We are in The News (Parking News) that is

People who know me well will know that I have a passion for improving performance in the public sector. Having worked for and local government all my working life I have had the privilege to work with some extremely talented and committed people and been part of some truly remarkable projects that have transformed service delivery for the public AND reduced the cost of providing these services.

So I get somewhat annoyed when the public sector is lambasted by Ministers and others as being something they are not. Take the recent 'spat' in the national and local press about Parking Enforcement.

'Council transport leader calls for ‘ignorant’ Eric Pickles to be sacked’

So ran yet another headline in the topical debate about the amount of revenue raised by local authorities from parking enforcement. Readers of Parking News know the difference between parking on the public highway and private land, can articulate why their council is operating a ‘surplus’, and can place their parking enforcement regime within the context of an overall strategic plan. But the (often inaccurate) sensationalism continues around this much debated and disputed function of local government. Could this be due, in part at least, to a lack of transparency on the part of Local Authorities involved in Parking Enforcement?

 It was this thought that caused us to start exploring the collection figures for PCNs in 2010 (after another public outcry over surpluses). We soon discovered that there were only a few local authorities that were publishing this information. The PATROL annual report awards of 2009 was our starting point and these annual awards have encouraged local authorities to publish their reports on their web sites. But these are still not compulsory and are hard to interpret easily. The lack of clear, comparable information does not help either the local authority, or the industry in general, present a cohesive picture to those who are interested. It is also difficult for a Council Tax payer to see whether their local authority is providing good value for money compared to other similar local authorities. 

 With the intention to improve transparency and accountability we submitted Freedom of Information requests to all local authorities and partnerships and received the overwhelming cooperation of the councils in complying with the FOI provisions. Only 1 local authority refused the request on the grounds of cost.

 

Some of the findings of this survey (see below) supported our view that although information was becoming more freely available it was still difficult and costly (both to the local authorities and empirical) to obtain this information. We believe that making this information freely available to local authorities will enable them to review their own performance against their comparative ‘peer group’ as well as demonstrate to the public that there is nothing being hidden from them and that the Council isn’t using their PCN income to ‘prop up the council tax’

 This is an extract from an article that will be published in the November edition of Parking News, further details of which can be found on the British Parking Association web site

 Some results of our survey last year:

Of the local authorities that responded we have summarised as follows:

	Collected	Cancelled	Outstanding
Range	28% to 90%	1.6% to 35%	1% to 40%
Average	75%	15%	10%

  Some of the conclusions drawn from the data substantiates our previous findings

• Most local authorities do not publish this information is a readily accessible format
• The transparency required to compare local authority performance is not available
• Some local authorities did not appear to keep meaningful management information about PCNs.
• Collection rates of 75% were considered ‘the norm’:

We continue to collect this information for last year and will be publishing our findings later in the year.