London Motorists Action Group - LMAG letter following Westminster Parking Summit

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