Civil Parking Enforcement

As the holiday period is upon us, a number of our clients are doing the sensible thing and spending more time with their friends and families. At e-mpirical we are using the time to start planning our Annual Survey of Parking Enforcement statistics. We have carried out this survey for two years with the aim to provide transparency of the collection performance of local councils and counter balance the sometimes one sided view put about by the popular press. However, we have so far been unable to persuade councils to provide this information in a simple standard format. Most councils want to treat our requests as Freedom of Information Requests and incur the overhead of this process. Others direct us to their Parking Reports on their web site, where again the data is not presented in a standard format. If you have any ideas about how to encourage this exchange of what should be publicly available data please join me in the debate at our blog http://e-mpirical.blogspot.co.uk/

Government Publishes Consultation on Local Authority Parking

Every local authority should publish an annual parking report to show precisely where their parking revenues come from and how any income is being used, says the Transport Committee.

At long last, maybe we will see some teeth in this that will encourage the transparency we have been advocating. see our article in Parking News November 2013 edition

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.

Parking Enforcement in the UK

Our work on collecting information about #parkingenforcment in the UK public sector continues. Nearly half of the councils have responded so far.
Most councils have responded to our FOI requests in the statutory timescales, but there are still a few to go!

Lack of data sharing allows drivers to escape speeding points

Now here's another example of poor data sharing.... If you get a speeding ticket and get offered Speed Awareness Training as an option you should only be able to do this once in three years.

Guess what, if you get the tickets in different areas of the country (usually run on County boundaries).... they don't talk to each other so you can get away with taking the course more than once and avoid the penalty points.

Rather a topical subject today methinks.

Full story here

Well the blotter is back!

I haven't been posting on the blog for sometime now and there are a couple of reasons. But now I'm back I will share them with you and promise that I will post more regularly.
Firstly, my attention has been elsewhere i.e. Twitter and Facebook and secondly I have been trying to work out how Google + might fit into our marketing activities.
Hootsuite has proven a great help in getting all of my 'stuff' together, but working out how Google expect Blogs and Google+ pages interact has been a little harder for me.

I think I have sorted this now and you blog followers might see more of me in future.

BTW, one of the things that I discovered in my journey is that you can't lie on Social Media. (?) What I mean is that you can't post articles in retrospect and catch up! Still who wants to read old news and comment?

So I hope you will find my renaissance on Blogger helpful to you.

My two main 'crusades' this year are going to be to continue my campaign to get the public sector sharing data and my new focus will be on parking enforcement (which would also benefit from sharing data, but also needs a good dose of 'the efficiency pill'

CCTV ANPR and all that bad press!

The Enforcement Summit at Chelsea Football Club yesterday saw parking professionals from the UK debate many of the topical issues in parking. Hot topic was CCTV and the press attitude to 'Spy Cars' This web site caught my attention. http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/ Read all about the 'Beast of Basildon'. Is a Smart Car fitted with CCTV and ANPR