|  |
LMAG letter following Westminster Parking Summit
Posted on Thursday, November 09 @ 17:34:12 GMT by pulpsimon |
|
Westminster Council held a Parking Summit meeting on Monday 6th November at the Landmark Hotel.
LMAG delegates were invited & attended (Alex Henney, Richard Chaumerton & Simon Aldridge).
The stated aims of the summit were "to assess some of the key changes Westminster have made to their parking policies and operations over the last couple of years, as part of their committment to operate a "firm fair and excellent" service."
Westminster accepts more needs to be done to further improve the service and was listening.
The event was chaired by the Hon Gwyneth Dunwoody MP, Chair of the House of Commons Select Committee.
Cllr Danny Chalkley (Cabinet Member for Economic Development & Transport), Alistair Gilchrist (Director of Parking) and Kevin Goad (Head of Parking Operations) led 3 the event.
LMAG Co Secretary Alex Henney has written to Westminster
8th
November, 2006.
Councillor Danny Chalkley
Cabinet Member for Economic
Development & Transport
City of Westminster
Dear Danny,
Parking controls and enforcement
I congratulate you on the event you put on
Monday.
There are three fundamental problems with
parking controls and enforcement.
1.
The whole so called “system” of road signage, regulations, and
procedures is far too complex and bureaucratic.
In consequence the public does not understand it, and very few in local
authorities understand them. The
“system” has degenerated to rule based minutae, and displaced common sense.
2.
In the drive for money, the basic objectives have been lost sight
of. Namely they should be:-
- To improve road safety and traffic flow.
But these objectives are achieved with the means of preventing vehicles
from parking in dangerous/obstructive locations, which is a minor fraction of
the effort involved
- To ensure that residents can park near their homes, which is achieved by
the provision of residents parking spaces, and ensuring that non-residents do
not park in the spaces. The implementation of this objective does not help
achieving objective 1
- To charge a “rent” for pay and display use of road space and to ensure a
reasonable turnover of spaces. The
implementation of this objective does not help in achieving either objective 1
or objective 2. This activity
undoubtedly generates the most PCNs
Too often the defence of parking
enforcement reduces to generalised arm waving about safety and traffic
enforcement, which is specious. Once one
is clear of the objectives, then one can devise proper means of achieving the
objectives. Proportionality dictates that
the enforcement of objective 1 should be more severe than the enforcement of
objective 2, which in turn should be more severe than the enforcement of
objective
3. While people that overstay
significantly or persistently avoid payment should be hammered, overstaying an
hour or so should not be heavily penalised.
If you were not a statutory monopoly but in the business of renting road
space, you would generally be pleased if people stayed more rather than less. I know the analogy is not precise, but I hope
it makes the point.
3.
The money driver which flows from councils to the contractors, and
within the contractors:-
- Leads to incentives to perform in terms of PCN count coupled with
disincentives against underperformance.
The incentives include Argos points and the allocation of
overtime - the disincentive is being dismissed
- Possibly employing significant numbers of illegal immigrants. It is possible that there are “mafias”
organised to import people and offer them a job as PAs, and such people can be
both exploited and disciplined by the fear of exposure
I copy this letter to Alastair Gilchrist and
Kevin Goad.
Yours sincerely,
ALEX HENNEY
|
| |
|
|
