure the BPA and its members are parking mad, but we are mad about parking, aren’t we?
A reasonably rational documentary, I thought. It seemed to me the biggest challenge is the public’s dislike for robotic enforcement using CCTV (and by inference, ANPR) plus the perception (which, in the public eye is reality) that every council is making a lot of money out of parking enforcement. As was pointed out in the programme, the law does not allow this. It’s not helpful that the Secretary of State for Communities in England, when announcing greater town hall transparency, added: ‘… as part of that, we will expose a great council cash cow cover-up, unmasking punitive parking practices that hit residents in the pocket. We’re calling time on local war against motorists – we need to see the back
16 FEBRUARY 2013 of this shopping
tax and encourage more people onto the high street.’ To do this only adds fuel to the fl ames of a poor public perception about parking, its provision, management and enforcement. There is some really good work being done by our members – true parking professionals – and this should be recognised. Good quality, well designed and properly maintained car parks can contribute signifi cantly to the prosperity of Britain’s towns and cities and the BPA works diligently towards this by sharing best practice, encouraging fair, reasonable and legitimate parking enforcement, and the promotion of safer parking through Park Mark. Parking needs to be managed intelligently if it is to work as intended, sometimes requiring effective enforcement too. All this costs money and, therefore, we believe that so called ‘free parking’ is not viable. The law does not allow local authorities to use parking enforcement to raise revenue, although it does acknowledge that surpluses
www.britishparking.co.uk
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