Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 359)
WEDNESDAY 14 DECEMBER 2005
MS KAREN
BUCK MP AND
MR MIKE
TALBOT
Q340 Graham Stringer: I am sorry
if I was not clear enough. I am asking beyond that. I am asking
whether there should be more or less total discretion for local
authorities to choose the fine they set.
Mr Talbot: To date certainly we
have tried to maintain a consistency across the country in terms
of the levels but still providing a degree of choice and that
seems to have worked reasonably effectively.
Q341 Graham Stringer: So if Birmingham
came along and said, "We've got a big problem with people
parking illegally and the fines do not seem to be deterring it,
we want to up it to £250," you would consider that,
would you?
Ms Buck: I certainly do not think
it is anything that is under consideration at the moment.
Q342 Graham Stringer: There is a
different policy in London compared to the rest of the country
on parking on the pavements. Do you think it is satisfactory that
there is a different policy between London and the rest of the
country?
Ms Buck: There are very clear
differences between inner-London in particular and most other
parts of the country in terms of the demand.
Mr Talbot: The schemes in London
which prevent any parking on the pavement unless otherwise signed
are certainly different from most parts of the country, although
there are one or two local Acts which have the same effect in
one or two areas. We have looked at this from time to time and
the problem has always been that if you define no parking on the
footway or the verge in all other circumstances except where signed
it would not be enforced. The problem that we always ran into
when it was considered before and it still remains is that it
is really not something that is effectively enforceable across
the whole country as there is a diverse range of circumstances.
What local authorities that have parking enforcement powers themselves
can do is to define for themselves areas where parking on the
pavement is not appropriate, so they can deal with it in a local
sense and that is what we have encouraged authorities to do.
Q343 Clive Efford: Are you satisfied
with the extent of external scrutiny of local authority parking
departments?
Ms Buck: The scrutiny comes from
a number of different sources and the Ombudsman is clearly one.
In terms of the financial scrutiny of local authorities and the
extent to which the revenue is spent on the purposes that are
defined, that is open to financial scrutiny. I think there are
a range of powers that are available to ensure that those policies
and practices are right. There are a number of areas of policy
in which this is, rightly, something for which local authorities
are accountable to their own electorates.
Q344 Clive Efford: Do you think they
are adequate? Are you concerned that some parking enforcement
officers have pressures put on them to raise revenues and, if
so, what sort of measures do you think you could put in place
to prevent that happening?
Ms Buck: We have made it very
clear that parking enforcement and penalty charge notices should
not be a source of raising revenue. We are very clear that this
should be—and this will be reinforced again in the guidance—about
using parking controls as a means of keeping traffic moving as
part of an overall traffic management policy. Certainly that would
be the case and that is something that is very clearly reinforced
in the guidance that we provide.
Q345 Clive Efford: Does the Department
have a view on setting figures in budget forecasts and that if
you put a figure in your budget at the beginning of the year you
are in effect setting a target for the next financial year to
raise revenues?
Ms Buck: Clearly what local authorities
will do is anticipate the kind of income that is likely to flow
from both their parking charges and PCNs on the basis of past
performance. Given that there are some, although not that many,
authorities that have historically made reasonably large surpluses
and are allowed to spend those surpluses in particularly specified
circumstances, they will have to account for them and that will
have to appear in the accounts. I suppose the alternative would
be that they do not make any projection whatsoever. I am not sure
I would worry about the fact that the figures appear in accounts.
I think that is different to saying is their parking in some way
target driven.
Q346 Clive Efford: Do you think there
should be any incentive for local authorities to publish how they
use that income and figures about penalty charge notices and how
much they get from parking revenue?
Ms Buck: I think that is absolutely
right. One of the themes that regularly comes through in terms
of people's concerns about parking issues is a sense of not being
clear what income is raised and under what circumstances it is
raised because I think people need to be very clear (and they
are not) that a lot of the money that is made from parking is
made simply from parking charges and not from PCNs. The clarity
and transparency of information is absolutely critical, it is
something that we are very clear about and we are going to consult
on ways in which we can encourage local authorities to perform
better in that respect.
Q347 Clive Efford: Is that with a
view to placing a statutory responsibility on local authorities
to publish that information or is that still open for discussion?
Mr Talbot: Certainly it is something
which we can include in the statutory guidance, which may not
go quite as far as being in the regulations and therefore it is
not statutory in that way. Since the guidance itself is statutory
and local authorities should take account of it, it is a fairly
strong encouragement on authorities to fulfil that requirement.
Q348 Clive Efford: Why is information
about the revenue from different parking activities not held centrally
and collected centrally? Does the Department have a proper oversight
of local authority parking enforcement?
Mr Talbot: The information is
provided to different parts of Government. Information is provided
to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in terms of more general
parking revenues and those are the figures which are most commonly
quoted, which actually include all the revenues and not just that
related to enforcement. One thing which we would like to do with
the new guidance is to get that broken down so that there is more
transparency and more clarity about the different elements of
parking and therefore it is clearer to see where the income and
the expenditure is going. The most recent ODPM figures have begun
to separate out the on-street and the off-street which is a starter
down that particular process. It is certainly something where
we would want to encourage more clarity.
Q349 Clive Efford: Has the Department
any concerns about some local authorities having had incentive
schemes for their enforcement officers in order to maximise the
number of penalty charge notices that are issued?
Mr Talbot: As the Minister said,
we are very much of the mind that parking enforcement is a transport
related and focussed activity and should be orientated to transport
objectives. The fact that it generates revenue in some circumstances
is an accidental by-product, although obviously it is quite substantial
in some instances. We did fund the British Parking Association
to produce a model contract which is designed for local authorities
to use where the emphasis moves away from the financial and the
ticket numbers objectives to a much broader basket of objectives
which relate to the performance of the network, eg is the traffic
kept moving or what is the quality of the service offered by the
parking attendants. We are moving in that direction and we want
to support the moves in that direction.
Q350 Clive Efford: Would the Department
express any concern to a local authority if it was seen to be
over-reliant on income from parking enforcement—a couple
of London boroughs spring to mind, one of which the Minister would
know very well—and becoming a parking enforcement junky
in order to keep their council tax down?
Mr Talbot: Oversight of local
government is principally an ODPM responsibility.
Q351 Chairman: Mr Talbot, you are
not getting away with that one. If you are making it clear that
this is something that needs to be transparent you need to know
whether they are fulfilling their duties under the Transport Act.
You are being asked what you would do to make sure that is the
case. I think it is really a question for you, Minister, not for
Mr Talbot.
Ms Buck: It genuinely is part
of the ODPM's scrutiny of local authorities.
Q352 Chairman: We understand who
scrutinises local government finances overall, but you cannot
have it both ways. If you need transparency, if this money is
being raised, what are you doing to ensure that it is clear to
the public how it is being spent?
Ms Buck: I think that is the critical
thing. The critical thing is that it needs to be absolutely transparent
and we accept that it is not entirely transparent.
Q353 Chairman: What is your Department
actually doing about that?
Ms Buck: We will be consulting
on measures in the statutory guidance in the new year to improve
the clarity and transparency of that information so that the electors
of the local authorities in question, among others, are clearer
about what the income is, what streams the income is flowing into
the local authority from and that they will need to be held to
account. It is clearly true that there are some outlying local
authorities in terms of the income. It is also true that those
local authorities tend to be in the areas of the greatest scarcity
of parking places.
Q354 Chairman: If you are not making
a profit, Minister, I think we can assume that you are not going
to be able to spend it.
Ms Buck: If parking is part of
a broader transport strategy then it is perfectly possible that
in a sense you will make a surplus from your parking income for
entirely legitimate purposes.
Q355 Chairman: Perhaps it would be
better if the revenues from the parking notices were paid to the
Treasury.
Ms Buck: There are pros and cons
to doing that. It would be a very bureaucratic process.
Q356 Chairman: Local authorities
manage to claim back money from central funding to support other
aspects of local government administration. Why should it be any
more difficult in relation to the normal formula grant?
Ms Buck: You have been talking
about a very small number of authorities. I think it is a bit
like using a hammer to crack a nut. It is quite important to retain
an incentive for local authorities—and we do this in other
respects as well—to ensure that parking is properly used
as a tool within a transport strategy. What we need to do and
want to do through greater transparency and clarity of information
is ensure that it is not used as a tax raising tool to cross-subsidise
the council tax, for example. If a local authority makes a surplus
as part of a good transport strategy that is fine. Brighton and
Hove are a very good example of that. They went into a significant
surplus on their parking account partly as a result of doing some
quite intelligent and imaginative policies on making their parking
work better as a demand management tool within their transport
strategy and I do not have a problem with that, and I think if
you took that incentive away from them that would not necessarily
be helpful.
Q357 Chairman: Presumably they did
not have a problem with telling people what they had done with
the money.
Ms Buck: I sincerely hope not
and I think that is very important.
Q358 Chairman: You would encourage
them to do that and you are thinking of a scheme whereby you may
be able to encourage—if no stronger word is needed—local
authorities to follow a transparent and a sufficiently guided
policy so that people can see they are following the objectives
in the Traffic Act.
Ms Buck: I think that is absolutely
right.
Q359 Chairman: When can we expect
this to be made clear?
Ms Buck: In the early part of
next year.
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