Academics Call for Quality, not Quantity, in Parking Enforcement Regimes

Reported in the North East press. Sunderland Echo did, however repeat our observation that it was hardly an 'independent' report when it had been commissioned by NCP.
In talking to the Professor he did state that they had not cheked whether Sunderland Council had correctly implemented the necessary Traffic Orders and had not checked the validity of the street signs and notices.
It may transpire that Professor Raine may need to come back to Sunderland and write another report should it be shown that the Controlled Parking Zone for the city centre does not exist.

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release: 5 July 2005

Academics Call for Quality, not Quantity, in Parking Enforcement Regimes

An independent report launched by the University of Birmingham today [Tuesday 5 July] urges local authorities to put customer service and public accountability at the heart of their parking enforcement regimes in order to address the growing public discontent that is so widely reported in the media.

This timely report argues that councils should apply to parking enforcement the same standards of professionalism and commitment to customer service that they now routinely practice in other regulatory areas such as planning, environmental health and licensing.

Simple improvements such as more face-to-face customer service desks, prompter responses to correspondence and higher standards of communication generally would make a big difference for many motorists wishing to challenge the councils’ actions.

Councils, and their contractors, should also improve their recruitment and retention practices for parking attendants to build up professionalism. The emphasis should be on encouraging quality in parking enforcement by attendants rather than the quantity of tickets issued. One solution is to join up parking enforcement with other street management functions, by developing teams of multi-functional street wardens to deal with issues such as graffiti, fly-tipping, abandoned vehicles, defects in street lighting, and other factors as well as parking infringements - this would encourage parking attendants to take more pride in their role.

A team from the University’s Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) carried out the six-month research project to investigate the very best practices in council-run parking enforcement. Six authorities were identified and nominated by peers as demonstrating high quality practices: Winchester; Hammersmith and Fulham; Manchester; Cambridge; Weymouth and Portland; and Sunderland.

Since the Road Traffic Act 1991, all London Boroughs and more than 100 other local authorities have taken on responsibility for parking enforcement from the police – many using private contractors for the front-line parking attendant work. Problems have often arisen where contracts have based payments on the numbers of tickets issued, resulting in zealous ticketing. The better way, as demonstrated in Manchester and Sunderland, is for contracts to incentivise ‘correct ticketing’ and the minimisation of enforcement decisions that end up becoming the subject of appeals.

Councils also need to raise their standards in dealing with appeals against tickets issued, with the report suggesting that local authority legal departments play a more prominent role in the process, to increase professionalism. Last year some 45% of appeals made by motorists to the independent parking adjudicators were allowed.

Finally, the report provides councils with a self-assessment method for evaluating the quality of their parking enforcement regimes, which takes account of the perceptions of local residents, businesses and motorists on the subject as well as quantitative and technical measures of performance.

Professor John Raine of the Institute of Local Government Studies, and lead investigator on the study, said: “In our analysis, high quality in parking enforcement is achieved when there is both good compliance with the parking regulations and also public support. Too often councils have been pursuing rigorous enforcement without that vital ingredient of public support. There is much more that can be done to improve communication and build public confidence in the purposes and integrity of the process.

“We hope that local authorities will use the self-assessment method that we have devised in the report to evaluate their current parking regimes and identify the priorities for improvement in their particular areas. The six good-practice councils that were examined in some detail in the study provide many valuable lessons for other local authorities and contractors, and we hope that the research hastens the pace of change for the better.”

Commenting on the report’s findings, NCP Chief Executive Bob Macnaughton, who sponsored the report, said: “NCP welcomes this move to drive the industry forward by defining quality and raising standards in parking enforcement. NCP supports national standards of excellence and we hope that the best practice set out in this report will soon become normal practice all over the country.”

ENDS
Notes to Editors:
The report, entitled Local Authority Parking Enforcement: Defining Quality – Raising Standards, by John W Raine, Eileen Dunstan and Theresa Alexandra Parry from the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Local Government Studies, is priced £25 and is available from The Publications Unit, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT

The report was commissioned and sponsored by NCP.

The British Parking Association (BPA) has commissioned a parallel review of the whole policy and legal framework for decriminalised parking enforcement, which is being undertaken by Richard Childs QPM and which is to be launched later this month.

Parking Enforcement Facts:
Local authorities were given powers to undertake their own parking enforcement measures under the Road Traffic Act 1991.

The 33 London boroughs were first to introduce their own parking enforcement measures in 1995, and since then the number of other authorities following suit across England and Wales has been steadily rising.

Some councils run their own in-house parking enforcement services while others use private contractors – the largest companies being: NCP; ACPOA; Control Plus; and Legion Parking.

The School of Public Policy
The University of Birmingham’s School of Public Policy is the largest centre for the applied study of public policy and management in Europe with more than one hundred academic staff from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. The School is continually engaged with practitioners in the public and voluntary sectors at local, regional, national, and international levels, operating in the vanguard of research on the development of public services. The School wins more commissioned social science research from central and local government and the health service than any other university in the UK. Five specialist departments make up the School, one of which is the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV), where the particular specialism is local governance and public service management. Throughout its forty-year history, the Institute has been playing a leading role in shaping policy in local government and in developing management practice in local authorities.

The report’s authors
John Raine is Professor of Management in Criminal Justice and Director of the School of Public Policy Graduate School. He has some twenty-five years of’ experience in research and consultancy on judicial systems, local government and public management. He is author of three books and numerous articles on aspects of public management and the administration of justice. He has recently completed a research project on the users’ perspective of the National Parking Adjudication Service and has completed previous studies on parking enforcement for the Lord Chancellor’s Department and the London Parking Appeals Service.

Eileen Dunstan is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Local Government Studies, School of Public Policy. She has worked on a wide variety of public policy research projects. Her previous work with John Raine has included, a study of the enforcement of financial penalties in Magistrates’ Courts in England and Wales for the Home Office, the impact of the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) on the police use of fingerprint evidence (with Morgan, Harris, Burrows), a review of Restorative Justice intervention for the Youth Justice Board and, most recently, a review of the National Parking Appeals Service.

Theresa Alexandra Parry is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, deputy director and programme manager for MSc programmes in clinical neuropsychiatry and mental health for older adults respectively. Originally a biochemist, she then trained as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1999. She joined the University in 2001, and for three years worked as a policy analyst for the West Midlands Local Criminal Justice Board. Previously she has lectured in law at Stratford on Avon College and for the Open University.

Further information:
Rachel Robson – Press Officer, University of Birmingham
tel: 0121 414 6681 / mob: 07789 921165 / email: r.a.robson@bham.ac.uk