Parking hell: The parking industry investigated, continued (page 5) ...
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUED FROM HERE . . .
Wednesday, 12.05pm: Manchester City Council backed off two years ago. The horror stories were becoming just too politically damaging: the bus-driver ticketed while picking up passengers; the 101 tickets wrongly issued by a single warden during a May Bank holiday; the infamous rabbit hutch, booked just up the road in Eccles. “You’ve got to have some level of public support, and we weren’t winning,” admits Pete North, the council’s director of operations. “It wasn’t seen as a fair regime, but one aimed at making money. So we said, enough is enough.”
The response was radical. Control Plus, the parking contractor, was peremptorily replaced by NCP. Clamping was banned, PAs were retrained in “customer service” and “reasonableness”, and, crucially, the new contract incentivised NCP not on ticket numbers, but on “quality of service” criteria as measured by the council.
“Before, it was ‘get out and issue as many as you can’,” recalls Alice Hauenstein, warden number MC370, as she tests the pay- and-display machines along Spring Gardens in the city centre. “Now, you’re trained to speak to people, alert them if they’re not aware they’re overstaying their time, help passers-by with directions. It’s about using a bit of common sense, really.”
Hauenstein shares a joke with a passing lorry-driver before stopping to feel the bonnet of a black Audi that has failed to pay-and-display. "Hmm, the engine's still warm, so he can't be far away," she says, pulling out her "Husky" hand-held computer. "We'll just log him in for now, just in case he's gone to find a machine." A man in a suit quickly emerges from a nearby building and unlocks the car door with a smile. "We're under no pressure to issue tickets, you know," Hauenstein says, smiling back. "We're not here to upset people."
“There’s still a lot of work to do, but we are winning greater public acceptance,” Chris Aylward, NCP’s contract manager in the city, says back at base. Council income from parking has fallen by a fifth under the new system, but that, Aylward suggests, is simply proof of the council’s commitment. “This industry,” he reflects, “has been focused for too long on revenue, with parking seen as a cash cow. But no system can survive if it doesn't have public support. If you're getting such a high level of public intolerance, it's clear that the industry has got to adapt.”
Slowly the message is percolating back to London. Last June, Islington Council declared that it, too, was ending clamping “to show that we do listen”. But back at Abdallah Bakkali’s former ticketing grounds in Camden, clamping (at £115 a time) provides a guaranteed revenue stream that has been factored into the borough’s financial planning. After all, its contracts with NCP require a “clamp achievement level” of 34,218 cars in a year, as well as 9,924 tow-aways and 463,000 penalty charge notices. These are not targets, insists a council spokeswoman, simply “baseline performance indicators”. But if NCP fails to meet them, it does risk losing a large financial bonus.
Not that NCP sees any links between financial considerations and the allegations of unfair ticketing made by Abdallah Bakkali. “That sounds like the ravings of a disgruntled employee,” says Tim Cowen, the company’s spokesman, when Bakkali’s charges are put to him. “None of that stuff happens. He would have been expected to reach standards of quality and accuracy, but there would never have been a question of him issuing a certain number of tickets a day.”
On Camden’s streets, where parking last year brought the council a £21 million surplus, such assurances may be of limited value. Tom Conti, the actor, is campaigning to make parking an issue in May’s council elections. More widely, measured in physical assaults on PAs or furious letters to local papers, hostility to parking-enforcement regimes appears to be intensifying.
The widespread suspicion, articulated with ever-greater contempt, seems to be that money- making has become a driving force in certain councils’ pursuit of the motorist. But that, as we know, would be against the law.
(The Times Magazine, February 11 2006)
Wednesday, 12.05pm: Manchester City Council backed off two years ago. The horror stories were becoming just too politically damaging: the bus-driver ticketed while picking up passengers; the 101 tickets wrongly issued by a single warden during a May Bank holiday; the infamous rabbit hutch, booked just up the road in Eccles. “You’ve got to have some level of public support, and we weren’t winning,” admits Pete North, the council’s director of operations. “It wasn’t seen as a fair regime, but one aimed at making money. So we said, enough is enough.”
The response was radical. Control Plus, the parking contractor, was peremptorily replaced by NCP. Clamping was banned, PAs were retrained in “customer service” and “reasonableness”, and, crucially, the new contract incentivised NCP not on ticket numbers, but on “quality of service” criteria as measured by the council.
“Before, it was ‘get out and issue as many as you can’,” recalls Alice Hauenstein, warden number MC370, as she tests the pay- and-display machines along Spring Gardens in the city centre. “Now, you’re trained to speak to people, alert them if they’re not aware they’re overstaying their time, help passers-by with directions. It’s about using a bit of common sense, really.”
Hauenstein shares a joke with a passing lorry-driver before stopping to feel the bonnet of a black Audi that has failed to pay-and-display. "Hmm, the engine's still warm, so he can't be far away," she says, pulling out her "Husky" hand-held computer. "We'll just log him in for now, just in case he's gone to find a machine." A man in a suit quickly emerges from a nearby building and unlocks the car door with a smile. "We're under no pressure to issue tickets, you know," Hauenstein says, smiling back. "We're not here to upset people."
“There’s still a lot of work to do, but we are winning greater public acceptance,” Chris Aylward, NCP’s contract manager in the city, says back at base. Council income from parking has fallen by a fifth under the new system, but that, Aylward suggests, is simply proof of the council’s commitment. “This industry,” he reflects, “has been focused for too long on revenue, with parking seen as a cash cow. But no system can survive if it doesn't have public support. If you're getting such a high level of public intolerance, it's clear that the industry has got to adapt.”
Slowly the message is percolating back to London. Last June, Islington Council declared that it, too, was ending clamping “to show that we do listen”. But back at Abdallah Bakkali’s former ticketing grounds in Camden, clamping (at £115 a time) provides a guaranteed revenue stream that has been factored into the borough’s financial planning. After all, its contracts with NCP require a “clamp achievement level” of 34,218 cars in a year, as well as 9,924 tow-aways and 463,000 penalty charge notices. These are not targets, insists a council spokeswoman, simply “baseline performance indicators”. But if NCP fails to meet them, it does risk losing a large financial bonus.
Not that NCP sees any links between financial considerations and the allegations of unfair ticketing made by Abdallah Bakkali. “That sounds like the ravings of a disgruntled employee,” says Tim Cowen, the company’s spokesman, when Bakkali’s charges are put to him. “None of that stuff happens. He would have been expected to reach standards of quality and accuracy, but there would never have been a question of him issuing a certain number of tickets a day.”
On Camden’s streets, where parking last year brought the council a £21 million surplus, such assurances may be of limited value. Tom Conti, the actor, is campaigning to make parking an issue in May’s council elections. More widely, measured in physical assaults on PAs or furious letters to local papers, hostility to parking-enforcement regimes appears to be intensifying.
The widespread suspicion, articulated with ever-greater contempt, seems to be that money- making has become a driving force in certain councils’ pursuit of the motorist. But that, as we know, would be against the law.
(The Times Magazine, February 11 2006)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, January 31, 2001
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