Parking hell: The parking industry investigated (The Times Magazine)
Local authorities in England and Wales now make more than £1 billion from the parking business. Yet there are growing accusations of sharp practice, and all over the country motorists are gearing up for battle. David Rowan investigates the booming industry of clamping, towing and ticketing, and meets the whistle-blowers
Wednesday, 3.20pm: Abdallah Bakkali, a North London parking attendant until last May, shuffles nervously down Hampstead High Street explaining the “tricks” he says he was taught here for issuing what he nonchalantly calls “dodgy tickets”.
“I was told to give tickets no matter how legally a car was parked,” Bakkali says with a disapproving frown, his greying ponytail and wispy beard incongruous among the impeccably groomed ladies strolling uphill towards Agnès b. “If a driver’s got a disabled badge, you write that there’s no badge. If there’s a visitor’s permit, sometimes you ignore it – it's a question of ‘Who’s going to believe the driver?’ And if you ask me if you can park for five minutes to collect someone, I’d be expected to say OK – and then ticket you once you’ve gone. He doesn’t have your name, the thinking goes, so what’s he going to do?”
Bakkali, 39, was taking home £226.79 for a 42-hour week when he says he was sacked after three months’ probation. The reason, he says, is that he found grounds to ticket only five or six cars “legally” in a typical day, rather than the ten or more he says his superiors expected. “If I wanted to survive, to get a permanent job, I was told I’d have to bring in at least ten tickets no matter how,” he says with ill-disguised contempt. The scams, he says, ranged from falsely claiming that bays had been suspended to hand-issuing deliberately mistimed tickets after claiming his computer was down. “I told them, I can’t do that. I said I believed in God. I asked my supervisors, ‘How do you sleep? Do you lie there dreaming about ticketing cars all night?’”
Camden council rejects his allegations, and, as a clearly disaffected former employee of NCP, the council’s parking contractor, Bakkali is by no means neutral. He readily accepts that he bears grudges against NCP, whose management, he says, refused to hear his complaints and promoted supervisors who openly broke the rules. Yet his claims – of attendants falsifying observation times, issuing “ghost” tickets when cars were not present, dishonestly claiming tyres were outside parking bays – have all been made by other London parking attendants (PAs) in recent months. At stake is public confidence in the entire system of parking enforcement.
“You have to ask why drivers hate the PAs,” Bakkali reflects as he crosses into Prince Arthur Road, a favourite spot, he explains, for colleagues to hide before pouncing on cars left for three minutes at school pick-up time. “How many people have spoken out before me? You have to ask why the council doesn’t want PAs to help the drivers. You might call it cheating, but I call it stealing.” He shakes his head and whispers disapprovingly. “It’s money, isn’t it? Money talks.”
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .
Wednesday, 3.20pm: Abdallah Bakkali, a North London parking attendant until last May, shuffles nervously down Hampstead High Street explaining the “tricks” he says he was taught here for issuing what he nonchalantly calls “dodgy tickets”.
“I was told to give tickets no matter how legally a car was parked,” Bakkali says with a disapproving frown, his greying ponytail and wispy beard incongruous among the impeccably groomed ladies strolling uphill towards Agnès b. “If a driver’s got a disabled badge, you write that there’s no badge. If there’s a visitor’s permit, sometimes you ignore it – it's a question of ‘Who’s going to believe the driver?’ And if you ask me if you can park for five minutes to collect someone, I’d be expected to say OK – and then ticket you once you’ve gone. He doesn’t have your name, the thinking goes, so what’s he going to do?”
Bakkali, 39, was taking home £226.79 for a 42-hour week when he says he was sacked after three months’ probation. The reason, he says, is that he found grounds to ticket only five or six cars “legally” in a typical day, rather than the ten or more he says his superiors expected. “If I wanted to survive, to get a permanent job, I was told I’d have to bring in at least ten tickets no matter how,” he says with ill-disguised contempt. The scams, he says, ranged from falsely claiming that bays had been suspended to hand-issuing deliberately mistimed tickets after claiming his computer was down. “I told them, I can’t do that. I said I believed in God. I asked my supervisors, ‘How do you sleep? Do you lie there dreaming about ticketing cars all night?’”
Camden council rejects his allegations, and, as a clearly disaffected former employee of NCP, the council’s parking contractor, Bakkali is by no means neutral. He readily accepts that he bears grudges against NCP, whose management, he says, refused to hear his complaints and promoted supervisors who openly broke the rules. Yet his claims – of attendants falsifying observation times, issuing “ghost” tickets when cars were not present, dishonestly claiming tyres were outside parking bays – have all been made by other London parking attendants (PAs) in recent months. At stake is public confidence in the entire system of parking enforcement.
“You have to ask why drivers hate the PAs,” Bakkali reflects as he crosses into Prince Arthur Road, a favourite spot, he explains, for colleagues to hide before pouncing on cars left for three minutes at school pick-up time. “How many people have spoken out before me? You have to ask why the council doesn’t want PAs to help the drivers. You might call it cheating, but I call it stealing.” He shakes his head and whispers disapprovingly. “It’s money, isn’t it? Money talks.”
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .
posted by David Rowan at Saturday, February 11, 2006
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