A degree of confusion in Cambridge

Cambridge town and gown have been scratching their heads over a difficult question relating to parking charges.

Neither the University nor the parking department in Cambridge has a reputation for sloppy thinking so why are local residents accusing the council of encouraging illegal parking in the city by setting tariffs in a central car park which exceed the cost of a penalty ticket?

The car park they are highlighting is the aptly named ‘Grand Arcade’ where on weekdays it will cost £25 for a full day’s parking (8am – 5pm) and £1 per hour thereafter until the following morning. So for people who want to park there for 24 hours the bill would be £40. At the weekend the tariff rises to £42.

Local councillors now seem embarrassed that they failed to compare the cost of parking in the City’s most expensive car park for a stay of 24 hours (£40/42) with the cost of a parking fine paid at the reduced rate in the car park (£25), or the cost of a fine for parking on double yellow lines at the reduced rate (£35). But should they be?

The large majority of motorists are law abiding citizens who do not knowingly want to contravene whatever regulations are in place. They are likely to pay for their parking and will not be swayed by the difference in parking and penalty prices.

To suggest that motorists would prefer to park on double yellow lines for 24 hours and pay a penalty of £35, rather than park legally in a off-street safe site for £42 is perverse.  Those few motorists who might attempt this could be dealt with in other ways.

The RAC Foundation would argue that the fault here lies not with Cambridge City Council but with the ‘one size fits all’ directives on penalty charge notices from the Department for Transport. The cost of a penalty charge notice is set by central government, not by local authorities. Outside London it is either £50 or £70 depending on the reason it has been issued. Payments made within 14 days have a 50% discount applied.

Clearly this flat rate is illogical.  It leads to situations such as we have in Cambridge and in cities at the other end of the scale, where motorists are fined £25 for 10 minutes too long in a car park costing only 60p an hour.

It would be a fallacy to conclude the way out of this situation is to raise the penalty charge limit, which is surely what Cambridge is hoping for since they could easily have reduced the cost of parking to below the PCN charge to avoid this debacle. What is needed is a more sophisticated solution to ensure the punishment fits the crime. One such might be to scrap the national penalty charge and replace it with a formula better reflecting the tariff in the car park.  That way, Cambridge councillors could charge what they like, sleep easy, and the rest of us would not suffer a hike in the cost of PCNs.

The railways have already adopted a model of proportionate penalties. If a passenger gets on a train without a ticket, they will have to pay a penalty fare. The penalty is currently £20 or twice the full single fare from the station where the passenger got on the train to the next station at which the train stops, whichever is the greater. If the passenger wants to travel beyond the next station, they must also pay the relevant fare from that station to their final destination.

If the railways can understand the concept of proportionality surely those responsible for setting parking penalty limits can do so too.

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What have we got to lose? Turning our backs on the High Street.

The High Street is back in the headlines. For many it may seem to be in the news every day, but this week several powerful groups are focusing on encouraging us to support our town centres.

Yesterday, the Centre for Retail Research published ‘Retail Futures 2018’ an analysis of how UK retailing will have changed by 2018.

And today, the BBC featured the ‘Portas Pilots’ initiative on its ‘You and Yours’ programme. It broadcast specially commissioned research to show how shop vacancy rates have changed during the last year in towns given a share of £1.2m of government money to rejuvenate their shopping areas

Next week the National Federation of Women’s Institutes will vote on a resolution from the NFWI Board on the ‘decline of our high streets and town centres.’ The resolution ‘notes with concern the continuing decline of our high streets and the damaging effect this has on local communities’.

We all know that town centres change: they always have. But whatever the superficial differences in layout and appearance, they have remained a focus for independent shops and markets – until now. For a variety of reasons, including cost, lack of time and a perceived difficulty in parking close to shops, we all now shop more on the internet. The Centre for Retail Research reports that we actually ‘shop’ in multiple ways. We may check a store’s website, visit one or more real shops to look at the item, read product reviews and check competitors’ prices on a smartphone before deciding where to buy and how to organise the pick-up or delivery. The BBC ‘You and Yours’ research shows that investment in the 12 original ‘Portas Pilot’ towns has resulted in mixed results. There has been an overall loss of 95 units, with only two towns showing an increase in the number of shops trading and staying open.

Much of this behaviour just seems to be prudent research to achieve the best buy. But all the groups with an interest in town centre shopping point to the wider benefits to everyone of a lively High Street economy. The Government maintains it needs to offer an experience that goes beyond retail – the high street should be a destination for socialising, culture, health, wellbeing, creativity and learning, with schools, doctors’ surgeries and offices along with shops. Our high streets should be social places that make creative use of public spaces and with a vibrant evening economy.

The Centre for Retail Research also highlights that a deserted High Street may have unintended consequences for the many hundreds of billions of pounds invested in retail property by pension funds, investment companies, shopping centre owners and retailers themselves. Added to this may be an unwelcome impact on local employment rates as jobs are lost.

So there are many reasons to examine honestly why we don’t shop on the High Street or use our town centres more frequently.  The quality of products on offer is clearly an important factor, but if we don’t go there because getting to a supermarket or cinema on the edge of town is easier, we must say so. If it is because we can’t carry heavy or awkward shopping on the bus and need to use a car, we must be up front about the need for convenient parking. Sixty-four per cent of all shopping trips are made by car – that represents 123 trips each year per person (NTS 0409). Cars are as much a part of our lives in the UK as is the internet and we need to take a pragmatic approach to both. Retailers must make clear strategic responses to changing patterns of shopping and local authorities must accommodate all important access to the High Street for pedestrians, public transport users, and motorists alike.

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‘Welcome, Mr Evan Davis, this is your car parking space’

When time is limited, there is a tendency for people to talk about or to turn the conversation quickly to what they think most important. Phatic exchanges are dismissed so the key issues can be debated. And regardless of comments in the press (Evening Standard 13 March) that he interrupts them, Radio 4 presenter Evan Davis is a master of getting his studio guests to part with their valuable knowledge swiftly. But in a recent (28 February) episode of  The Bottom Line even Mr Davis himself seemed surprised at the speed with which one of his guests began his contribution to a discussion about keeping shoppers on the High Street by highlighting the role of car parking.

For his programme, Davis had lined up Sir Stuart Rose, former Marks and Spencer Chairman; Andy Street, Managing Director of John Lewis PLC; and Berndt Hauptkorn, CEO of Uniqlo Europe. He began by asking them how to go about getting customers to visit ‘bricks and mortar’ shops in such challenging economic times. Immediately, Sir Stuart Rose pitched in on the lower ground floor by describing the poor customer experience many would-be shoppers have in car parks at shopping centres. He said, ‘ …mostly the car parking is pretty grotty. You get down there and it’s difficult to get around, it’s poorly lit, it’s often a bit damp, and quite often it’s expensive.’

Progressing to the upper floors, the giants of retail spent some time debating what might persuade the public to abandon virtual shops in favour of the real thing. They emphasised the need for a ‘good product’, for a bit of retail ‘theatre’, and for shop floor layouts that enable the customer to ‘penetrate huge areas’.

Eventually, Davis interrupted.

‘I just want to finish on car parks’, he said. ‘Why are car parks so shockingly awful? It’s such a no-brainer, it doesn’t cost that much.’

Sir Stuart Rose sensing the limited time left for comment called out, ‘Come on Andy give us more sexy car parks at John Lewis!’, and in typical customers-come-first at JL style, Andy Street responded with, ‘They’ll be coming’.

But he continued, ‘What you really want is not just a general space, you want a sign above the space that says, ‘Welcome, Mr Evan Davis, this is your car parking space’

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Countdown to #clamping ban on private land. @BritishParking Assoc members to stop from Monday

A date for your diaries. On 1st October the ban on clamping and towing on private land in England and Wales comes into force as a result of the passing of the Protection of Freedoms Act.

On that date only those with lawful authority – such as the police and local councils – will be able to carry out such actions.

However many parking firms seem likely to pre-empt this and voluntarily stop such activities from first thing on Monday – two weeks ahead of their legal obligation to do so.

The move comes because the British Parking Association – an accredited trade association – has told its 150 or so member businesses that they need to hang up their Denver boots sooner rather than later. Failure to do so risks seeing firms kicked out of the organisation:

“If any clamping or removal activities occur after the 16th September and are brought to the attention of the BPA, it will be considered non-compliant with BPA Council’s instruction and thus a breach of section 4 of the BPA’s Code of Professional Conduct.

“Breaches of the BPA Code of Professional Conduct are taken seriously and will be referred to the BPA’s Professional Conduct Committee for investigation and review, which could result in suspension or termination from the BPA.”

But, drivers beware.

Despite the BPA’s laudable efforts motorists should still have their wits about them because it is likely to be the unscrupulous operators, who are not BPA affiliated and have never signed up to the organisation’s voluntary code of conduct and the reasonable fees and behaviour it defines, who will continue to ply their dubious trade right up to the bitter end.

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Councils make half a billion pounds surplus from #parking each year. See how your council ranks.

There has long been a suspicion amongst motorists that local authorities are raking it in from parking charges and the truth is that many of them are. Even where huge ‘profits’ are absent the picture is almost uniformly one of surplus and not deficit, with only 57 (15%) of 371 local authorities in England reporting negative numbers.

The data is contained in annual returns councils make to the Department for Communities and Local Government, but given the mass of data government departments publish it is not always easily accessible. Openness does not equal transparency.

The RAC Foundation has tried to illuminate the figures and below are tables for those councils which have the biggest surpluses both in London and nationally. The complete list of all councils can be DOWNLOADED HERE. Together the councils in England make a surplus of a fraction over £500 million.

More details on councils’ parking operations can be found in the RAC Foundation recent report, Spaced Out by David Leibling and John Bates. See pages 66-68 in particular.

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Where have all the gardens gone? Rise in car numbers sees grass plots paved to provide #parking

The rise in car ownership and use has been mirrored by a significant increase in the number of front gardens which are being concreted over to make way for parking: an estimated seven million in total.

DCLG figures analysed by the RAC Foundation show around 80% of Britain’s 26 million dwellings were built with a front plot.

Almost a third of these plots have been turned into hardstanding, an overall area roughly equivalent to 100 Hyde Parks or 72 Olympic Parks.

Houses built between 1919 and 1964 are most likely to have a front garden and hence it is these properties which are most likely to have seen the change.

The move to find extra parking space has resulted from the huge rise in car ownership. In 1950, there were two million cars. In 2011, there were 28.5 million.

Based on current rates of ownership, the rise in population alone is set to increase this figure to around 32 million cars in the next two decades.

Not only are there more cars than ever before, they are getting bigger. The Ford Escort of 1968 was five feet wide. Today’s Ford Focus is six feet wide.

Even where properties have garages, these are increasingly being used to store things other than vehicles or converted into extra accommodation. A third less cars are put away in a garage overnight than a decade ago.

Only a fifth (19%) of Great Britain’s 28 million cars are put away in a garage each night, while half (53%) of all cars are left on the drive and a quarter (25%) are parked on the street. A minority (3%) are left elsewhere. This is despite ten million households (39% of the 26 million total) have access to a garage

The figures are amongst those contained in Spaced Out: Perspectives on parking policy written by John Bates and David Leiblin for the RAC Foundation.

The report is an in-depth look at parking patterns and provision across Britain. It also reveals that:

• The average car is parked at home for 80% of the time, parked elsewhere for 16% of the time and is only on the move for 4% of the time
• 94% of all parking acts away from the home are free
• Of the 6% of parking acts which are charged for, almost half cost less than £1
• On average 800 cars are parked every second
• Excluding charges for residents’ parking, the annual parking costs for a car are £42. By comparison the average car consumes £1,600 worth of fuel annually
• In London roughly half of councils’ on-street parking income comes from parking fees and permits, and half from penalties. Outside of the capital, the ratio is 55:45
• Together, councils in London (including Transport for London) made a surplus of £180 million in 2009/10 from parking activities
• Together, councils in the rest of England made a surplus of £310 million in 2009/10 from parking activities

In January last year minister decided to scrap the cap on parking spaces at new developments:

“National planning policy requires local authorities to set limits for off street parking in residential development. However, evidence suggests that forcing local authorities to adopt parking limits has not led to housing developments which meet the pattern of car ownership in many communities. In new developments these restrictions can lead to significant levels of on-street parking causing congestion and danger to pedestrians.

“I have today removed the requirement for local authorities to set maximum parking limits for residential development in their area, and instead have given them the freedom to decide what level of parking is right based on the needs of their local community.”

But even so there is a fear that councils regard parking provision as an afterthought. Unlike their legal obligation to keep traffic moving there is no law that makes them provide adequate space for stationary cars, though the two topics as inextricably linked.

On the face of it parking is an inconsequential act. But it is a hugely emotive topic and providing adequate parking in the right place at the right price is a big challenge for planning authorities.

Appropriate parking provision by local authorities has to be paid for and if charges are not levied on drivers then council tax payers will have to foot the bill. However the suspicion amongst many that parking charges are general revenue raisers will not be dispelled by the half a billion pound surplus councils in England make each year.

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#Parking ticket issued every 4.6 seconds. But what’s done with the cash?

Traffic wardens down, parking fines up. That’s the story in the figures obtained under freedom of information requests submitted to councils across the UK.

According to swiftcover.com – which obtained the data – there were 6.8 million tickets issued in 2011. That’s one every 4.6 seconds.

Yet there were fewer wardens in 2011 than 2010. 3,693 as compared to 3,882.

Of the tickets issued, one in four was disputed and of these 39% were overturned (down from 47% the previous year).

There are two points worthy of particular attention.

The first is the widely differing rate of success in appeals between councils.

In Bradford only 11% of appeals were granted, yet in Chichester that rose to 72%.

Are enforcers in West Sussex displaying a worrying lack of knowledge about the rules and regulations they are trying to uphold when they issue a ticket?

The second point of note is the £234 million raised from the fines. While many authorities actually run their parking operations at a loss, others make a handsome surplus and the question must again be asked as to what they do with the excess. The law says any money left after the parking provision bills have been paid has to be spent on transport or environmental services. This is a broad definition and the public will be left with the suspicion that some authorities see parking enforcement not as a way of managing congestion – which it should be – and more of a general revenue raiser to shore up budgets being cut by central government – which is illegal.

This has at least been recognised by the Local Government Minister Bob Neill who said: “There is no excuse for town halls using parking fines and motorists as cash cows. There are plenty of other ways for councils to raise extra income or make savings like better procurement and sharing back-office services.

“We want to see councils use parking to support the high street and help their local shops prosper. That’s why we have ended the last Government’s requirements to limit spaces, push up parking charges and encourage aggressive parking enforcement.”

Of course, if Mr Neil and his colleagues hadn’t cut the money allocated to councils then we wouldn’t be in this situation. But that’s the world we are in.

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The end of #wheelclamping is nigh. Or is it? #Parking saga continues.

So that’s it.With the enactment today of the Protection of Freedoms Bill wheel clamping on private land will be banned from October. Or will it? The Protection of Freedoms Act allows for Local Authorities, the DVLA, the police, and all those with lawful authority to continue using wheel clamps. It is vital that motorists and landowners know just how lawful authority is defined and so far government isn’t saying.

Could it be the private companies who run the railways and allow us to park on their land? Could it be the National Parks, the Port Authorities, or any other body established by statute? Perhaps parish councils even?

The reality is that two years after Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone MP first announced moves to introduce the ban in 2010 – and some twenty years since the Denver Boot first appeared on these shores, during which time tens of thousands of motorists have found their vehicles illegally immobilised with little interest shown by government – we are still in a state of confusion.

Countless hours of TV programming and radio debate, and an endless stream of column inches in the press, have been devoted to this source of misery to motorists. And yet it seems set to continue. BBC Watchdog producers must be counting their lucky stars.

Oh, and by the way, wheelclamping isn’t being banned in Northern Ireland at all. So if you are ‘just jumping in’ this summer and using a car, park carefully.

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@BBCWatchdog takes a bite out of private #parking industry tonight at 8pm

Tonight’s Watchdog programme on BBC1 again goes for the throat of the private parking industry, challenging the British Parking Association on why one of its member firms was found guilty in a county court of not displaying adequate signage which led to a driver not ‘paying and displaying’ and hence receiving a ticket.

For those who can’t see the programme this is the gist of the situation and the BPA’s response:

“Mr Cutts received a parking ticket for not ‘paying & displaying’ at a car park for the Peel Centre, Stockport managed by an Approved Operator Scheme (AOS) member, Excel Parking Services.
Mr Cutts refused to pay the ticket, stating that he did not consider the Excel signage present visible enough. This matter was taken all the way to the County Court where the Judge found in Mr Cutt’s favour.
Firstly, Watchdog are asking why the BPA failed to make Excel change the signs.
The core issues within our response to this are;
•       The signs used by Excel at the site comply with the AOS Code of Practice
•       There are enough of them that Mr Cutts should have noticed that parking conditions applied at the site
•       While 11900 tickets have been issued there over a 3 year period, 2.9 million motorists have complied at the site and paid to park – compliance rate of 99.63%
•       Judgement in a County Court case does not set precedent
•       For every Court case where the Judge may find in favour of the motorist, there are numerous others where they find in favour of the operator
Watchdog are then asking whether the BPA management of the Code of Practice for the management of parking on private land is robust enough.
Our responses to this question are as follows;
•       We now have a robust Sanctions Scheme where, if members are found to be in breach of the Code, sanctions points are awarded which can eventually result in expulsion. Currently, 29 members have sanction points on their record and five members have been expelled from the Scheme.
•       We have a dedicated Compliance Manager and have conducted over 2000 investigations into member behaviour last year following complaints from the public.
•       However, we believe that our Approved Operator Scheme is no substitute for legislation which regulates the sector. We have campaigned for many years for the Government to fully regulate private parking operators so that those who are currently not answerable to any authority can be held to account. A robust regulatory framework enshrined in law is the fairest and most effective way to achieve this but the Government have consistently refused to take this important step to protect motorists.”

If nothing else this case highlights the gulf that exists between many drivers and those who operate private car parks. It also shows why there is a strong case for unenforceable, voluntary regulation (of clampers, ticketers or whatever is set to follow) to be taken out of the hands of the private parking industry iteslf – whether or not you believe they are doing a good job – and given to Government.

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#Parking policy. Nothing to appeal to motorists

Your diary may or may not have included details of Parkex – Europe’s biggest parking exhibition – currently taking place in London.

But it was certainly part of transport minister Norman Baker’s agenda and it was at the Olympia venue that the RAC Foundation asked him just what provision he would be making for an appeals system for motorists wanting to challenge ‘questionable’ parking tickets issued on private land.

On the face of it his response was reassuring. He said an appeals process – free to access for motorists – was being put in place by the British Parking Association (BPA) as a result of changes to the law included in the Protection of Freedoms Bill which is nearing the end of its Parliamentary passage.

The BPA has not yet revealed the final structure of the appeals process –  it could be similar to that of the services that adjudicate appeals from motorists disputing tickets issued by local authorities on the public highway – but whatever means is decided on, the Government wants the service running by October, when the Protection of Freedoms Act will come into force.

However, the Government has not made things easy for the BPA or for motorists.  First of all, the Government refuses to make membership of the BPA, or any other similar accredited trade association (ATA), compulsory for anyone running a private car park.  The parking operators who voluntarily join a trade association are likely to be the good guys. Those who decline are the most likely to cause drivers problems.

Yet the actions of those operators remaining outside an ATA umbrella could still have been constrained if they were also required to offer access to an appeals service – perhaps by paying to use the BPA system on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately there is no such requirement.

Ministers believe ‘rogue’ operators will effectively be forced to join an ATA because this is the only way they can get electronic access to drivers’ details from the DVLA to pursue the tickets they have issued that go unpaid. This is seriously doubted since more than 30% of tickets left on windscreens are paid without the need to get drivers’ details. So what motorists seem likely to be left with is a muddle.

For decades drivers have struggled to understand a confused parking landscape. Why should a motorist need to know whether or not a parking space has been set up under a Traffic Regulation Order and whether or not it is being enforced under the Traffic Management Act 2004, or whether it is on private land and is being enforced under Contract Law? He, or she, just wants to park.

The Government fully understands how much motorists put into the Chancellor’s chest.  It is a pity it doesn’t better appreciate that no one takes a car anywhere without parking it, and that parking should be appropriately regulated – wherever it takes place.

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