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18 Jan 2007 : Column 355WH—continued
“Car parking also takes up a large amount of space in development, is costly to business and”
that reducing densities of parking in new developments is essential. That is worthy of consideration along with the report’s findings.
I have a couple of examples of where we need to consider revised parking policies. My constituency, Basingstoke, is a growth point for the Government and an area of considerable housing development. We have experienced a number of problems with parking. A block of flats in my constituency called Crown Heights was built with no allocation of parking spaces for some of the residential units in a town where 80 per cent. of all households have a car. In another high-density housing block in Winterthur way, 484 flats were built with 12 visitor spaces—only 12 spaces, for probably nearly 800 residents.
A broad figure of 1.5 parking spaces per household is used in my constituency yet more than 40 per cent. of households in Basingstoke have more than two cars. A great number have three or even four. That has caused immense problems in new developments with cars being parked on pavements.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Is the hon. Lady seriously suggesting that planning guidance should indicate that permission should be given in all new schemes for people to have more than one car? It is an agreed planning objective to use the restriction of parking space as a means to ensure that quality of life for everyone is better rather than worse.
Mrs. Miller: Of course, as has already been said today, it is important that parking can be used as an important part of a traffic management strategy—the report states that. The problem is that when local development does not reflect the realities of day-to-day living in the community, it can create more traffic problems rather than solving them. When one considers the different levels of car ownership throughout the country, one can see clearly that the issue is difficult to handle at a national level. Later in my remarks, I shall suggest that perhaps it is something that would be better handled locally.
Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con): I hope that my hon. Friend is advocating a change in planning policy guidance. In constituencies such as Kettering, where tens of thousands of new houses are to be built in the next 15 to 25 years, it is obvious to everyone that there will not be enough road space to park all the cars in the residential areas that are being built unless planning policy guidance is changed.
Mrs. Miller: I think that my hon. Friend faces in his constituency some of the issues that we face in Basingstoke. If the problem is not unique to towns that are expected to have a high level of housing development and that have high-density figures put forward, it certainly creates more problems in constituencies that are akin to ours.
The problem is not confined to the residential sector but is an issue in the commercial sector. Basingstoke is ninth when it comes to jobs in the south-east, with 79,000 jobs. We are a diamond for growth; a growth point for the Government. Many companies are showing a considerable amount of growth in my constituency because it is a good place to do business. However, there are issues to consider. We have almost full employment in Basingstoke and, as a result, many people who work in our town have to travel in daily. Despite the fact that we have 79,000 jobs, we have not received a huge amount of investment in our public transport system in recent years. We have guidance in place that gives three parking spaces per 1,000 sq ft, which is in line with the Government guidance, and because of the problems that Basingstoke has with public transport, about 50 per cent. of its day-time population travel to work by car. That is exacerbated by the fact that a great number of the people who live in the rural areas surrounding my constituency work in Basingstoke, and the public transport links are insufficient for them to be able to use it as a viable alternative.
The Government have made the problem worse by insisting that developers build motor cars out of new developments, in both the residential and commercial sectors, by the under-provision of parking spaces. The result in recent years, as residents and businesses know, is a dramatically worsening parking problem in places such as Basingstoke. As I said, it is causing a great deal of concern to many residents.
So what is needed? First and foremost, investment in infrastructure should go hand in hand with development. Promised improvements, such as the new Chineham railway station, which we were promised a number of years ago but which has since been postponed, need to be put in place. That, however, is beyond the remit of our debate.
On a more positive note, I am pleased that the Government, on page 30 of their response, say:
“The approach to planning for residential car parking provisions is...currently under review”.
Indeed, they continue, saying that draft guidance PPS3
“makes clear that local authorities should develop parking policies for their plan areas with local stakeholders and communities, having regard to expected car ownership for planning housing”.
Does that change in emphasis indicate that the Government feel that their previous guidance was wrong? If so, it would be useful if my local authority, which would have to implement such things, and local residents and businesses could have that information.
We have the opportunity to give local authorities more freedom to determine locally what is required for residential and commercial parking. As the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich said, it is important to use parking as a way of controlling traffic, but it needs to be done in a way that does not create problems, such as congestion and inappropriate parking, in other parts of our communities.
Basingstoke was built around the car—at a time, perhaps, when there was less pressure on our roads. As I said earlier, time moves on and our low level of unemployment and the high demand to live in what is a very good community mean that parking is becoming a
distinct problem. I look forward to the Minister’s response. One can help communities like mine to deal better with such issues.
Finally, I touch on a slightly different issue—that of blue badges. The Committee considered their abuse in detail—and I expect that the Minister knows what I am about to say. I would have liked the report to cover other further issues, but particularly the eligibility criteria for blue badges.
At present, children under the age of two with severe mobility impairments are not eligible for a blue badge. That might sound straightforward, as children of that age cannot possibly drive. However, they need to be moved around by their parents. Some suffer from the sort of illness that requires bulky medical equipment to be transported with them. My constituents Helen Grindrod and Kelli-Ann Wilkins have daughters, Mia and Jessica. They have hip dysplasia, which means that they have to wear full body casts. As a result, it is difficult to manoeuvre them in and out of cars. Not being eligible for blue badges considerably reduces the parents’ ability to move not only the children but the whole family.
The Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee recommended in 1999 that the rules should be changed. The Government accepted in 2002 that the rules should be changed. We should have seen some change before now, but no: four years on, and we have had no change in the rules. Yet more consultation is spoken of, but that is not good enough for Mia and Jessica, who are suffering as a result of the Government’s inaction. I draw that case to the Committee’s attention in the hope that it may be given consideration. I invite the Minister to fill me with joy by telling me that she will bring forward those much-needed regulations in the near future.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Again, I commend the Committee on its report, and I hope that it judges my contribution today to have been positive and that it may consider picking up on it.
3.5 pm
Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley) (Lab): I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller). If she was saying that the Government’s implementation of the Barker report had the balance wrong between public transport, car parking, the general capacity of the system and the right of local authorities to make decisions, then I agree with her, although I would not go the whole way with her solution. Merely increasing car parking would deal with only one particular part of the problem.
I start by paying respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) for the way in which she chairs the Select Committee on Transport. She does it with enthusiasm and intellectual rigour. Apart from the three years when I was helping the Government—or not, as the case may be—I have been a member of the Select Committee, and on every occasion and on really difficult issues, from aviation and runways at Heathrow to road pricing, my hon. Friend has managed to achieve consensus. That does not happen in all Committees. I do not know whether it is an apology or a confession,
but I say that because on this report I was not able to agree with the Committee. For the first time, I voted against a report.
I dare say that it would have been possible to find a form of words on some issues on which the whole Committee could have agreed, but I had a fundamental disagreement with the report on the question of who should make decisions on car parking. Should it be the Government or the local authority? My hon. Friend made a straightforward case for why it should be the Government. I hope to make the case that the Government are not good at that sort of thing and that, although local authorities have a mixed record—some are good and some are bad, and some change and become more responsive—they are the better part of the state to make such decisions.
Before I get to the meat of the report, it is worth going through a few statistics. Transport is a complicated matter, and statistics often enlighten the debate. Every transport debate, particularly on roads, should start with the fact that an estimated 2 million vehicles are on the road that should not be there because they are not properly insured or taxed. How much would it help our congestion and parking problems if those 2 million vehicles were crunched or taxed and licensed properly? I suspect that it would help a great deal, but it is the Government’s responsibility and they are not doing well, which has not helped.
The report says that 45 per cent. of local authorities use the decriminalised system of parking enforcement. That is true. However, like a lot of statistics it is absolutely true but it probably gives the wrong impression. Most of those authorities cover densely populated urban areas. I could not work it out—I did not have the statistics—but I would guess that about 75 per cent. or 80 per cent. of the population is covered by decriminalised parking regulations.
One staggering statistic, which has not come out in the debate so far, was given to the Committee on 7 December by Mr. Kavanagh and Mr. Macnaughton of National Car Parks. They told the Committee that, although there can be improvements in the administration and collection of fines, people stand a good chance of not paying them. Thirty per cent. of fines are never paid or enforced, and the courts, the police and the local authorities could do a great deal more to collect that money.
According to another statistic, which has been referred to, more than £1 billion a year is collected from people who do not comply with on-street parking rules, which leaves a surplus of more than £400 million in the system. I disagree, however, with the Committee’s view on whether that money should be spent just on parking and on whether central or local government should determine how it is spent.
Let me summarise the areas in which the Committee wants more central Government guidance. It wants control of the income and wants no-incentive schemes to be national policy. It wants guidance on local transport plans to be enhanced and increased. It wants an absolute prohibition on parking on pavements to be a national policy, not subject to local traffic regulation orders. However, I disagree with the Committee that such centralised policies should apply, because nearly
all those issues are better determined locally, and I shall try to explain in detail why.
The Committee argues very well for transparency and clarity of information, whether on parking tickets, some of which do not explain the appeals system properly, or when councils pass traffic regulation orders. Such issues should be clear, as should the fact that traffic regulation orders are subject to the local ombudsman. I agree with the Committee on those points.
I shall use Manchester as an example of why local is better than central. In many ways, it is a bad case to start with, because it probably had the worst parking enforcement system in the country in 2002. At that time, it would have been easy to say that the system should have been nationalised because central Government could not possibly have been as bad. The city council handed the enforcement of on-street parking to Control Plus after a tendering process, but the company was a disaster. Its operatives were characterised in the local press as going about their business in jackboots, and it was incompetent. It used a financial incentive system that meant that its operatives had to issue a certain number of tickets a day to avoid being disciplined. That meant that they put tickets on cars on bank holiday Mondays, when the regulations did not apply. As a result, there were lots of confrontations.
I have not been able to look up the figure, so I am speaking from memory, but I think that about 70 or 80 per cent. of the appeals in the national system at that time were from Manchester—that is how bad it was. The company would clamp and remove cars at the drop of a hat. It clamped and removed cars on Remembrance Sunday, and ex-servicemen from all over the north-west of England who had travelled some distance to go to the Remembrance day parade returned to their cars to find that they were expected to pay considerable fines to get them released. Frankly, the company was appalling.
Having listened to the evidence, however, the Committee accepted that Manchester had introduced a model system, following local pressure from councillors, Members of Parliament and the press, as well as the general dissatisfaction expressed through the democratic process. It is practising things with which the Committee is not very comfortable. For example, parking attendants have discretion over whether to put the ticket on. I know that the case against that approach is that it makes attendants vulnerable; they can be threatened if the public know that they have discretion. However, it represents a change in philosophy and attitude and it is part of a much better system. Confrontations and violence have decreased considerably.
There has also been a change in clamping policy. Clamping is a perverse policy. We say that the owner of a car that is parked illegally should pay a fine or that they are causing excessive congestion, so we will make it difficult to move the car. That has never seemed a very sensible policy to me. However, it has now gone out of the window in Manchester. Cars are now removed only where they cause congestion, and people
have to pay a fine only when they have parked so selfishly that other drivers cannot get through the city.
Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD): I am sure that what is happening in Manchester is very welcome to the public there. It is an interesting experiment, but has any formal evaluation been made of it? Have any hard statistics been generated as a result of the experience?
Graham Stringer: In seeking to understand such questions, it is always better to look at hard figures, rather than just at anecdotes about confrontations. The best figure that I can give off the top of my head to highlight the improvements is that the number of appeals against decisions has fallen to a quarter of what it was—as I said, it was at record levels compared with other places in the country. That is not a complete indicator of what is going on, but it is a fair indicator of an improvement in the system.
We are talking not only about a transport philosophy but about a general attitude to how the city should be. My hon. Friend will wince when I say this, but the council—these are not my words—has said that parking is not just a transport issue but a liveability issue. It is about living in the city centre. As a result, it has extended the responsibility of parking attendants, who now not only deal with illegally parked cars but are better trained and better qualified. They liaise with the police and other authorities to get rid of untaxed vehicles and deal with other problems. Generally, therefore, they help to make the city a better place to live in. There are statistics, which I do not have with me, to show how many untaxed and abandoned vehicles they have helped to remove. Such vehicles were not dealt with at all previously.
There is a debate about centralisation and localism. The Committee’s view is very much that car parking is part of the transport issue, that it should be seen as such and that income from it should therefore go back into the transport system. My view is that it is a matter for local determination. If we want to tax people for parking in the city, why should not the charges, which are now determined nationally, be determined locally? If some cities want low levels of income from fines, or a town or city wants a high level of fines, why should they not have it? That could then be subject to debate. However, at present it is up to the Secretary of State to deal with changes to fines beyond a certain level.
The system in Manchester, then, has been improved beyond the remit of the transport debate, and more effectively than I think it would have been if it had been left to my hon. Friend the Minister and Department for Transport officials. I do not think that it is ever possible centrally to obtain enough information to deal with the vast array of communities, cities, towns and counties of this country.
Before I finish, I should point out that it may sound as if the story that I am telling has a happy ending, but it does not, entirely. The parking enforcement has been improved, but the city council is now consulting on charging for parking on the streets in the evenings and on Sundays—with fines for unpaid charges. I shall reply to the consultation. I have not seen the detailed proposals, but I suspect that they will damage the economy and jobs in Manchester and I shall respond accordingly. However, whether the council has got the
matter right or wrong, such decisions are better determined locally than nationally. Also, if money that is raised locally goes to an environmental scheme, which is allowed now, that is good. A city or town should have the right to allocate parking income to social services or education if that is how it wants to plan its budgets, when it looks in the round at how it wants the town or community to develop.
My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich began with a point in favour of centralisation. The British Parking Association put the case, probably not as articulately as my hon. Friend, and its argument, set out in the report, puts things starkly. I think that it is wrong. It says:
“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.”
I say great—excellent. The fact that local communities and local democracy are not dictated to from outside and that local choices can be made is excellent, and the British Parking Association is wrong when it says that no one can change that state of affairs. The electorate can, if it becomes such a big issue.
I do not want to stray much from parking, but wherever we look—as a Committee or as Members of Parliament—where central Government take more control over local affairs the result is inefficiency and the wrong decision. The Transport Committee did a report on trams. We found that the involvement of the Department for Transport put extra costs into the tram system, delayed it and in effect meant that Liverpool, Leeds and South Hampshire did not get the tram systems that they required. I shall not give a long list of examples, but in the context of education we might ask whether the schools building programme is better controlled by the Department for Education and Skills and the Treasury than local authorities. I suspect that most people, having seen the figures recently, would think not. The Government do some things well, including setting national frameworks and ensuring that there is transparency, but they do other things less well.
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