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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 748-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE TRANSPORT COMMITTEE
FINDING A SPACE FOR PARKING POLICY
Wednesday 7 December 2005 MR KEITH BANBURY, MS LYNN WITHAM, MR PETER GUEST, MR BOB MACNAUGHTON and MR IAN KAVANAGH
MR NICK LESTER, CLLR DANNY CHALKLEY, CLLR TONY PAGE, MR ANDY VAUGHAN and CLLR RICHARD KNASEL MR MIKE LINK, MR JOHN ELLIOTT, MR SEAMUS ADAMS and MR TOM FRANKLIN Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 211
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Transport Committee on Wednesday 7 December 2005 Members present Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody, in the Chair Clive Efford Mrs Louise Ellman Mr Eric Martlew Graham Stringer ________________ Memoranda submitted by British Parking Association (BPA) and National Car Parks Limited (NCP)
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Keith Banbury, Chief Executive, Ms Lynn Witham, Council Member, Mr Peter Guest, Vice-President, British Parking Association, Mr Bob Macnaughton, Chief Executive, and Mr Ian Kavanagh, On Street Director, National Car Parks Limited, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming this afternoon. You are most warmly welcome. We have one little bit of housekeeping to perform before we start to talk to you, if you will forgive us. Members having an interest to declare. Mr Martlew? Mr Martlew: Member of the Transport and General Workers' Union and member of the GMB. Graham Stringer: Member of Amicus. Chairman: Gwyneth Dunwoody, a member of ASLEF. Mrs Ellman: Member of the Transport and General Workers' Union. Clive Efford: Member of the Transport and General Workers' Union. Q1 Chairman: Lady and gentlemen, before I ask you to identify yourselves, perhaps we could start at the left. Would you like to tell us who you are, just for the record? Mr Banbury: Good afternoon. My name is Keith Banbury. I am the Chief Executive of British Parking Association. Ms Witham: My name is Lynn Witham. I am a member of the Executive Council of the British Parking Association. Mr Guest: My name is Peter Guest. I am the Vice-President of the British Parking Association. Mr Macnaughton: My name is Bob Macnaughton. I am the Chief Executive of National Car Parks. Mr Kavanagh: My name is Ian Kavanagh, the On Street Director for National Car Parks. Q2 Chairman: Thank you. Perhaps I should warn you that sitting in front of you are microphones which do not project your voices, they record what you say, so I am afraid we are going to have to ask every one of you to speak up because the acoustics in this building are not altogether fitted to some of their modern tasks. Did any one of you have anything you wanted to say just before we begin the questioning? In which case, let me ask you, should decriminalised parking enforcement be rolled out across all local authorities? Mr Banbury: I think there is an argument to do that. At the moment, because there are two systems in operation there is some confusion in the members of the public and that would be a good reason, in a sense, to roll it out across the country, but there are other reasons. Because decriminalised parking enforcement is meant to be self-funding it may well be that some councils are unable to undertake that. Therefore, that may be the main reason against it, but I think it is something which should be considered. Q3 Chairman: Have you any reason other than an instinct to believe that that would be the case? Are you just assuming there is a certain population requirement before such a scheme would be self-financing? Is that your assumption? Mr Banbury: That is correct. Because they have the opportunity to do it at the moment, although only 170 or so have done so, it could well be that those who have considered it have turned it away because of that. I know that in some cases it is being undertaken on a county-wide basis so that the areas where they actually generate a surplus can actually support those areas where they do not. Q4 Chairman: Since the change on parking enforcement has been introduced, the number of reported parking contraventions has increased. Do you think we ought to be concerned about that? Mr Banbury: Not particularly. I think the reason why it has increased is because the enforcement is much more rigorous than it used to be and through the police system where there are traffic wardens, of course there are very few of them around and therefore enforcement is fairly sparse. At the moment, just to put it in some sort of context, there are about 8 million parking tickets issued through decriminalised parking enforcement each year and there are something like 32 million drivers, so one in four of us gets one ticket a year, or each of us gets one ticket on average every four years. Q5 Chairman: You could be said to have a vested interest in rolling out this legislation across all local authorities. Do you have a particular view? Mr Macnaughton: This is why I was keen to let Keith make the first point. Q6 Chairman: I gathered that, that is why I am asking you. Mr Macnaughton: I think for the case of consistency, absolutely there is a case for decriminalised parking enforcement to be rolled out everywhere. I think there are issues where parking enforcement is the responsibility of the police. It is not their priority, and it is increasingly not their priority. So the resources which are invested in the traffic warden service are increasingly diverted elsewhere, and that is a problem. As a consequence, we see where we take on decriminalised parking for the first time that quite often it is extremely welcomed. I would point to St Albans just in the last 18 months or so, where it was in the national media, "It's a scandal. There's no parking enforcement. People are parking everywhere." So I do think there is a strong case for it, but I also recognise the priority should be in the denser populated areas, the urban areas, where there is more congestion. Q7 Mr Martlew: Just on that point, in Cumbria we got rid of all the traffic wardens and to be honest when they brought in the new system everybody was not pleased. I am glad to see they are in St Albans, but they were not in my constituency. Coming back to traffic wardens, are they disappearing throughout the country, or is Cumbria just an exception? Are there less and less of them and there is no control? Mr Banbury: I think as more and more move to decriminalised parking enforcement there will be less and less traffic wardens and I think there is a conscious effort by the Police not to actually undertake this function as much as they used to, because they have other higher priorities. So as a result, in some areas there is very little enforcement and as a result people park obviously anywhere they wish to. Mr Macnaughton: I think the question is as much one for the Police Service. We do see that less resources are being put into this area. It is not their priority. They have a very big agenda of things to do and I do not think it comes very high up that list. Q8 Chairman: Mr Banbury, do you think statutory guidance with a Code of Practice really will raise the standard of parking enforcement? Mr Banbury: I think so. There have been concerns and we as an association have done a number of things to try and improve the situation, but it needs to go further. We actually introduced - and I sent a copy through - a review undertaken by Richard Charles, who is the ex-Chief Constable in Lincolnshire and he undertook an independent review and came up with 43 recommendations which he passed through to the DfT. We definitely believe there are improvements which can be made. Decriminalised parking enforcement in itself is, I think, a very sensible way to go. It is a parking ticket, it is a parking penalty and to decriminalise it makes eminent sense. It is a much more user-friendly system than going through a magistrates' court. Chairman: I think we will want to ask you a bit about that. Q9 Clive Efford: Can I ask the representatives from the BPA, do you support the adjudicator's call for Audit Commission scrutiny of all local authority parking enforcement? Mr Banbury: I do not think we actually directly supported it, but we do support the review of that. There is also a cause, and I think the Which? magazine and others have suggested the possibility of a parking regulator. That is something we feel the Government should consider as a longer term possibility. Q10 Clive Efford: What areas would a parking regulator look into in terms of the practices of local authorities in enforcement? Mr Banbury: Exactly that, the practice of the local authorities. He would not get involved in the actual issue of tickets. There is an adjudication service, which is generally sound. He would get involved with local authorities to ensure they undertake their roles correctly. Mr Guest: You said the number of tickets issued was rising, but then so are the kilometres of kerb space controlled and the hours of control. So it may not be that the actual number of tickets per space, per hour is rising. Q11 Chairman: Can we quantify that? Mr Guest: No, we cannot. It is one of our major concerns that there is very little hard data around on what has happened since decriminalised parking in terms of driver behaviour, the amount of parking and the amount of enforcement, and it is one of our recommendations that there does need to be some quite fundamental research in the field to understand what has happened with decriminalised parking enforcement. Q12 Clive Efford: On the issue of scrutiny? Mr Guest: Yes, the scrutiny of local authorities. We believe that most local authorities most of the time are doing the job quite well, or well. We recognise that some local authorities some of the time are doing the job quite badly. At the moment we have a local authority activity which is of the order of £1 billion per year in terms of turnover where there is no scrutiny, there is no control, there are no standards and there is no back-stop except by going for judicial review or similar methods. There is nobody to say whether it is being done rightly or wrongly and telling local authorities where they are doing things wrong that they should mend their ways. It is not something which the BPA has looked at and it is not something which the BPA has formed a view on, but there was a report recently done by Which? which made this recommendation. Q13 Chairman: I would have thought you were the logical forum to do that. You have this wide cross-sample of membership. I would have thought that was the sort of thing you would have been looking at? Mr Guest: Yes, we carried out the DPE research. It is not something which came up as a result of that independent research, but it has come up in the dialogue which has come out of that research and other research. It is an idea which we feel has merits. Q14 Chairman: You have put that to the Department for Transport, have you? Mr Guest: We have a meeting with the Department for Transport in a week's time where it will be on the agenda. Mr Banbury: Could I add to the point about statutory guidance? I think we are great supporters of this. I think this is the key for the future. There is no doubt there have been some concerns about decriminalised parking enforcement, a lot of which has been media-hyped, I have to say. Nevertheless, there are things which need to be changed and this is the mechanism through which I think they need to be changed, backed by a Code of Practice and with good practice guides. I think perhaps in a year's time the whole issue of the DPE and the issue of tickets will to some extent start to be resolved. Q15 Mr Martlew: You say there are things that need to be changed. Can you give us an example? Mr Banbury: One of the things which needs to be looked at is the question of proportionality of charges. At the moment you get the same fixed penalty if you overstay on a meter or if you are on double yellow lines. Now, in natural justice there is an argument for saying there should be a differentiation of charges. So that is one of the issues which the group, of which I am a member, which is actually standing and sitting at the moment, is to look at, but all of the other issues as well related to it. So the whole focus perhaps will change in the future. We need to do better in the sense of the way in which we implement it. We need to have stronger rules and we need greater transparency. The two key issues which Richard Charles came to us with was legitimacy - we must do it for the right reasons - and transparency so that local authorities could show to their constituents and the motorists what number of tickets they have had, how they spent the money and what they have used it on. Q16 Clive Efford: In your evidence you have indicated that parking managers are under pressure to raise target revenue from parking enforcement. How under the statutory guidance can we address that and what steps would relieve the pressure on those parking managers to do that? Mr Banbury: This was, I think, an issue which Richard Charles brought to us. Two things we have done which I think will help. The first is that we have developed a new model contract, which I think Bob could comment on in a minute. A local authority contracts with a service provider to undertake their functions. In the past the contracts which were under cctv were very much ticket-orientated. It is not unreasonable to develop an expected number of tickets, but what was unreasonable, we think, is that there was a penalty clause so that the contractors' had a huge penalty if they did not meet those numbers of tickets. I argue that with parking a ticket is a consequence of what happens rather than a target, so our new contracts focus on different forms of KPIs for compliance with the regulations rather than on the number of tickets. We have to get the number of tickets out of the equation, and that is already happening. A number of local authorities, including Westminster (who you will hear from later), are actually moving in that direction and I think what we are doing is kicking at an open door. But we do need to move on that because I think that is one of the biggest concerns of the public and people like the AA and RAC. Q17 Clive Efford: Particularly in places like London, are not the amounts of money which can be raised from parking enforcement too attractive at times for parking enforcement managers to raise income, and is not the possibility of using that money for other things other than traffic management issues an inducement to try and raise revenue? Mr Guest: I think it is important that we understand and recognise that the powers the local authority has to operate, manage and enforce parking are traffic management powers; they are not fiscal powers. It is a natural consequence of what happens, particularly in large cities, that there is a financial surplus which comes out of those activities. We are concerned that sometimes local authorities seem to have lost sight of the fundamental reason why they are doing what they are doing, so the money does become attractive and it does become an issue. One of the recommendations we have made to ensure that what is going on is understood and is transparent is that the financial consequences of what the local authority should do should be very transparent, that there should be a statutory responsibility to publish the information about the money they are raising, how they are spending that money, what they are doing with it, and it certainly is appropriate that any surpluses should be used to the public good. It is a statutory requirement for money which comes from on-street parking that surpluses are ring-fenced and used for the public good. One of the concerns we have in the industry is that originally the primary purpose of a surplus was that it should be reinvested into providing more and better parking. In fact, the parking infrastructure which we have in terms of parking structures, signs and lines, are being neglected, are falling into disrepair while the money is spent on other things, and that is a matter of great concern to us as an industry. We had the experience a few years ago where one of Mr Macnaughton's car parks partially collapsed at Piper's Row. The professions did a great deal of research into that. There was a great deal of forensic research into that. Out of that research came recommendations from the professional institutions about checking, maintaining and preparing a whole life care plan for all car parks. As far as we are able to determine, that has not happened and we know there are structures out there which are becoming dangerous. Most of those structures belong to local authorities and they are not reinvesting their parking surpluses into the maintenance and upkeep of those structures, which we think should be a very high priority. Q18 Mrs Ellman: How are the car parking charges and meter charges set? Who does that? Mr Guest: I will try and respond to that. You may gather from my hair I am quite old now! Q19 Chairman: We thought that was only since you had been in this room" Mr Guest: I suspect it will be by the time I leave this room! The original parking charge was set by the Greater London Council, which decided there should be a charge of one shilling per day to park on the streets of London. Since then, charges have been set by committees all the way across the country, I am tempted to say at random but I do not think that is true, in response to local circumstances. Local authorities have total discretion on setting their meter charges and their car park charges. They look at their local conditions, at the cost of running their parking operations, they look at the competition from Mr Macnaughton and others, and they set those charges, but there is no rigid framework which they have to comply with. Q20 Mrs Ellman: Do you think it would be better if charges were more uniform or a complete discretion? Do you have any views on that? Mr Guest: I cannot see that uniform charges will work. Parking is provided in a local environment to meet a local need and is subject to local political decision-making. Therefore, my council will set its charges within its framework of decision-making and its local political need. The next council along will have a different set of circumstances, and I cannot see how that could be centralised and regulated. Q21 Mrs Ellman: Could I ask National Car Parks, how do the charges you levy fit into local traffic policies, or do they if it is something totally separate? Mr Macnaughton: We have an economic model which we use to aid us in trying to get some degree of consistency on how we set parking tariffs. Clearly, each economic centre is its own marketplace. It is a supply and demand model depending on the demand of drivers and depending on the supply of parking. Q22 Chairman: Are you telling us there is a big difference, for example, between what you charge in the centres of cities and what you would charge in a smaller area? Is that what you are telling us? Mr Macnaughton: Yes. Well, it depends what the situations in the market are. Local authorities still control about two-thirds of off-street parking spaces in the UK, and of course they have all the on-street places. We see a vast inconsistency in the way local authorities set tariffs. There are some local authorities which have no parking at all virtually, they have a little bit of on-street. There are other authorities which have very large portfolios and there is no real science. There are local policies and some are good and others are, frankly, illogical, but that is just the way it is. Q23 Mrs Ellman: Could the same be said about your charges? Mr Macnaughton: We are a private sector organisation. We set charges according to local circumstances, but we have a consistent methodology across the whole country. It is partly an analytical method. We do not own our property, we pay rent for all of our sites, and unfortunately what we have seen over the last ten years is that the value of our property in our towns and city centres has escalated incredibly and so has our rent. Q24 Mrs Ellman: Does that mean then that the charges you levy are to do with what you think you can basically get away with? They are not necessarily related to local traffic management? Mr Macnaughton: That is correct. Q25 Mrs Ellman: That is an entirely different thing. Who should take responsibility for making the public more aware of how representations could be made and decisions made on that? Ms Witham: I think that is very much down to the local authorities themselves to ensure that people are aware of how they can appeal against parking tickets. I think that whole appeals process is a vital safeguard. Some authorities are very good at doing this. They have a lot of information on their websites, they publish leaflets and they make sure that people get this information, but it is variable. Q26 Mrs Ellman: Do you think that a good job is being done on that, making people aware of what the system is to make representations? Ms Witham: I think there is always room to improve it. I am working with one London local authority at the moment which is defining all its enforcement policies and the grounds on which it will consider appeals, the grounds on which it will consider mitigation and cancel tickets. When that is finished, that will go on its website, and some authorities are now doing this. Q27 Mrs Ellman: Do you think that local authorities should have to meet statutory performance levels on dealing with representations? Mr Guest: We have said in our submission to you, and we will say again and again that we feel there is a need for stronger statutory guidance, and in dealing with the ability of the public to make representation and appeal against the activity of a local authority that needs to be spelt out very clearly in a uniform way for all local authorities so that the public know where they stand when they get parking tickets. Certainly part of that guidance should be setting benchmarks and standards, but obviously depending on the representation on the appeal there has to be some flexibility because it may be somebody has a very straightforward case they wish to make to the local authority and it may be they want to enter into a dialogue which goes on for some time. It is difficult for a local authority to be pushed into a rigid framework of response if it has to deal with a more complex case. Q28 Mrs Ellman: What does that mean, that you think there should be benchmarks? Mr Guest: It means that there should be benchmarks and standards, but they have to recognise reality. Q29 Mrs Ellman: So there should be, but they do not have to? Mr Guest: There are things which you can regulate. If somebody writes to you, you should be required to respond within a certain time, but not necessarily resolve the case within a certain time. Q30 Clive Efford: Do you think on the whole the public get a raw deal from the appeal's process? Mr Guest: I do not think we know. What we do know is that of the 8 million or so tickets which are issued each year only about one per cent end up in adjudication. I think that is about right. Mr Banbury: Just under one per cent. Mr Guest: Which suggests that on the whole most of the public most of the time do not feel strongly enough about what is going on to take their cases to adjudication. I am not sure if that is because they feel it is reasonably good or because they do not think the cost of adjudication is justified. Q31 Clive Efford: Is not the problem that you only get the 50 per cent discount if you pay it within a certain time? If you appeal, then you face paying the whole charge, so do the people just cut their losses even though it may have been somebody who was lawfully loading or unloading? Ms Witham: If I can answer that one, round about 20 per cent of all tickets which are issued will result in correspondence from the driver, who for one reason or another does not understand why he has received a ticket, or was loading or unloading, as you have said, or is otherwise exempt, maybe a blue badge holder. The majority of local authorities will deal with those letters at that point and it is standard practice that if somebody writes to them within those 14 days they will re-offer them another 14 days to pay at the discount, so they have not been disadvantaged by writing in. There is absolutely nothing to stop local authorities offering that discount at the subsequent formal representation stage as well, and in fact at any point throughout the process. Q32 Clive Efford: Would your organisation encourage them to do so? Ms Witham: Yes. Mr Banbury: Yes. If I may add, this is something which statutory guidance need to look at through the working group, because I think that is a major bone of contention with some members of the public. Chairman: We have several things we are going to ask you about that. Q33 Mrs Ellman: What about the use of bailiffs to recover unpaid fines? Do you have a view on that? Mr Banbury: My understanding is that the bailiff is only used when it gets to court because a persistent evader has not paid the fine and as a result the case is referred to the court by the local authority and a bailiff is then involved. I do not think before that stage a bailiff is involved, unless anybody can correct me on that. Mr Guest: The bailiff is a court officer, who is enforcing a decision of the court and you have had to go through quite a long process to get that far. There does appear to be a number of drivers who still perceive the penalty charge notice as something which if they ignore it, it will go away, and maybe part of the process which needs to be improved is the information to drivers that when the local authority issues a penalty charge notice it means it. It is a charge for misuse of the parking space and it means that it should be paid. Q34 Mrs Ellman: The AA Motoring Trust has given us some evidence about problems from the no win, no fee pursuits of unpaid or unserved parking penalty notices. So they think there is a problem. Mr Kavanagh: Could I just point out that before a bailiff turns up to collect any money from a driver who has received a penalty charge notice, that driver will have received three or four items of correspondence through the process outlining exactly what will happen if they do not pay. Q35 Chairman: So your view, Mr Kavanagh, is that it would only come into operation when they have had more than adequate notice? Mr Kavanagh: Yes. Q36 Graham Stringer: On that last point, how many people never pay their fines? What is the percentage of the total money which is charged to motorists for parking illegally but which is never collected? Mr Macnaughton: The payment rates, I think, vary between about 60 per cent and 75 per cent. Q37 Chairman: Mr Kavanagh, do you know that? Mr Kavanagh: It varies widely. We know of authorities which have collection rates below 50 per cent and we know some which have about 70 per cent. The average is about 65 per cent, we think. Q38 Graham Stringer: So you stand a pretty good chance, if you do not pay, of never paying? Mr Kavanagh: Yes. Mr Macnaughton: We would use payment rates as a guide of quality for parking attendant performance, so although we are not so involved in the back office processing we use it as an indicator of good quality parking tickets, which is why we monitor it. Mr Kavanagh: But about 30 per cent of people who receive parking tickets never pay them, for one reason or another. Q39 Graham Stringer: Before Mr Banbury comes in, do you think, therefore, the process should be tightened up? Are there good reasons for the enforcement rates being so low? Mr Banbury: There is quite a number of reasons why tickets are not paid. A vehicle which is a foreign registered vehicle generally will not pay a penalty charge notice. A number of penalty charge notices are cancelled, of course. Drivers make representations, they make appeals and they are cancelled. There is this persistent problem, which is a problem for both parking and --- Q40 Graham Stringer: Sorry, before you go on any further, if they are cancelled I assume that they are not then part of the 33⅓ per cent which are not collected? Ms Witham: If I can expand on it, there will be parking tickets which are cancelled. Q41 Graham Stringer: Then they disappear out of the calculation? Ms Witham: Absolutely, yes. The majority of tickets which are unpaid are normally as a result of demographic features, if you have an area with a high population movement. The shortest period that you can move a ticket from being issued through to a bailiff warrant is four to five months. If you have got a high population movement, there will be people who no longer live at that address. The other reason why some tickets are unpaid is because it is simply impossible to trace ownership of vehicles. Those are the two major reasons. Mr Kavanagh: I think it is between 5 and 10 per cent of vehicles which are not registered with the DVLA at all, so you therefore cannot find the drivers at any stage in the process. Mr Banbury: Could I add to that? I did a little bit of research recently and spoke to a number of local authorities and they say the average is about 10 per cent are uncollectible, in their view, because of the reasons mentioned. Each authority has developed an offender database, a database of persistent offenders, and recently we discussed the possibility of making this into a national offender database, which in some sense received quite a lot of support on the basis that people move around the country, they do not necessarily have addresses, they have cars which are not registered and therefore this is about £30 million which is lost to local authorities each year. So it is a significant sum of money and the view is that if the general member of the public who gets a ticket pays, by and large, it is not fair on those who pay not to try and collect those who do not pay. Therefore, we are looking towards whether or not this is a real possibility. We need to look at the technology and we need to look at the practicality of doing it, but it is something we are considering. Q42 Graham Stringer: That is very interesting. Could I just change the focus slightly? A number of the witnesses have suggested there should be greater transparency of what local authorities do. Do you believe there should be a statutory responsibility to record and publish the number of penalty charges, the number of representations made, the number of adjudications and the number of times the adjudicator upholds the motorists' representations? Mr Banbury: Yes, I think there needs to be, and part of the group which is looking at the statutory guidance I think will come up with what will be required, and we suggest it be a statutory requirement that there is a return each year by each local authority along the lines you have said to determine each of those particular issues and so that there is total transparency, full disclosure of the facts. I think this will help in trying to alleviate the concerns of some of the motorists. Q43 Graham Stringer: Do you believe that local authorities should be either collectively fined if they look as though they are doing a bad job when the statistics are analysed, where they are issuing a lot of parking tickets which were incorrectly issued, and on an individual basis do you think that if a motorist is put to a great deal of trouble by the incompetent and unfair issuing of a ticket that motorist should be compensated? Mr Banbury: There is an ability, as I understand it, for the adjudicator to award costs, but it is rare. Q44 Graham Stringer: It is rare. I am saying beyond costs, for the inconvenience and the annoyance? Mr Banbury: On your first point, I do not really think that is for us to say. I think this is a decision through the statutory guidance as to whether or not people should be fined, or if you have a parking regulator then that individual would actually deal with that particular issue. Mr Macnaughton: Could I just offer an angle on the penalty to the local authority? I think linking the performance of the local authority to the use, the application of any surplus, would be very wise. So if it is a poor quality enforcement regime, then certainly the authority could be restricted in the application of any surplus. If it has a high quality enforcement regime backed up by the performance data, then the public should not be concerned about how any surplus is applied. Q45 Graham Stringer: You originally said that local authorities have to use the surplus for public good, what came up in my mind was, what do local authorities do which is not in the public good? Is this a meaningful phrase, "public good"? Mr Macnaughton: I think it is defending the accusation that the whole industry for local authorities is a money-making machine and I think there are very few authorities which make a significant surplus and virtually none which make a surplus which would be meaningful to their budget anyway, I suspect. The point was made that applying the funds more visibly would be a wise thing. So I do not think anyone is questioning that they are not for the public good, but if they are being used to balance a budgetary issue in the wider council then that might be perceived as a problem. Q46 Graham Stringer: Do you have individually difficulties with the issue of clamping? Is it not contradictory to good traffic management when a car is parked in the wrong place to clamp it so that it is there for a good deal longer than it otherwise would have been? Mr Guest: I think perhaps we should remember that the whole process of decriminalised parking enforcement originates in the United States. In the original model in the United States, clamping was used as part of a progressive approach to enforcement where drivers were getting repeat parking fines which they were not paying. Clamping was targeted against the repeat offender, who was then required to clear the backlog of fines in order to have the vehicle released. So it became part of a progressive and logical enforcement process. When the 1991 Road Traffic Act was prepared that provision was not included, so clamping is on the same par as a fine. You can have a fine, be clamped or be towed; the law does not discriminate between the three. Clearly, using clamping against a vehicle which is obstructively parked would be a nonsense and potentially dangerous. If a vehicle is parked on a meter and has overstayed the meter then it is not obstructively parked and if there is a good reason to clamp that vehicle, because you want to talk to the driver, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Mr Banbury: But I think the general view of local councils is that they are moving away from clamping. They are removing the vehicle for the very reason you have mentioned. We do not have a problem as an association with regard to clamping undertaken by local authorities, but we do have a problem with clamping which is undertaken on private land and we have had quite extensive discussions with the security industry authority, who are now due to regulate this, because we do not feel they are going far enough and we have expressed our concerns to the Home Office and to the Home Secretary because we feel there need to be greater controls for the public good, that this is really for the public good. Q47 Graham Stringer: Is meter-feeding a problem and does that need greater national regulation and control? Mr Guest: Meter-feeding is an offence where the order controlling the parking place says it is an offence. I am not aware that any local authority actively enforces against meter-feeding. Mr Macnaughton: Meter-feeding does get enforced in places, but it is a minority activity. Westminster Council recently very publicly announced that they would allow meter-feeding, that it would not be enforced, and I think that was good practice. It just cuts out the low-level comments that regimes are excessive and harsh. Parking policies around stopping people meter-feeding is trying to make sure that spaces are freed up where on-street spaces are in short supply. Let us remember why those policies were there in the first place. On-street spaces are there for short-term, high turnover activities and people blocking up those spaces by absorbing the maximum amount of time they are allowed does cause other problems, so there is a balance to that, but penalising people who put another five minutes on the meter because they are not quite ready would seem extremely excessive. Q48 Chairman: I want to ask you about the definition of loading and unloading, which is a very fraught subject. We have been asked by the freight industry for a clear definition of loading and unloading. Would you expect that to be in your guidance? Mr Banbury: Yes. Ms Witham: There is quite a clear definition which arose from an adjudication decision back in 1995 and a lot of local authorities understand it and use it as guidance. It is not statutory, it is purely guidance, and basically the adjudicator recognised that activities such as delivering and collecting small items as part of a delivery round are loading and unloading, as are delivering and collecting bulky items. Q49 Chairman: Why is it then that particularly these express delivery people seem to be very sensitive about it? I would have thought they would have known that if that was the case. Mr Macnaughton: One of the issues with the express industry is that they have a little knowledge about the rules, but they do not have a lot of knowledge. Q50 Chairman: Surely you are not telling us businessmen only have a little knowledge of the law? Mr Macnaughton: If I can illustrate it. Yes, clearly there is loading and unloading activity going on, but that does not mean that allows them to unload on a double yellow line by a set of traffic lights or on a white zigzag, and if you actually analyse where a lot of those tickets they are disputing are going on, they are actually not in a loading and unloading area, they are actually going on in an area where there is a clear contravention. Q51 Chairman: So what would we do to make sure the business community actually complied with existing laws? Ms Witham: I think it should be in the statutory guidance and I think all local authorities should be aware of it and they should make efforts to make sure that the business community is aware of it. Q52 Chairman: There does not seem to be a lot of consistency across London, for example, does there? Ms Witham: No, there is not, and that is an area which is being addressed. It was part of the GLA review, ensuring consistency across London, but I also think authorities need to understand the needs of businesses to load and unload and to make provision for that as well. Q53 Mr Martlew: Just on the blue badge scheme, not the abuse of the blue badge scheme, which we all seem every day, but the actual design of it, there seems to be confusion. Most of the people who have blue badges are elderly and if they put it in the window the wrong way round they end up with a ticket. Is that your experience, and if it is, could we design it better? Mr Banbury: Could we make the point that I think we need a commonsense approach to that. If it is the wrong way round, then there needs to be local guidance to parking attendants, and one thing we have not spoken about is parking attendants, which I think is a major area in itself. They need to have guidance from the local authority of how they deal with these situations. Q54 Chairman: Can I ask you about this, Mr Banbury, because it is all part of the same question really, is it not? Somewhere like Westminster, where there is an enormous turnover of staff and they are complaining that they cannot keep people, is it a matter of terms and conditions, is it a matter of training? Why is it not possible to keep the staff to do these kinds of jobs? Mr Banbury: From our point of view, I think most of the contracts in the past have been, as I have said earlier, about lowest price. Lowest price means you pay low wages, you get low quality people and it is a cycle. What we are trying to do is raise the whole profile by changing the contract and also we have developed for the first time a national qualification for parking attendants. We are talking to the DfT about this becoming a requirement to practice, so that every parking attendant wherever they are in the country will have gone through the same course so that there is some consistency of approach. They will then deal with issues locally in addition to that, but I think that is important. The BPA is all about raising standards within the industry of performance. Q55 Chairman: You do not disagree with that, Mr Macnaughton? Mr Macnaughton: No, I do not. Q56 Chairman: Do you have anything to add? Mr Macnaughton: I can add to the issues on staff. I think you have to look at the nature of the job. It is a very challenging job, it is a difficult job, and there is the public's attitude to the job. We support all of the initiatives to improve the perception of quality, because why would we not? This makes a better job for our attendants. But we do see a very strong correlation between the very aggressive coverage of activity by the media and assaults on staff. Q57 Chairman: Mr Macnaughton, if you have come here to ask us to deal with the Press, you may have the wrong committee! Mr Banbury, you did very briefly touch on the fact that some local authorities have not kept their traffic regulation orders in proper repair and that signage and other aspects are not clear, so people are not always totally sure where they are allowed to park or not. What do we do about that? Mr Banbury: Well, we have to make them keep them up to date and they have to review them annually and the money should come out of any surplus they are generating. Q58 Chairman: Do you have any figures? How many local authorities are bad boys when it comes to keeping their estates in order? Mr Banbury: I could not have a guess. I do not know. It is probably quite a number, but if as part of statutory guidance they are required to do this annually then at least we can start tackling the problems. Q59 Chairman: Should the 50 per cent discount period for penalty charge notices be extended beyond the issuing of the notice to the owner to give all motorists a fair chance? Mr Banbury: I think the answer, as I have already said, is that some of the local authorities are doing it, and generally yes, providing it is not abused. That is the concern which some of the local authorities have, that this situation can be abused, and to an extent even down to statutory declaration, that they just keep putting it off and putting it off. So there is a balance to be struck, and again statutory guidance needs to deal with that particular issue. Q60 Mr Martlew: Just a point about the blue badge scheme, that there is a lot of problems. Do you actually have to deal with those problems? Mr Banbury: Not us, but our members certainly do. The main problem they have with the blue badge is the abuse of it, which is something we have mentioned, and that is a real problem which I think is not for us to tackle, it is for somebody else to tackle. Q61 Mr Martlew: Who is it who should tackle it? Mr Banbury: Well, government in a sense. The reasons why people receive blue badges needs to be reviewed and discussed so that those who need it get it, because we have had examples of people who are using the blue badges of people who are dead and there has been an exercise in Liverpool which has turned up quite a number of these. This is just unreasonable and unacceptable. Q62 Mr Martlew: What is the penalty for that? Mr Guest: With the situation in Liverpool, where there has been a particular problem with counterfeit badges, the City Council has undertaken an initiative with the Police where the motorists are being prosecuted under the criminal law. They are not being dealt with as people who have committed parking offences, they are being prosecuted under the criminal law. I think that is a work in progress. It is having an effect. It is taking these counterfeit badges off the streets and it is giving criminal records to the people who are using them. I am not aware of the exact purpose of the prosecution. I think it is obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, but I am not quite sure. Q63 Chairman: Just finally, Mr Macnaughton, as the leading supplier of parking attendants do you think it is a good principle to take on a wider street warden role? Mr Macnaughton: I think it can improve the perception of the service, but I think the authorities who are doing this are generally doing this as a parallel service. There are aspects of the parking attendant's job which can be broadened, but if you are talking about moving into some of the sort of street ranger-type activities, dealing with graffiti, litter and other activities then really that effectively needs to be delivered by a parallel agency. These are together, but the parking attendant probably needs to focus on parking enforcement. Chairman: I think if we are going into parallel universes, it is probably a good moment to stop! Lady and gentlemen, thank you very much for your evidence. I am very grateful to you. Memoranda submitted by Association of London Government, Cllr Danny Chalkley, Local Government Association, Mr Andy Vaughan and Winchester City Council
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Nick Lester, Director, Transport, Environment and Planning, Association of London Government, Cllr Danny Chalkley, Cabinet Member for Economic Development & Transport, Westminster Council, Cllr Tony Page, Transport Portfolio Holder, LGA Environment Board, Local Government Association, Mr Andy Vaughan, Head of Street Management and Parking, Manchester City Council, and Cllr Richard Knasel, Portfolio Holder for Economy and Transport, Winchester City Council, gave evidence. Q64 Chairman: Good afternoon to you, gentlemen. Can we ask you to identify yourselves, starting with my left and your right. Cllr Chalkley: Danny Chalkley. I am one of the Councillors on Westminster Council and I am a Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Transport. Mr Lester: I am Nick Lester. I am the Director of Transport, Environment and Planning for the Association of London Government. Cllr Page: Cllr Tony Page from Reading but representing the Local Government Association. Cllr Knasel: Cllr Richard Knasel from Winchester City Council, and I am Economic Development and Transport. Mr Vaughan: Andy Vaughan, Head of Street Management, Manchester City Council. Q65 Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen. Did you either jointly or severally have anything you wanted to say before we start? Cllr Page: No, we will go straight into questions. Q66 Chairman: We have got lots of questions for you all. What action is needed to bring the standard of the worst up to the best in local authority parking enforcement? Who is going to pick up that question? Mr Lester: If I can start off, I think there is a number of things which can be done. The Government statutory guidance will help. In London we produce a Code of Practice, which was originally produced in 1993. It was updated in 1999 and is being updated again. We will add to that. Q67 Chairman: What happens? Do your authorities not take notice of your Code of Practice if there is already a certain amount of divergence across the authority? Mr Lester: It is non-statutory, therefore it is non-binding, but as far as I am aware local authorities take notice of this, but obviously no code, no guidance can cover every individual situation. Local circumstances vary and local circumstances on each individual penalty will vary, and also local policies towards how councils want to respond to representations will vary. Some councils will want to be stricter than others. Q68 Chairman: So you are saying you would really like statutory guidance? Cllr Page: That will help. Also, efforts which can be made to improve and impart best practice. We do quite a lot of it in London, but there is not an equivalent to my organisation outside London which covers the same ground. Q69 Chairman: So what about your Code of Practice? What, therefore, ought to be in it? Cllr Page: It covers the whole range of enforcement activities and gives guidance to authorities about how to interpret different parts of it. It does not cover where to have a yellow or not, that is a different matter; that is regulation and that is entirely down to the individual authorities. Q70 Chairman: But it would be very specific. Do you have a way of effectively looking at the quality of the policy and the enforcement which would be assessed? Cllr Page: The bottom line on enforcement quality is undoubtedly compliance - do motorists comply with the regulations or not? - but that is difficult and expensive to measure accurately. It involves people sitting on the roadside for 16 hours a day. It is very easy to count the number of illegal acts, but what is also important is the duration of illegal acts, otherwise you are saying that one person parked illegally for two hours is less of a problem than two people who park illegally for five minutes each. Q71 Chairman: We will come on to this, and in fact we will ask Manchester a bit about that, on flexibility, but are you saying that statutory performance indicators and a service level agreement would not work? Cllr Page: No, they will help, and I think there needs to be a range of measures to assess performance, but the bottom line for all enforcement must be compliance. That is what it is there for more than anything else. Q72 Clive Efford: Can I ask the local authority representatives, have your parking payment revenue accounts been in surplus in the years during which they have been in operation? Let us start with Mr Vaughan. Mr Vaughan: Yes, is the short answer. Manchester's parking account generates about £1 million surplus per year. That it is really generated from on-street. Q73 Chairman: Is that the new or the old scheme, Mr Vaughan, so we are quite clear? Has it been consistently £1 million per year through the entire scheme? Mr Vaughan: Yes. I think the changes that Manchester has made have actually been around the fringes in reality, but they are the ones which are the most high-profile cases. So it has been consistent throughout. With the parking enforcement service, the cost of the service is broadly met through the issuing of penalty charge notices. That is cost neutral, and that additional income is generated through on-street pay and display charges, people paying to park rather than fine income, if that makes sense. Cllr Knasel: In Winchester overall off-street and on-street is about £300,000 a year. We make a surplus. With on-street parking we only made a surplus of £36,000. Cllr Chalkley: Historically, Westminster has always been in surplus and if you take all of the income we get from all of our on-street services, that is metres, the various levels of enforcement, suspensions and dispensations, etc., that is all of the costs which we incur, for last year 2004/05 it was £38.8 million to the parking places reserve account. Mr Lester: If I can put the figure in context for London as a whole, there are four authorities who make an annual surplus of £10 million and another five authorities whose annual surplus exceeds £5 million. All the rest are less than that, and two authorities make a deficit. Q74 Clive Efford: The next highest is half of that, is it not? Mr Lester: Yes, I think that is right, but certainly the point which Mr Vaughan made, which is that enforcement broadly breaks even and the surpluses are made from legal parking charges meters, pay and display, is the generality across London and the reason why Westminster makes such a high surplus is because it has most of its streets controlled and a large amount of paid for spaces. Q75 Clive Efford: As local authorities, do you set targets for income from parking, and if so does that include income from penalty charge notices? Mr Vaughan: Absolutely not. No, there is not a target for penalty charge notice income. I think that would be contrary to everything Manchester is trying to achieve. There are, of course, four councils. In terms of income we base it on previous years' experience, but absolutely not targets, and I think that is really at the heart of Manchester's philosophy and approach. Cllr Knasel: Absolutely no targets at all. We just have a budgetary forecast based on previous experience. Q76 Clive Efford: Presumably it is the same answer for Westminster? Cllr Chalkley: Absolutely, yes. Q77 Clive Efford: So on the surpluses - and this is really a question for Westminster, because the surpluses in the other two authorities are minimal - what do you use the surpluses that you make on the income from parking charges and penalty charge notices for as a local authority? Cllr Chalkley: Nick is quite right. If you take away the monies we get through meters the surplus just associated with on-street enforcement I think last year was about 6 or £7 million, so that narrows it down from the £38.8 considerably. In terms of what we spend it on, as you know, there are limits on the range of things we are able to spend it on. We spend it on routine maintenance of our highways, servicing, paving, lighting, that sort of thing. We spend it on very human services such as taxi card schemes and concessionary fares for our elderly people, and we also use it to part-fund some very large public infrastructure projects, for example the Golden Jubilee bridges, which I like to think there is nobody in this room who does not think that that is a credit to not just Westminster but to London. Q78 Clive Efford: Your penalty charge notices for this year, are you on target for the figure you have put in your base budget? Cllr Chalkley: No, we are a long way short of our forecast for this year. I can tell you that we are about £30 million in income terms from our budget and that is largely due to the decisions which have been taken over the last year in policy terms. We have scrapped meter-feeding. I think that was covered in the previous session. We have made a whole range of policy changes to make our policies fairer. Q79 Clive Efford: Given that you have whittled the figure down, when you take the whole enforcement process into consideration, does that mean you are now making a net contribution from your general fund into your parking revenue account? Cllr Chalkley: This year it is unlikely that we will make a contribution. Q80 Clive Efford: What I am driving at is that in the past you have made a huge surplus and I think you actually issued something like 10 per cent of the whole parking enforcement notices issued by local authorities nationwide. Does that not suggest that the whole system in Westminster has actually been run as a revenue-raising system rather than one which is there for traffic management and traffic flow? Cllr Chalkley: I do not agree with that. Westminster is the largest parking authority in the UK, and we have been historically, and that results from largely our geographical position within the centre of the centre. We have more cars coming into Westminster than any other local authority. We have a great deal of road space. We have somewhere in the region of 1.1 million people coming into Westminster every single day, many of those by car. Q81 Clive Efford: But those cars also pollute other local authority areas when they drive through them. Is it fair that the income from that only benefits the area where they stop rather than the other areas which they also pollute and drive through? Cllr Chalkley: Because of Westminster's central position and because of the number of bridges we have got, we do get an awful lot of through traffic and people who are doing business daily in the City will tend to stop off in Westminster. They may have two or three stops within London and they will stop off in Westminster en route through. Q82 Clive Efford: Can I ask you one question which every driver in London would want to ask you. At any time do Westminster issue instructions to its enforcement officers to actually increase the number of penalty charge notices issued? Cllr Chalkley: Incentives? I can categorically confirm for every motorist out there, and that includes myself as a motorist, that Westminster do not set any incentives or targets for our enforcement contractor, NCP, who you spoke to earlier, and I can confirm that NCP do not set to their employees any targets or incentives. We are absolutely clear about that. We got ourselves into a great deal of trouble previously, reference the Champions League scheme, which was operated some time ago. In March 2004 we made a very, very public declaration, "We got it wrong," and one of the first steps we took to restore public confidence in what we were doing was to scrap all forms of incentives and target-setting. Q83 Clive Efford: The reduction in income which you are experiencing this financial year is due to the reduction in penalty charges notices which you have issued? Cllr Chalkley: The reduction in income is due to a range of factors. They are external factors, for example congestion charging, which has obviously impacted upon the number of cars coming to the City every day, but also it has resulted from a great deal of policy changes which we have made. Meter-feeding accounted for somewhere in the region of 30,000 penalty charge notices and I am very pleased to say that the first decision I made when I became Cabinet Member back in June was to scrap meter-feeding, and I did so because I thought it was unfair, draconian and largely misunderstood by the public. Q84 Chairman: You do not accept the argument that if somebody is occupying a meter which is really meant to be (particularly somewhere like Westminster) used only for a short time, meter-feeding actually is rather anti-social? Cllr Chalkley: What we have seen, largely because of congestion charging, is fewer cars coming in. Q85 Chairman: But the Congestion Charge has been in place a little longer than a year. Cllr Chalkley: It has, but it is trendal (sic). It has only been effective for two and a years now, but the trend has meant that the occupancy on on-street parking is downwards and therefore we have been reasonable in that we said, "Okay, fine, we've got more space available on-street. We'll allow motorists to use that space." Mr Lester: If I could add one thing, the important issue is where the council sets a maximum stay on parking at any one place, a maximum of two hours and four hours, that is what is important, that it is not exceeded because that is where you are avoiding, for example, shop-owners parking all day outside the shop and therefore taking up all the spaces which would be used for customers. In the past when enforcement was very lax, meter-feeding was the way of trying to address that. Now we are more capable, having more enforcement tools, to address the maximum stay rather than meter-feeding per se. Q86 Clive Efford: Could I ask Mr Page, in the interests of accountability, do you not think there should be more transparency around what local authorities are doing in terms of parking enforcement, the number of penalty charge notices which are issued, what they use the money for is there is any surplus income, so that people understand just exactly what is going on in the area of parking enforcement? Cllr Page: I would dispute that there is any lack of transparency at the current time in terms of the amount which is spent on resourcing decriminalised parking. That is all there on the record. No local authority that I am aware of sets out to make any substantial profits out of the enforcement of on-street parking, but merely a remit usually to cover their costs, and clearly one would not want to see those operations being --- Q87 Chairman: They do not have a benchmark though, do they? For £600 a year they could get a very efficient system of benchmarking which would make it very plain to them what was actually happening within their own area. There are no local authorities who do that, are there? Cllr Page: The benchmarking which takes place at a local level, I can assure you, Chairman, is very visible and accountable. Parking issues are very sensitive in all our areas. Q88 Chairman: Yes, but the local authorities want to persuade the motorists and their constituents in their voting, do they not? There is an independent benchmarking service which is operated by the Transport Research Laboratory. There are not many authorities who for the price of £600 a year are prepared to support it. Why is that? Cllr Page: I am not aware of the details of that, although I would invite the professional officers to comment on that, although I do know that in terms of speaking to each other local authorities exchange a considerable amount of information. Q89 Chairman: Yes, but we are talking about transparency, are we not? It is lovely that you all talk to one another! I am delighted to know that councils are exchanging information, but I was just thinking that we poor excluded may not know entirely what it is you are talking about. Cllr Page: Well, none of this is secret, Chairman. Our deliberations and activities in local government are far more open to scrutiny in public than many government departments, as you will be aware. Q90 Chairman: Now, now, Mr Page do not be cruel! Cllr Page: In terms of when we have been re-letting contracts, we will go to great lengths to take up references and find out experiences from other authorities. My own authority recently spent a lot of time talking to Manchester about their experiences and the LGA and other professional organisations will disseminate information. So there is considerable benchmarking across the piece. The key point I would emphasise on behalf of all local authorities is that the accountability at local level is enormous in terms of representations to elected members, in terms of the processes which we have in place for reviewing parking restrictions, responding to residents and responding to representations, I would defy anyone to find a more transparent and more responsive process. In terms of the accountability, therefore, I think it would be hard to improve on it. The final point I would made in terms of accountability is of course the budget. You are focused on "profits" from decriminalised parking enforcement and warden activity, but of course we as local government get a lot of income from surface and multi-storey car parks and car parking charges in that area, where we will often set targets to make surpluses in order to reinvest, for example, in the funding of concessionary fare schemes, in public transport infrastructure support and it is part of an overall transport package to achieve modal shift. So we would have no problem in defending the use of surpluses from car parking for wider reinvestment, but that is a separate issue. Q91 Chairman: So you would support the involvement of the National Audit Office, for example? Cllr Page: Sorry, to what purpose? Q92 Chairman: Well, looking at the costs, the expenses and the balances? Cllr Page: I do not think a single authority in membership of the LGA would have any problems with that. Q93 Chairman: So they could easily, for example, at council level publish a breakdown of the penalty charges they issue each year with the numbers that are paid and the numbers of complaints which have been made about it? Mr Lester: I think many authorities already do that. Cllr Page: We all do that. Q94 Chairman: But not all of them? When we say "many" what are we talking about? Mr Lester: The level of detail will vary, but each authority is obliged to produce a parking account each year, which includes the totals of income broken down, the expenditure broken down and the use to which any surplus is put. That is a statutory requirement. Q95 Clive Efford: If that is true, why are the British Parking Association calling for more transparency in publishing those figures and also publishing what any surpluses are spent on? Also, they have suggested to us that there is pressure on parking enforcement managers to raise revenue and there is evidence and it has been reported in a report from Richard Charles that he has seen evidence that this takes place. If what you are saying is true, why are there those concerns from other areas within the profession? Mr Lester: Well, I have read Richard Charles's report and he expressly says that he has not seen any evidence to say that councils are into revenue-raising. Q96 Clive Efford: It does indeed. Richard Charles did suggest that while he did not have any evidence to prove that LAs were manipulating DPE, it became clear to him that during his study some LAs were putting their parking managers under significant pressure to meet financial targets rather than improvements to traffic flow and safety. So I think we need to read the whole report, do we not? Mr Lester: You do need to read the whole report, but it is also clear that any council which was using parking enforcement as a way of raising revenue would not just be doing bad practice, it is actually acting unlawfully. I think it is something which needs evidence if there are going to be accusations of unlawful behaviour. Q97 Mrs Ellman: What lessons have you learned that you could pass on to other local authorities about to embark on decriminalised parking? Cllr Knasel: Winchester was the first ten years ago to enter into decriminalised parking outside of London and I think any new authority really ought to have a mentor authority to help them, because there are some lessons you can learn from people who are already experiencing it and I think the biggest lesson is to be fair and open. With our particular penalty charge notices we only had 16 appeals in the whole year, which is 0.1 per cent of all the parking charge notices we have done, because we have been seen, I believe, by the people who park that we are being fair. Where we are fair, I believe, is that with something like 45 per cent of the people who query their charge, we read through it and really find a reason to agree with them. So we are only moving forward to actually insist on charging where people have queried it, where we feel quite clearly they have been abusing things. So if you are quite clearly fair to people, I do not think there is any issue. Cllr Page: The worst thing that happens in my own area is the churning out of a standard letter which clearly does not respond to points people have made and I think in the interests of again transparency, but particularly fairness, if people receive a letter which clearly addresses points they have made they will be far more satisfied than talking to a machine which simply churns something out. As an authority which has been guilty of churning out those letters but has now reformed and improved its practices, I can certainly testify to the significant downturn. Mr Lester: I think it is an important generalised point that when most authorities start off thinking about enforcement they think about issuing notices, whereas the most important part of the exercise, to my mind, is dealing with them after they have been issued. So the important lessons are not to under-resource the back office, to have the back office staff properly trained. Issues at that level are as important, if not more important than the people on the street and it deals with all the challenges raised. I am conscious there is a similarity with a comment which British Airways once made that its most satisfied customers were not those who had a trouble-free flight but those who had a problem but then the airline sorted it out well. I think that is as relevant for enforcement as anything else. Cllr Chalkley: To be firm but fair is our charter statement and I would encourage any local authorities who are going into this process to adopt a charter. We make public our enforcement protocols, which we review very regularly, weekly, daily, as we work around the City, and I think that goes a long way towards ensuring transparency. Specific examples of things we have introduced which have been very successful are the introduction of digital cameras and also the use of cctv, so it is evidence-based enforcement. That obviously gives the Council reassurance that their enforcement contractor is doing a proper job, but also it gives the public some reassurance. That is our charter. Q98 Chairman: I am afraid we cannot recall visual aids. We use old-fashioned things like words in this Committee. Cllr Chalkley: I do apologise. Intelligent deployment also, i.e. putting enforcement where it is actually needed on the street, and I am very pleased to say that increasingly Westminster Council is being seen as an exemplar council along with Kensington and Chelsea. Q99 Clive Efford: Just very briefly, I notice there was an article in the Evening Standard on Westminster Council where a parking enforcement officer issued 700 penalties in central London over 13 months raising £68,000 for Westminster, and there was a case where you upheld the decision of the parking enforcement officer, where on cctv evidence which the person who was issued with the penalty charge notice supplied he proved that the officer was lying. Did you go back and review all 700 penalty charge notices, I just want to know? Cllr Chalkley: That individual left the Council some time ago. Unfortunately, the Evening Standard did not approach us to ask us for a response. We are going back. We are reviewing his cancellation rates to see whether they were higher or lower than the mean. The short answer is, yes. Q100 Mrs Ellman: Should there be time limits and more specific performance requirements on how councils deal with representations? Mr Lester: In practice, there are. The adjudicators have set out time limits and if people appeal a case and time limits are breached, the adjudicators will normally expect an explanation as to why those time limits have been breached. In some cases there are statutory time limits. In private legislation in London, for example, we brought in a time limit for issuing a notice to owner so that if it is more than six months after the event then it is no longer lawful to issue a notice to owner. Q101 Mrs Ellman: Could I ask Cllr Page on behalf of the LGA, in general terms would you agree with that? Cllr Page: I would, certainly. I think there probably is a need for some greater clarity, and this may come through the guidance, as to the issue which was raised earlier from the previous witnesses about whether or not the discount period applied once you had written in. There is some evidence of confusion, not only amongst the public but also amongst some local authority officers about this point. I think clearly if you write in and appeal then you should still be given that same length of discount period once the correspondence has been finalised and clearly that is an issue which I think requires some further guidance. Q102 Mrs Ellman: Should drivers be compensated if they have been incorrectly issued? Mr Lester: I think in many cases the parking attendant will not know about the explanation or the circumstances surrounding the vehicle at the time the ticket is issued. If, for example, you have got a van parked on a yellow line at the foot of a tower block, the attendant will not know if the van has just been left there parked or if the driver is delivering to the top floor or not, and it would be unreasonable to expect the attendant to know. It would also be unreasonable to expect the attendant to wait around for maybe twenty minutes to find out if the driver came back or not. They do have a normal guidance of five minutes for observation in those circumstances. So the ticket in that case may be quite properly issued and subsequently the driver or the owner will write in and say they actually were delivering to the seventeenth floor, it was time-consuming, and the ticket will then quite properly be cancelled. I think in those circumstances the suggestion that there should be any compensation would be wholly unreasonable. Cllr Page: My own authority has a parking appeals panel, which has the authority to recommend compensation. So far a case has not arisen where a recommendation has been made, but theoretically that could be made if a case is made, and I certainly would see no problem with that being more widespread. Certainly the involvement of elected members should not preclude them being able to recommend payment of compensation if circumstances so arose. Q103 Mrs Ellman: So has compensation been paid anywhere in the country? Cllr Page: I do not know. Mr Lester: Yes, there have been cases that I am aware of. They are limited in number and they do occur where the process has wholly failed, has wholly broken down in councils. Similarly, the adjudicators do award costs where councils have acted wholly unreasonably, but it is limited in numbers. Certainly it is interesting to see from the adjudicators' statistics that they award costs less often than they refuse claims for costs because in the majority of cases they do not believe that the council has acted wholly unreasonably. In lots of cases issues come down to one person's word against another, and how do you decide? One person's decision could be different from another person's decision. In cases at appeal, appellants will regularly bring forward more information at appeal than was available to the council at the time they decided on the initial representations. It would be quite unreasonable, I think, to penalise councils for rejecting cases in those instances where the decision to allow an appeal is based wholly on information which has come to light later on. Q104 Mrs Ellman: What about more discretion to parking attendants on issuing and cancelling tickets? Mr Vaughan: Manchester learned from history really in terms of this issue and we have had the approach of having no discretion for parking attendants, of trying to set policy in ivory towers for all circumstances, and we have realised, I think, the error of our ways. I think we need to train staff, to empower staff and to trust staff to take responsible decisions. Q105 Chairman: Did you train them, Mr Vaughan? I am not clear whether you trained them or whether you gave instructions to the contractors. Mr Vaughan: Both. I think it is a key point that again one of the lessons we learned is you cannot outsource the responsibility for this service and it is really crucial. This is a council service and our contractors also share council values and council philosophies, so the training is a joint training with the Council and our contractor delivering it together. But I do recognise that Manchester is a little different from a number of councils in taking this view, but it is our view that we need to have discretion where it is most appropriate and that is throughout the whole process rather than separating it and then only allowing discretion in the back office. I think that happens in reality anyway and this is a matter of Manchester just being open, honest and transparent about its approach. So absolutely, and again it is a cornerstone of Manchester's reasonable and proportionate approach. Q106 Mrs Ellman: Mr Lester, the Association of London Government has a different view on this? Mr Lester: Well, I think there is a range of policy options as to where discretion is applied. It is essential that discretion is applied at all the processing stages, but on the street there is a balance to be struck between the degree of discretion which is allowed to attendants not to issue or to issue tickets and the fact that they are also susceptible to threats, both violence and corruption. Q107 Chairman: Does that happen then, Mr Vaughan? Tell me what you think. Mr Vaughan: No, and I think in reality if you are going to get a thump on the nose, regardless of what someone says in the office you are going to exercise discretion in any event and this is a matter of being transparent in what we have achieved. Q108 Chairman: So more attendants were not attacked, more corruption was not discovered. Was there a series of complaints from the contractors and from the people doing the job about these problems? Mr Vaughan: No, and I think that the feedback I have received will be anecdotal from parking attendants, which is, "Actually this is about valuing our role as a profession, trusting us to make reasonable judgments," and it was one of the criticisms Manchester received from the former Traffic Warden Service before we decriminalised, that a traffic warden would exercise discretion and parking attendants would not. Well, it is our view that parking attendants should, and parking attendants welcome that. Q109 Mr Martlew: We have already mentioned the issue of the 50 per cent discount, but surely there is an unfairness? It often happens that somebody will come along and take the ticket off and by the time they actually get the notice they have no opportunity to pay the discount. Is there a fairness in that? Mr Lester: If that genuinely happens, there is a problem, but I think it must be up to individual cases to be decided if people make that claim. I am certainly aware that about four or five years ago there was a small café in Brixton and there was a little sign on the counter which said, "If you get a parking ticket, claim you never received it and then you'll get off." So you have to judge each claim as it comes through to see if you think it is right or not. Cllr Chalkley: That is really where the benefit of digital cameras comes in, if you can evidence the fact that somebody has been issued with a PCN and that is evidence as being on their vehicle --- Q110 Mr Martlew: Sorry, can I stop you on that? If the chap puts it on the windscreen and somebody comes around ten minutes later and takes it off, there is no evidence from the digital camera, is there - only that he put it on, not that somebody else came along and took it off? Mr Lester: You have to judge on the evidence and if somebody writes in on every single occasion they get the ticket and they have never actually received it, then you might wonder whether they are wholly truthful on every occasion. If it is somebody where it is the first time you have ever had any correspondence from them, or maybe they have paid other tickets in the past without question, then there may be more evidence for believing the case they are making. Q111 Mr Martlew: We have already heard from the earlier witnesses that there is a belief that overstaying by ten minutes is not as serious an offence as parking on a double yellow line. Do you believe there should be variable fines? Mr Lester: We have actually done a technical study into the possibilities of differential penalties. What the study found was that it would be relatively straightforward, although to an element subjective, to have differential penalties for different categories of offence such as a higher penalty for double yellow lines as opposed to overstaying on a meter. It is much harder to deal with short and long overstays because the issue is when were they actually discovered. You do not know how long they stayed there, all you know is when the attendant came round. It is not an instant calculation, so it is a bit harder to do that fairly. Q112 Mr Martlew: The issue which often comes to light is when an authority goes through the system you are talking about, the traffic orders and the signage are not correct. Do you actually believe that before you decriminalise you should actually do an audit? Are you sure that that happens with the local authorities? Cllr Page: Yes. Mr Lester: It is very clear it should happen, but the problems are often about what happens subsequently. Yellow lines get worn away. They start off pristine and complete and at some point you have to take the decision that it is no longer good enough. What is very clear is that where the signs and the lines are inadequate then the adjudicators will throw out any tickets issued. The signs, of course, are those prescribed by the Government, we do not have any choice in the signs which can be used, but if they are not there, if they have been knocked out by a lorry or something like that then the regulation becomes unenforceable. Q113 Mr Martlew: So you would support regular auditing of these then? Mr Lester: I think it is essential that it be regular. Whether it should be every year, as was suggested in the earlier session, I think that is quite an effort, but there is clearly support for regular auditing. Q114 Mr Martlew: So if that was to be laid down by Government you would support it? Cllr Page: I would certainly support the Government also looking at the whole issue of clarity of signage because there is a problem at local level. In the area I represent in Reading we have had a series of adjudications from the NPAS in the last few months, three adjudications in the same area saying that the signs are legal and three adjudications saying the signs are illegal. This has caused us to say to the Department for Transport, "We think there is a problem somewhere else and you need to sort this out," and I think from talking to colleagues there is a problem elsewhere which has arisen. Q115 Chairman: Are we talking about the roads controlled by the council or roads controlled by the Government? Cllr Page: We are talking about the public highway but the signage of parking restrictions is laid down in great detail by the Department for Transport and Mr Lester can comment in much more detail about the travails of dealing with that. Q116 Mr Martlew: Perhaps the representative from Westminster will have some sympathy with the situation where you have an area, a beautiful street, and unfortunately the signage is ugly. Is there any discretion on areas which are listed? Mr Lester: No, none at all. Cllr Page: No. Q117 Mr Martlew: Should there be? Mr Lester: I think it is a tricky balance to strike because on the one hand we are under a lot of pressure from people like English Heritage and the urban conservation movements to reduce the number of signs; on the other hand the motorists are saying there should be more signs and clearer. So there is a balance to be struck there. I think it would be very difficult to have differential signing in different areas because motorists would not know what to look for. Cllr Chalkley: 76 percent of Westminster is covered by a conservation area and there are clearly competing demands there. Nick has just covered it. Motorists want clear signage and Westminster wants less street clutter. Q118 Chairman: It does actually bring us to the whole question of the high proportion of appeals which the councils do not actually contest, because particularly on the business of signing I rather understood that one of the ways in which local councils could use the surplus money they raised was in doing things like maintaining their general street furniture in the sense that this would clarify the situation. Is that not so? Mr Lester: It is only with the Traffic Management Act that councils have been able to use parking surpluses for highway maintenance, so that is in the last year. Before that, maintenance was not an allowable expenditure. Q119 Chairman: Tell me about appeals. Why do so many councils not contest appeals? Mr Lester: I think there is a number of reasons why councils will not contest appeals. In some cases the appellant will produce more evidence at the appeal stage and the council will say to itself, "Well, if only they'd told us this in the first place we would have allowed the representation." Q120 Chairman: Apparently one council did not contest the first 80 appeals which were lodged. That will create in the minds of the public the conviction that the application of the charge was simply because the council was seeking to renew its coffers, will it not? Mr Lester: I think there are other reasons why councils do not contest, one of which is that when an appeal comes through it will be reviewed by a more senior officer, who might say, "Why on earth are we following this through?" In some cases we are aware that councils have had backlogs and have decided not to contest appeals just in order to get over backlogs. I think that is an unfortunate occurrence when that occurs, although it is better to do it that way round than the other way round. Q121 Chairman: Yes, but it does not actually say a great deal to the public about either the efficiency or the clarity of view of the council concerned, does it? Winchester, I am sure you never do these terrible things? Cllr Knasel: In reality actually last year we contested every single appeal and across the non-London areas I believe it is 35 per cent which are not contested, but when you look behind that figure the bulk of those are new councils in their first year not contesting the first number of appeals that come in, taking the view that either the council officers are not yet geared up well enough to give evidence for appeals to be won, or actually that there is a bedding-in time for residents to actually get used to the new system. Q122 Chairman: I think the difficulty is that if you are told that the worst London borough failed to defend its initial decision in 74 per cent of the cases, whereas the best one only did so in six per cent, you do worry a bit about the inconsistency of application, do you not? Mr Vaughan, did you want to comment? Mr Vaughan: Yes, I just wanted to make a comment about not contesting and a comment on Manchester's approach really. You have had two opportunities to take the right decision ordinarily before you get to the adjudication service, so councils (certainly Manchester) will not be taking a decision without new evidence, and much of that new evidence is when it is submitted verbally and it is a personal hearing rather than necessarily what is able to be often read into a letter and formal correspondence. One of the things which Manchester is piloting with the adjudication service is telephone appeals at earlier stages of the process, to have a conversation with someone, which hopefully will allow the Council to have a greater understanding in person as opposed to what can be written down and therefore get the decision right first time. Q123 Chairman: That is a fairly recent development, though, is it? Mr Vaughan: Yes, it is. Q124 Chairman: So you would not be able to say how effective it is proving? Mr Vaughan: No. it is being piloted at the moment, so I have got no statistics, I am afraid. Q125 Chairman: Are some of the changes such as compensating drivers where there is a real case of difficulty acceptable to local authorities? Cllr Page: I think we have already covered that, with respect, Chairman. The answer is in principle yes, but I think it is for each local authority to have its own internal procedures for arriving at that decision and for clarity, again, to be the essence of the day. In my own authority it is dealt with by a panel of three elected members. In other authorities it may be delegated to a chief officer, but at the end of the day I am not aware that any local authority has said, "No, we will not consider a claim for compensation." Mr Lester: If I could add one thing, I think it must be clear that just because a ticket has been cancelled it does not mean to say that the authority has acted badly. Cllr Page: No. Absolutely. Q126 Chairman: No, I do not think we were suggesting that, but I think the problem you have all highlighted is that the general public has to be convinced that the schemes which you are operating are fair and above board and can be defended in terms of what you are trying to do locally. Therefore, the attitude of a council which appears not to contest any appeals does give the impression that there was no reason for the original penalty. Now, that is obviously not so. I think what we are saying to you is that this must throw up in people's minds a doubt about the scheme. Do you accept that central London needs more kerbside parking spaces and loading bays because of the business demands? Mr Lester: I do not think there is the space to put them and that is the problem with a number of the business concerns, that every city has limited kerb space and it is (particularly in London) not possible to meet all the competing demands for kerb space which are there. Q127 Chairman: So how do you encourage business to comply with your regulation? Mr Lester: I think each council has to look at each location quite carefully, and many find it very difficult because on the one hand you will have businesses saying, "We want parking spaces for loading," and on the other hand you might have residents saying, "We need a residents' parking space there as well." It is very, very difficult to get the balance exactly right. Q128 Chairman: Do you think that in certain cases, for example where people are moving house, there could be a consistency of direction in the code of conduct? Mr Lester: There is a general exemption for house moving. Q129 Chairman: Well, yes, but we were also given evidence that these are not respected. We were told, "It is a complete waste of time appealing against the tickets issued. The cost immediately doubles. The local authorities do not accept dispensations allow us to go about our lawful business." It also says, "One of the worst areas for this practice is Westminster." Do you want to comment on that, Mr Chalkley? Cllr Chalkley: Yes, I think I have to comment. I do not agree with that. Q130 Chairman: Well, I did not exactly expect you to agree with that! I just thought you might like to comment. Cllr Chalkley: Anybody who is undertaking a removal or is undertaking any kerbside activity is able to apply for a suspension in advance and providing their use is legitimate we will grant them a suspension for doing so. Q131 Chairman: I think we might actually ask for a little bit more evidence from the persons concerned and perhaps then ask you to look at that. I do think it would be interesting to know what proportion of local authorities actually take a strategic look at parking enforcement schemes. Do you have any evidence for that, Mr Page? Cllr Page: The local authorities take a strategic look at parking as part of their overall transport responsibilities and the compilation and preparation of local transport plans will require us to look at parking as part of our overall responsibilities. Clearly, in a two tier structure it will vary, but for the unitary authorities we take this very seriously, as I said earlier. Q132 Chairman: The local authorities are very diligent, are they, in asking all the local people what they think? Cllr Page: In terms of consulting on local transport plans, I think most local authorities are very positive and very proactive about this because we recognise the enormous sensitivities around issues of traffic restraint, parking policy and the overall environmental objectives. As I said earlier, achieving modal shift has to be done as part of a package of measures, of which parking is but one measure. Q133 Chairman: So you are reasonably satisfied that the local transport plan will be at least including those bones of a parking policy which would be adequate for the needs of the area? Cllr Page: It is more than bones. Mr Lester: In London the local implementation plans are obliged to expressly include parking plans and the Mayor has to sign these off as having complied with the Mayor's transport strategy. So it is absolutely expressly there. Q134 Mr Martlew: On that very point, obviously outside London we have got the Government who are giving grants. Do they indicate to you that if you do not get your parking charges right or your parking policy right then it could affect the amount of money which comes to you? They do not put any pressure on you in that way? Cllr Page: I am not aware that parking features in any specific aspect. By way of sanction, no, there is not, but clearly the performance of the local authority in achieving its own targets (which it will have agreed with the Government office and these may be PSA targets as well as its own specific targets) may well affect subsequent Government grants, but that would be as a package of measures and not simply taken in isolation. Q135 Clive Efford: Just one other anecdotal thing which has come to my attention. The proliferation of cctv cameras, some of which (I am thinking of the City of London now) have been installed for security reasons are now being used for parking enforcement. This is a particular problem for professional drivers, lorry drivers, taxi drivers and others, who have to stop on red routes and in some restricted areas but they are being caught by cctv and receiving fines, having not been approached by any enforcement officer. Mr Lester: Cctv is used for parking enforcement, but it can only be used effectively where no stopping is the rule, so that those people who are stopping where it is not allowed will get penalised. This is typically around major junctions and you will get different areas. In Victorian and Edwardian London and big cities you get banks on the corners of junctions because they were built then because they were prestigious sites. They have now got cashpoint machines. People will stop there to use the cashpoint machines. They will say, "I'm only there for two minutes," and in those two minutes they have blocked the junction behind them. That is where you have no stopping rules. You cannot really use cctv where people are allowed to stop because it is very difficult to work out by camera the exemptions. It is difficult to spot a valid blue badge, for example. It is impossible to spot a pay and display ticket and whether it is valid or not. So they are used where no stopping is the rule. Q136 Clive Efford: With my former professional hat on, I can see an immediate problem with that. A London taxi driver needs to stop in a wide range of locations where there are parking restrictions and laws in the past have acknowledged that and therefore they have not been subject to parking enforcement. Mr Lester: If they are allowed to stop to set down, that will be observed by the camera operator. Cctv is not automatic, it is operator controlled. So the operator had to view what is going on through the camera and then decide if an offence is taking place or not. So if it is allowed for drivers to stop and for taxi drivers to stop to set down or pick up fares, that will be spotted. But there are places where even taxi drivers are not allowed to stop to set down or pick up fares and in those cases penalties will be issued. Q137 Chairman: How can we get the public to support a sensible parking policy and enforcement? Do councils do enough to either inform or persuade their electorate of the need for proper traffic management, for example? Mr Lester: I suspect there is always more that can be done. We in the ALG do a period survey of London boroughs' websites with regard to parking and they have improved immensely over the last two years. They now give reliable, accurate and full information, whereas about two or three years ago it was partial and in some cases non-existent. Q138 Chairman: Yes. It is unfashionable to say this, Mr Lester, but there are some people who do not have access to websites. Mr Lester: Indeed, and there are other ways in which councils can provide better information. In the ALG we provide about a quarter of a million leaflets explaining how the parking enforcement regime works every year and when people write in saying, "What do I do now?" we sent them a copy of the leaflet in addition to responding --- Q139 Chairman: But it is one of the things you say to your councils, "What are you doing to improve public understanding?" Mr Lester: Indeed, we regularly say to councils that they need to explain themselves more, and I think most councils have taken that very seriously. Q140 Chairman: Some of them have been very slow to implement parking policies which manage road traffic demand, have they not? Mr Lester: It is difficult to know exactly what you do in those cases. In some cases it is easy. For example, the growth in the number of controlled zones around rail heads. There have been about a hundred new and extended controlled parking zones in London in the last eight years since parking enforcement was decriminalised and it became possible to do that, and typically they are around rail heads to give priorities to residents over commuters and that will in its own right have an effect on reducing demand. Chairman: Gentlemen, you have been most interesting. Thank you very much for coming. We are very grateful to you. Memoranda submitted by Institution of Highways and Transportation, Technical Advisers Group and Living Streets Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Mike Link, Assistant Head of Highways and Transport, West Sussex County Council, Institution of Highways and Transportation, Mr John Elliott, Secretary to TAG Transportation Committee, Mr Seamus Adams, Assistant Director of Transportation, London Borough of Hackney, Technical Advisers Group, and Mr Tom Franklin, Chief Executive, Living Streets, gave evidence. Q141 Chairman: Good afternoon, gentlemen. The last should be first and the first last, so can I say I am delighted to see you here. Could I ask you to identify yourselves. Mr Link: I am Mike Link representing the Institution of Highways and Transportation. Mr Elliott: I am John Elliott representing the Technical Advisors Group of local government. Mr Adams: Seamus Adams, Assistant Director of Transportation for the London Borough of Hackney. Mr Franklin: I am the Chief Executive of the national charity Living Streets. Q142 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. I am able to go straight to questions, am I, or did anyone want to say anything? No? Fine. Can I ask you all, are the links being made between parking policy, traffic management and street management? Mr Link: Not strongly enough would be the Institution's opinion. I think the recognition that parking is one of the building blocks is in fact insufficiently recognised. There was reference earlier to the fact that it is enshrined in local transport plans, the requirement for it. That is actually weakened in the second round of local transport plans, which is regrettable. Q143 Chairman: Weakened? Mr Link: Yes. Q144 Chairman: Have you got clear evidence of that? Mr Link: My understanding is that it is no longer a requirement of the second round of local transport plans. Q145 Chairman: Well, now we do have an immediate difference of view. Mr Link: In any event, there is very little emphasis placed upon it by Government through the Department for Transport. Their eyes now seem to be focused on Transport Innovation Funds and road charging, and the like, and yet for the vast majority of local authorities for many years to come parking management will represent a very valuable tool in managing traffic and making transport more sustainable and there is a danger that it will be overlooked. So the Institution would not agree with earlier comments that there is sufficient integration of parking strategies into transport policy at a local level. Q146 Chairman: That is interesting. Can I ask you, Mr Elliott, you have suggested there should be leadership on explaining the reasons for parking control, but who should that come from? Mr Elliott: I think it needs to come from central government first. To reiterate some of the things, there is not enough emphasis on parking control. For 95 per cent of the time a vehicle is stationary. Far more attention is given to the time it is moving than the time it is stationary in Government policy and at all levels. Q147 Chairman: So you do not really think that either the Government or local authorities give sufficient attention to the consultation with the residents and the businesses? Mr Link: I would not like to suggest on behalf of the Institution that local authorities do not give attention to those things when they are introducing schemes. Q148 Chairman: No, but I was just wondering if you thought there was sufficient requirement on councils to take note of the demands of their local residents? Mr Link: I believe there is. Without wishing to advertise, the Institution produced this document earlier in the year. I was on the working group. Q149 Chairman: It is a very good document. I spent my August reading it. I just did decide halfway through August I was a sad person! Mr Link: Well, that makes two of us! To a large extent, we felt we were making the best of a bad job. It is so difficult to do what you are suggesting in the current circumstances. The policy lead from DfT is insufficient. The signing, as we heard earlier, is a disaster area. Police enforcement in most of the country has been non-existent for years, leading to parking regulations being ignored. Local authorities are coming in and in many cases re-establishing controls. Quite often the motives for doing that become confused. You have quite rightly identified that whilst some authorities might not set a target for income, once a budget forecast is made it is as good as a target and the original objectives for introducing schemes, which are about traffic management, free-flow and turnover, are often lost. If I may say so, the preponderance of thought given to enforcement and making that effective and fair ignores the reasons why the schemes were introduced. I think somebody said earlier the key thing is compliance and yet nowhere do we see performance being measured in terms of the compliance which is being achieved, the original objective for the scheme. I think to a certain extent the emphasis given to statistics between whether different authorities are successful in appeals or not, as we have heard, can represent all sorts of other things and are a very poor indicator of whether or not a scheme is performing well against its transport objectives. Mr Franklin: We think that there have been some improvements. We think that decriminalised parking enforcement has led to an improvement in many places in the country and in fact it has been a victim of its own success. It is not surprising that criticism has increased because actually there are more notices being issued and parking enforcement has got tougher. But we are concerned that there are two-thirds of the local authorities in this country where they do not have control over parking enforcement and we think that should be standardised across the country. We would also say actually that pavement parking in London is now far better than it has been in the past and that is because in London pavement parking is not allowed except in designated areas. But we think that should be extended across the country as a whole because parking on pavements is a massive issue for pedestrians, particularly for pedestrians with disabilities. Chairman: I think we want to explore both of those. Q150 Mr Martlew: You mentioned that decriminalisation has made it better and I look at your example of the City. Surely you can get better parking, but have you noticed that the traffic flow is any different? Is this not a failure of the systems? Mr Elliott: I think London traffic flow has improved throughout considering ever-increasing demands on it. Without parking control, which we have had since 1994 in London, I think the situation would be very much worse than it is now. Parking is the only measure of controlling traffic in outer London. In central London we have got an excellent public transport system and congestion charging, but in outer London it is working. In other cities, Oxford is a city where they have actually improved traffic flow quite dramatically over the years, despite --- Q151 Mr Martlew: But this is the way they implement the scheme other than just fining people? Mr Elliott: Unless you have a mechanism there to say, "You park there and not there," and follow that up, your policies will never work. That was the trouble before decriminalised parking. We had a third of a million people parking illegally in central London every day and those were a third of a million trips in of extra traffic that we have got rid of, or we have got rid of a significant number of them because of decriminalised parking. Mr Adams: I think the other added benefits in terms of managing the roadside space, in terms of road safety, keeping junctions clear and pedestrian accessibility are paramount and that is themed through with the introduction of CPZs. It is the enforcement around those junctions. It is clear where there are no CPZs in built-up areas those junctions are parked up --- Q152 Chairman: We try to avoid initials, Mr Adams. CPZs may be very close to you, but not to us. Mr Adams: I do apologise, controlled parking zones. Q153 Mr Martlew: If we can go on from that, the situation is that people get very annoyed if they are charged for overstaying, yet people do not appear to be implementing it outside schools with the zigzags? Is that a correct assumption? Mr Adams: I would say not, and certainly in the borough I represent --- Q154 Mr Martlew: I am a bit worried that a lot of it is London-orientated. It is much better than the rest of the country, I will give you that, but it is not the norm. Mr Adams: I think road safety is paramount. Certainly for schools, zigzags, it is paramount that it is enforced rigorously and certainly in the authority I represent we rigorously enforce that and it is paramount in terms of road safety. Q155 Chairman: Does Mr Franklin want to make a comment on this? Mr Franklin: We would say that there are different levels of offences and that there should be greater enforcement around things, not just schools but also hospitals and places where there are likely to be more vulnerable pedestrians. We would actually favour differential rates in terms of fines, and so on, so that those infringements which really affect pedestrians, for instance parking on pavements, should be treated more seriously. We would like to see that measured through the performance indicator regime as well. So it is not just a blanket figure for the number of notices issued, it is looking at the type of the enforcement action which his being taken. Mr Link: If I may comment and draw the last two points together? There is far more chance of the sort of effective enforcement which is being talked about here where there is decriminalisation than where there is not. Therefore, I think a very clear view from the Institution would be that decriminalisation should be completed across the country as soon as possible. Q156 Chairman: Do you accept this argument that it works very efficiently if you have got a certain size of authority? Nobody is suggesting coterminosity, but the suggestion is you need a certain population size. Mr Link: It can work anywhere. There are examples where it is working in all sorts of different authorities and it provides the opportunity for local control and local discretion and local resources to target enforcement in areas where there is not decriminalisation and where the police are simply not resourced or prepared to do it. Q157 Mr Martlew: I have not been on the Committee very long, but obviously I am very jealous of the way in which London manages its traffic. It has already been mentioned that it is against the rules to park on a pavement in London. Do you believe that should be spread out throughout the country? Mr Elliott: Yes. Q158 Chairman: You are really pleading for consistency, are you not? If we had a code of conduct with an acceptable series of these very basic points, you are really pleading for consistency across all authorities, are you not? Mr Franklin: We are saying that what works should be adopted across the country. Q159 Chairman: How do we define what works? If you have got that formula in your pocket, you will be a very rich man because you will be a consultant to every government department I have every known. Mr Franklin: We do try, but to give you an example, we undertake community street audits with communities where we go out and we are looking at the streets and looking at what is good and what is bad about them, and we see a very big difference between what happens in London and the rest of the country. In the rest of the country communities are telling us, and we see it with our own eyes, that pavements are blocked. We have got the Disability Discrimination Act in this country, which means that public transport is becoming more accessible, which means that buildings are becoming more accessible, but it is no good if the pavements themselves in between those two are not accessible and what we are finding is that it is not just people in wheelchairs, it is parents with buggies and people with shopping having to go into the road to get past parked cars and there is absolutely no reason for it. Q160 Mr Martlew: To come back again to where London seems to do it very well is with the bus lanes and the parking in bus lanes. Are you of the opinion that London is the only centre which actually controls it properly and the rest of the country is lagging behind? Is that the view? Mr Elliott: No. I think London has an advantage because it has had decriminalisation since 1994, so it has had a longer time to get its act together. It has also been in the traffic limitation business since 1958 or thereabouts when the first meter appeared. Lots of historic cities like York, I mentioned Oxford before, and Cambridge are very good examples where there is a traffic imperative to get this right. Without then the follow up with enforcement it all falls apart. Q161 Mr Martlew: The good practice is not spread throughout the country, is that what you are saying? Mr Elliott: I think it is a case of what is the priority in an area. Lots of areas do not have the sorts of traffic pressures which the big cities, the historic cities or the city centres of major conurbations have, so it does not case the same sorts of problems when people do break the laws of traffic flow and the general management of transport. So it is not just London. London has had longer at it, but it is a lot of other places where they have a real issue, where it becomes less of an issue. It is more difficult for you folks as representatives of people to push things like this at a local level. Q162 Chairman: That is far off the point though, Mr Elliott, is it not, because you have just assured me that decriminalisation should exist all the way across the United Kingdom. How are they going to pay for it, because smaller councils in smaller towns are going to find it rather difficult, are they not, to actually pay for recruiting, for maintaining a team of attendants and to maintain all the back-office staff with all the equipment which is going to be necessary? Mr Elliott: It is much harder in smaller authorities and I think small authorities have got to get together in some way, either under a country banner or get joint working arrangements. Chairman: We await with great interest the effect of that! Q163 Clive Efford: Could I ask Mr Link, is the planning policy guidance on parking provision appropriate and would you like to see it changed in any way? Mr Link: You are referring here to PPG13. Undoubtedly the implementation of PPG13 is putting more pressure on on-street parking, if that is behind your question, but then if the policy was going to be effective that was an inevitable consequence, that behaviour would have to change and that that would be uncomfortable. So I am not sure if you are suggesting that it can be implemented without those problems. Q164 Clive Efford: I am asking you whether there is any way it could be improved? Mr Link: Without picking the policy, then I do not think it can be. If the policy is going to work and if the policy is correct in terms of changing behaviour and travel demands and people's propensity to own cars, or use them, then it was bound to have an impact upon on-street parking in certain areas. Mr Franklin: I think there are probably other things which can be done in addition. It is not just about the number of parking spaces, it is also thinking about the design of neighbourhoods, are they walkable, are local facilities within walking distance? All of these things make a very big difference on the demand for car use. With new developments, are there facilities there for cycling? So many new homes are designed in such a way that actually it is very difficult to own and to use a bike on a regular basis. Car clubs are another very effective way in new developments of reducing the level of demand for cars. I think all of these measures together with parking can make a difference in terms of car use locally. Mr Elliott: Can I add on that, obviously the PPG and management parking enforcement are to some extent the stick. The carrots, as Mr Franklin has explained, need to be there as well - the improved public transport and all the other bits. But PPG13 is possibly long-overdue. I quoted what Buchanan was saying about traffic in towns in 1962. It was not until 1969 the standard changed in London, having had very clear advice seven years earlier, and it is not until basically 2000 that it changed in the rest of the country. Q165 Chairman: If we had followed some of his recommendations about ringroads and various other rather basic bits of planning we would have been in a much better situation many years ago. Mr Elliott: They were not actually recommendations, they were examples of how you could, if you wanted to, reconstruct towns, but fortunately, I think, we have not reconstructed towns. Chairman: They should have been recommendations. Q166 Clive Efford: In relation to PPG3, which sets a maximum for on-street parking spaces according to the availability of local public transport means, is that sensible? Most people have a car for domestic or pleasure use anywhere regardless of whether they travel to work by public transport. Is PPG3 a sensible way to try to reduce car use by saying less parking spaces will result in less parkings? Mr Link: I think given the caveats earlier about also providing the alternatives in well-planned developments, then yes, it is effective and there is evidence that across the country local authorities can live, if you like, within those new maximums. Q167 Clive Efford: Are you aware of any councils which have got any innovative schemes such as giving priority to car-share schemes in their parking policy? Mr Franklin: There is a whole series of housing associations in West London, for instance, who are working on car-free development schemes where there are car club schemes as part of those, and certainly within some local authorities it becomes a planning condition that the developer actually supports the setting up of a car club. So these things can work. They are difficult and I think each new development needs to be taken on its merits because they are not all the same and it does depend on all of those other factors too. Car-free developments without those other things will not work, but I think with them car-free developments and reduced parking are part of that mix. Q168 Clive Efford: Do you think that local authorities do enough to encourage park and ride schemes, either parking at rail heads or at other transport termini in their planning strategies? Do you think they do enough of that? Mr Elliott: Park and ride is an interesting phenomenon. There are certain sorts of condition for it to work well, historic towns with highly-controlled central areas, ringroads, limited numbers of access roads. You have got to be very careful also that you do not take people off the ordinary bus services or anything else, that they drive all the way into the park and ride and then take the park and ride. There is also a bit of a financial distortion in the way park and ride is treated. Local authorities can effectively subsidise park and ride whereas it is much, much harder since the 1985 Bus Act to do the same for ordinary buses. So I think there is a distortion. One has to be very careful of park and ride. It has its places. They are incredibly successful places, park and ride, Oxford being an example. London exists on a tremendous amount of park and ride, but you have to be careful; it does not apply everywhere. Q169 Clive Efford: I am interested that you say that about London. At the risk of upsetting Mr Martlew further, in and around London, do you think there is enough strategic thinking around providing parking spaces which could help reduce car use and the number of journeys undertaken into London? Mr Elliott: Unfortunately, there has been a gap, obviously, between the GLC being abolished and TfL picking up the reins when those sorts of strategic issues could not be looked at properly. For my sins, I worked for Barking and Dagenham at one stage, ideal park and ride sites for central London, but Barking and Dagenham would have no benefit from it, it would be Westminster which would benefit, unless Westminster gave some money to Barking and Dagenham. Q170 Chairman: That does happen though, does it not? The City of London has arrangements with local authorities around them to provide certain services for which they make a monetary contribution. So it is not entirely beyond the wit of councils to get together and plan that sort of application, is it? Mr Elliott: No, but it is harder because the City of London would be buying its services on specific items. It would be Westminster, Camden, the City of London, Southwark and Lambeth who would all have a benefit from Barking and Dagenham providing a park and ride service. TfL can now handle that. Q171 Mrs Ellman: Would you say that local authorities have used parking policy for traffic management measures? Mr Elliott: I would say not enough, no, obviously as a professional transport planner and having worked in this field for a long time. There are a lot of things working against it, from Government funding to public reaction, comments about Buchanan. Do people know about it? Do they know about those sorts of issues of planning transport? I do not think any of us have told the public enough about the why of transport; it has always been, "What is the latest point I could score?" Mr Link: I would agree with the point in your question. I think I said earlier that it is an underrated part of the toolkit, as it were, of traffic management techniques and in danger of becoming more sidelined in terms of the emphasis given to it by Government, which is looking elsewhere. I think there is a feeling that Government has said, "There's decriminalisation parking. Get on with it," and the main focus from the Department for Transport now is the Transport Innovation Fund and congestion charging and the like where, as I have said, the vast majority of local authorities for many years to come, this will be one of their main techniques for managing demand. Mr Franklin: It is not just transport, it is also streetscape issues as well. I do not think there is enough of a link between parking and the wider streetscape issues. All of the surveys show that the public see a very clear link between the quality of their life locally and all of those sorts of issues to do with traffic management and general streetscape and I think there is a lot more which could be done with using parking in terms of improving the general quality of the local environment. Q172 Mrs Ellman: What do you think could be done to make people more aware of the impact of parking on streetscape issues? What can change it? Mr Franklin: Firstly, Lewisham Council held a citizen's jury about a year ago when it took a representative sample of people and sat them down and over several days they went into a lot of detail about car use, and so on. They measured people's views at the beginning of that process and at the end and what they found was a significant shift of about 20 per cent in the hardening of people's attitudes towards greater control of the use of the car because as people became more aware of those issues and were sometimes for the very first time made aware of some of the negatives of unimpeded car use people's attitudes started to change. I think that shows that by that greater debate it is possible for people to see both the positives and the negatives of car use and become much more rational about it. Q173 Mrs Ellman: Should parking policies be included in the Transport Innovation Fund? Mr Link: The guidance on the bids for Transport Innovation Funds put what we are talking about, ordinary parking controls and management, right at the bottom of the pile in terms of the Government's view on what was necessary for a successful bid. Any bids which relied upon traditional traffic management parking techniques got nowhere near acceptance. Q174 Mrs Ellman: So do you think that should be changed? Mr Link: I am not suggesting that there is not a role for the Transport Innovation Fund and the things it is promoting. I think my point was that we are in danger of losing focus on what will be for the majority of local authorities the technique they could use, and they are not getting sufficient help at the moment in using it. We have mentioned signing several times. Making parking more acceptable to the public. One of the top three, if not the top reason for people appealing is that they do not understand the signs. Two years ago TRL produced a report from DfT on how to improve signing and two years later we are waiting to see whether it gets turned into new signing guidance. It is well overdue. Most professionals cannot understand what the signs mean! Q175 Mrs Ellman: How widespread is this problem about signage? Should it be looked at nationally? Mr Adams: I think it is very confusing for somebody who does not know what particular signs mean. As Mr Link said, even for some professionals it is difficult. There is so much variance and different types of signs. I think we need to streamline it and make it far easier for the public to understand in terms of where they go, from one local authority to the next. A uniform approach is certainly needed and needed quickly. Mr Franklin: I think they could also help with the appearance of streets, too, because I think this is a case where less is more. Less signage and less rules, but actually a greater effort to make sure that everybody understands what those rules are. So by having fewer signs our streets could look better and we could make sure people understood those fewer rules better than the plethora out there at the moment. Q176 Mrs Ellman: Should pavement parking be an offence across the UK? Mr Adams: I think it is difficult to have a general rule about pavement parking because you have some streets which are old, Victorian streets where there is virtually no parking if you do not park on the pavement. I do agree we should minimise it where we possibly can. Mr Franklin: The problem with that is we cannot just look at the needs of the parked cars, we also have to look at the needs of pedestrians too. In some cases it may be that it is okay to park on the pavement because there is enough room for pedestrians, but if it is a choice between parking on the pavements because there is no room for parking and blocking the pavements completely for pedestrians then I think in terms of the transport hierarchy every time the pedestrians' needs need to come first. Q177 Mrs Ellman: How should that be addressed? Mr Franklin: I think it should be almost like an opt-in situation rather than an opt-out situation. So instead of in the rest of the country it is the case that there can be zones where it is not allowed to park on the pavement but they have to be very specifically identified, there should be zones where it is specifically identified that you can park on the pavement. But as a general rule, everybody should know that you do not park on the pavement unless it is specifically allowed. Q178 Mrs Ellman: Should there be more parking capacity at rail stations? Mr Link: If only, I think would be the answer across the majority of the country. In most cases, it is not physically possible or affordable and many rail station car parks are full from early in the morning and are preventing more rail use off-peak, the fact that they are full. Mr Elliott: But you also need to back it up because lots of stations could be reached by bicycle, on foot or by local bus services. Those should be preferable to parking at the station. So you have got to actually provide those sorts of sticks and carrots along the way so people choose the best first and work down the hierarchy. Mr Adams: I agree with what John said in terms of the fact that you have to look at the interchanges between the different modes of transport and I think probably improve the interchange in terms of bus to train, etc. It is not about one approach fits all, I think you have to look at where the train stations are located, what usage there is in terms of can they get there by bike and other forms of interchange so that we can promote that instead of using the car just to get to the station. Q179 Clive Efford: But there is an issue about the home to mode of transport journey, is there not, particularly for women and people perhaps with mobility problems? We need to accommodate with rail head parking and those sorts of issues. Is that not an issue which we ought to be considering more? Mr Franklin: For I think probably much smaller sums of money improving key walking routes would do more in terms of increasing the accessibility of things like railway stations than any amount of additional parking at railway stations. The fact is that so many of those routes are poor in terms of lighting, in terms of the short-cuts which could be made in terms of making it easier for a much larger group of people to access railway stations on foot. Q180 Clive Efford: Is that the reality though? I can think of stations in my constituency with the trains late at night, the last few trains, with few people getting off and if you were a woman on your own, whether it was lit up or not you would feel vulnerable. Mr Franklin: The trouble is, it is about an ever-decreasing circle because the more people who do not use public space on foot, the less safe it becomes. So what we need to do is increase the number of people who feel safe in the public space and use it because we feel safer when there are other people around. So by in a sense turning that into a virtual circle we can make streets far safer at night by actually doing things like making sure there are clear routes, good signage, that the lighting is good and that it does not just follow the carriageway, it actually follows the walking routes. Sometimes that can be off the direct route of the carriageway. Things like that will encourage people to use the streets at night and therefore people will safer. Q181 Clive Efford: That requires a partnership between the local authority and the transport provider, does it not? Do you think there is enough work done around that? That is a very compelling argument you have just made. Mr Franklin: I think in this whole area there is not enough attention being placed on this because there is so much attention being placed on the needs of traffic first, motorised traffic. Despite all the talk of the transport hierarchy with pedestrians at the top, the reality is that they are just getting scraps in terms of the attention and I think there needs to be much more focus being placed not just by local authorities but by the bus operators, the train operators, and so on. So many bus stops are in a terrible state and the routes to those bus stops are in a terrible state. If we want to encourage people to use public transport, we should not just look at the bus, we should look at the routes to the bus stops as well. Q182 Chairman: The bus companies do complain bitterly about on-street parking, for example, impeding them. Have you any solutions for them? Mr Adams: We work with the bus transport network very closely to look at the hot-spots --- Q183 Chairman: Mr Adams, I am sorry I am going to sound like my friend Mr Martlew, but there is a different situation in London. You can talk to the bus companies in a completely different way because those of us who are outside London who do not have the same contractual relationship find time after time the companies do what they like. They have very interesting ideas of traffic planning like not going to the main station because they want to turn off a quarter of a mile earlier, which is a problem I have had, and not going down the most heavily domesticated roads because they say there are too many cars and they cannot drive down there. Their interpretation of traffic planning, Mr Adams, outside this capital city is not necessarily the one you recognise! Mr Elliott: I think one of the problems is the 1984 Act from the local authority point of view made public transport planning outside London extremely difficult, but that is another subject which you may be having another inquiry about. Q184 Chairman: Yes. I think, Mr Elliott, if we manage to go through Buchanan and the 1984 Act we shall be here for some time! Mr Link: Chairman, there are, nevertheless, good examples outside London where that is happening, so it is possible. Q185 Chairman: If I did not believe there was anywhere in the United Kingdom that was capable of solving this problem, Mr Link, I would not be sitting in this chair. The ALG witness did suggest signage was completely regulated by the Government, but you are all suggesting there is a slight scope for improved clarity. Have local councils got that choice and discretion? Mr Link: I think the point was that the current signing guidelines are not helpful. They are not clear, certainly to large numbers of the public, and a revision to the signing regulations is well-overdue. The evidence to move forward has been with the Department for Transport for some years. Q186 Chairman: Since there has been decriminalised parking the number of reported parking contraventions has increased very significantly. Is that a trend which ought to worry us? Mr Elliott: I think that when parking enforcement is first decriminalised because it has been so badly done before the number of penalties will increase very markedly. I said earlier a third of a million people were parking illegally in central London every day before decriminalisation and there were one and a half million tickets issued in a year, so it was scratching the surface then, so it is a massive improvement. Q187 Chairman: You do suggest in your memorandum particularly that performance indicators should be restricted to levels of compliance rather than numbers of tickets issued, do you not? Mr Elliott: If you can measure compliance well. It is what we are all trying to achieve. Q188 Chairman: How do you do that? Mr Elliott: Some authorities have been doing it. You can monitor parking spaces continually or monitor illegal parking continuously in between the times the attendant comes around and see how many extra offences are committed. One central London authority - again it is the central London authorities which have the resources, I am afraid, to do these sorts of things - found that only one in ten of offenders do actually get tickets, and that is a very well-managed authority with lots of resources in central London. Q189 Chairman: So do you think that the actual count levels of penalties for parking infringements are fair? Mr Adams: I think there could be a change, a variable change, i.e. where cars are overstaying on a meter, depending on a car which is parked on a double yellow line. It is a different infringement and I think the penalties should be higher for those cars parked on the double yellow line. Q190 Chairman: So where should you permit clamping and removal of vehicles? Mr Adams: It is the ultimate deterrent, the removal, and certainly again where you have built-up cities you have persistent evaders and you will need to remove those vehicles. It is difficult sometimes to remove all the vehicles or get to the vehicles, so therefore you need to clamp them and I think it is important you have that end deterrent. Q191 Chairman: Yes. We were told originally that the American scheme regarded this as a progression. You would not say so? Because we are asking very specifically what numbers and in what circumstances would you expect clamping to be part of your weaponry? Mr Adams: I think it is difficult to put an exact number on it, but I think it is important that you have it as a back-up system in terms of supporting the general enforcement of ticketing. Q192 Chairman: Do you have any idea at all how many people are persistent offenders, any rough percentage? Mr Elliott, do you have this in your weaponry? Mr Elliott: I have done a persistent evader study. I cannot quite remember, but I feel it was something like ten per cent of the tickets. Q193 Chairman: You could perhaps confirm that to us in writing when you have had time to dig it up? Mr Elliott: I will see if I can find it. I cannot guarantee that. Q194 Chairman: You are quite clear that you think councils could in fact do a lot more as far as the signage is concerned, is that so? Mr Franklin, you want it all cleaned up, do you not, in your streetscape. So how should we really accommodate increased demand for parking? We have been talking about Victorian streets. I can give you a classic example because my town was built at the same time as Mr Martlew's. Victorian houses did not expect people to be in love with combustion engines, which was not a problem then, and people are consistently complaining that having bought the terraced houses they cannot park outside the door. Well, no, but then what do we do about that, say "Tough"? Mr Franklin: I think sometimes we are going to have to say "Tough." Q195 Chairman: You have never been a councillor, I take it? Mr Franklin: I am a councillor, actually. I know very well. We cannot do a sort of predict and provide on this, because the proportion of people who own cars and the number of households with two cars is going up all the time. Q196 Chairman: So are you going to put a limit on the numbers of vehicles in a particular street, or are you going to say, "No one can park in this street"? Mr Franklin: I think it is about limits, the space which is available there and looking at what other needs are there too. For instance, in the home zone area parking is allowed but it is allowed with other activities going on too, including spaces for children to play, etc. Parking can actually be used in those sorts of circumstances in a way which enhances the street environment and slows the traffic down. Q197 Chairman: I have to tell you it is known to most elected members as being the one cause of enormous friction. Now we have started you off! Yes, Mr Elliott? Mr Elliott: I recognise that. I have lived with that for a long time and I have worked for central London and outside. It is again a question of why, because people think, "I've got a right to park on the street." Q198 Chairman: Oh, they think they own the street, yes. Mr Elliott: The street and land is a terribly expensive commodity in the centre of cities and if we actually charged a fair price for it an awful lot of people would sell their cars now. Q199 Chairman: Are you abrogating that, Mr Elliott? Mr Elliott: No, I will defer to the politicians to market that product! Q200 Chairman: Yes. I think some of us know our own limitations. Mr Link? Mr Link: Just to add to those comments, there are residents' parking zones where numbers are limited and where in many cases residents do find that a fair system. People moving into the area might know that they need to go onto a waiting list. There might be a differential price for first and subsequent permits. Initially permits are issued one per household, and so on, so there are ways of managing that but that is all they are. But they are in many cases respected by the residents. Mr Franklin: I think there is a silent voice as well, those people who do not own cars or who rely on walking, and so on. Very often elected councillors do not hear those voices so loudly because it is always the people who in a sense feel they are suffering who are shouting the loudest. Q201 Chairman: It is not unconnected with the fact that most members of the Press are deeply wedded to their combustion engine. So tell me, is the planning policy guidance absolutely appropriate? Do we need changes? Is there anything else which ought to be included or are you saying it is perfectly all right, it is just the way it is administered and the difficulties which arise because councils do not apply it consistently? Is that what you are saying? Mr Franklin: I think it needs a greater subsidy. I think the trouble with the whole thing, for instance, about density and the link between density and parking is that it is very broad. There probably needs to be scope for different types of schemes. I think in some schemes you need more parking, in other schemes you need less parking, and because it is talking about an overall ratio it does not necessarily reflect those sorts of differences. We also think that with new schemes also you do have to look at that whole package, which is about how walkable neighbourhoods are and are there local facilities within that crucial 15 minute walk which makes a difference as to whether people use their cars for those short journeys or whether they walk for those short journeys. Q202 Chairman: If they can, of course, Mr Franklin. We must not produce policies which totally ignore the needs of people who cannot do a 15 minute walk, must we? Mr Franklin: No, that is true. Q203 Chairman: It is not use getting the cars off the pavements so that they can walk down the pavement if at the end of it they cannot breathe, is it, really? Mr Franklin: No, that is true, but in terms of people who cannot walk so far there are all sorts of things which can be done in terms of making it easier for people. Firstly, things like making sure there is a network of places for people to sit, to rest along the route. Q204 Chairman: Yes. At that rate it would take a little time to get to the station, would it not, if we were resting at the end of every road? Mr Franklin: It could do. Q205 Chairman: Some of us might give that impression, but we try hard! What about new technology? Is it going to solve all the problems of parking pavement facilities? Mr Adams: I think there is new technology which has helped in terms of public opinion, in terms of the way a parking ticket is issued. I know a lot of authorities now when they issue a ticket have photographic evidence with the ticket, so that has helped public confidence, i.e. if they appeal they can see if they have photographic evidence backing that up. Cctv has helped that in terms of technology. They can view the evidence tape in terms of that. Also, in terms of traffic orders there is now software which is able to manage the traffic order so that you update it and you can have a whole filing record of it. That is becoming more transparent. I think authorities are becoming more transparent in terms of how they operate and I think new technology has helped that immensely along the way. Q206 Chairman: Can I ask you, Mr Link, has the Institution at local government level of the GLA ever made the slightest attempt to talk? I know it is difficult given some of the links, but have you ever as an institution approached the local authorities as a joint institution and asked to discuss their implementation of traffic management plans? Mr Link: Not to my knowledge. Q207 Chairman: So would the normal route be that you would make representations and you would expect the people with whom you deal to make representations to the Government? Forgive me, but I really have read that report which you have got there. I think you should announce the title, by the way. Mr Link: It is the Institution of Highways and Transportation Parking Strategies and Management. Q208 Chairman: Thank you. It is very noticeable to me that it seems to contain a sort of distillation of sensible policies, but if that is not specifically drawn to the attention of local authorities - we are saying here consistently this afternoon there is no consistency. The one thing which is consistent is that they are inconsistent? Mr Link: Yes, and that is recognised in the guidelines and in putting it together it was extraordinarily difficult to make it generally applicable. In so many cases what might be general guidance was splitting down into a whole myriad of circumstances of different government arrangements, London, two-tier, etc. Q209 Chairman: Mr Elliott, what about you? You have got all that expertise. What do you do with it? Mr Elliott: An awful lot of us in local government are members of the Institute of Highways and Transportation, so we get it and in fact they built it probably from a lot of local government --- Q210 Chairman: I understand that, but it is actually a simpler point I am making. There is no point in the experts in traffic management coming and consistently saying to a committee such as this one in the House of Commons, "Government must do this," if you are not at the same time looking at the traffic management schemes right the way across local authorities. It is local authorities who will have to use your expertise. What consistent approaches do you make, all of you, to ensure that is the case? Mr Elliott: I think we do need to do some work in that area anyway. Q211 Chairman: Well, you can go away, Mr Elliott, and come back with a précis of your last report. Mr Franklin: The only thing we can say is that through out own organisation we have got a network of branches across the country and what we try to do is spread our expertise in terms of what pedestrians and users need and make sure that our branches are wherever possible campaigning within their local authority for those changes. Chairman: With that small nag, can I say thank you to you all. It has been really very instructive and very helpful. Thank you. |