SUSPENDED

Five parking attendants off the streets in 'racism' probe
Sunderland Echo
Wednesday October 4, 2006
By Craig Thompson and Jeremy Wicking

Five parking attendants have been suspended after NCP staff in Sunderland were filmed making racist comments and cracking jokes about disabled people.
The workers have been removed from their positions while a full investigation into the remarks gets underway.
In an undercover report for the BBC's Inside Out programme, one attendant even described slashing a man's tyres after he complained.
Amid union calls for parking enforcement to be brought back under council control, and condemnation from all sectors of the community, the controversy appears to be rolling on.
NCP, whose staff enforce parking rules for Sunderland Council, took a temporary measure to withdraw some staff from parts of the city after Monday's programme led to verbal abuse.
A spokesman for the organisation said: "This was for their own personal safety. Five workers have now been suspended from their posts and an investigation has now been launched."
Coun Bryan Charlton, who has responsibility for community cohesion in Sunderland, said: "The council and its partners are as shocked as everyone else and has taken immediate action including ensuring that NCP acts swiftly and decisively to redress the situation and make appropriate retribution to the damage caused by the actions of some of its employees.
"These views of a tiny minority are not representative of parking attendants in the city. We would urge people to be supportive of the vast majority of attendants going about their duties and providing an important service to the city."
NCP took over parking enforcement in Sunderland from the council in 2003.
Coun Charlton added: "This recent episode is hugely regrettable but needs to be kept in proportion.
"Many people in Sunderland have worked very hard over the past few years to promote good relations between people from different backgrounds.
"Unions are urging the council to take parking enforcement "in-house".
Council leader Bob Symonds has already ordered an immediate review of the three-year-old contract, which could lead to it being taken over by the council, a new company brought in or a shake-up at NCP in Sunderland.
Conservative opposition leader Coun Peter Wood said the programme had raised fresh issues about parking in Sunderland which have come after hundreds of traffic rules and regulations were exposed as being wrong.
He said the "drip, drip" of allegations over parking was harming sensible enforcement in the city and, given the council's track record on other traffic matters, he would have major doubts if it was taken in-house.
The council and NCP have been partners in ticketing since taking over from Northumbria Police and more than £1.8million has been collected in fines.

Comments shock city businesses
BUSINESSMEN from across Sunderland have spoken of their shock at hearing the comments of city parking attendants.
Asif Khan, 33, of Ashbrooke, said: "The comments from the people in the programme have let the rest of the community down, and I'm sure that these were just a few bulldogs."
The comments also showed up the wider ignorance of the NCP parking attendants, as the majority of the ethnic community in Sunderland have a Bangladeshi background and are not from Pakistan.
Mr Khan said that in Urdu, the main language of Pakistan, "Paki"means clean and "stan" is land, a fact that many British people would not know.
He said: "I was completely horrified at the comments. They should all be sacked on the spot and they're ruining the reputation of the rest of the community of Sunderland, who I know are not like this."
A file on the comments has been sent to Northumbria Police.
Peter Darke, who runs a bike shop in the city centre, said many people had been put off coming to do their shopping in Sunderland because of the parking attendants.
He said: "Things were much better when the police and council were running things."

'Two sets of parking rules for same street'
AN ASTONISHED independent parking adjudicator heard there were two sets of traffic rules for the same stretch of street.
The claim came in a tribunal at which parking protester Neil Herron was appealing against 26 penalty tickets he has deliberately collected around Sunderland.
Mr Herron used the public hearing, at Sunderland Central Library to bring up flaws which he claims could bring down the entire parking regime in the city.
On one road, Frederick Street, the council admitted it had two parking orders imposed – one imposing "no waiting" restrictions, while the other made provision for parking bays.
Adjudicator Andrew Keenan said that he would "need a lot of convincing" that two traffic orders could cover the same area.
He told Stephen Sauvain, a barrister acting for the council,: "I'm asking what does the Traffic Regulation Order say – parking spaces or no waiting? You're saying 'it's both actually'. How can motorists know what's going on?"
He added that if correct markings had not been used throughout the city's controlled parking zones then this could invalidate the whole zone, and had done in other adjudications.
Mr Herron went on to claim that a number of other streets in Sunderland had been signed and marked incorrectly and were subject to conflicting traffic regulations.
He said: "It seems the whole thing is a complete shambles. The motoring public in Sunderland deserve better than this."
But Mr Sauvain QC said Mr Herron had failed to produce evidence to suggest that road markings and signage were incorrect.
After the hearing, Mr Keenan said that he would consider the appeal carefully and write to the two parties to inform them of his decision, adding: "I will need to spend a considerable amount of time on this."
If Mr Herron wins his appeal, he claims the decision could cause the collapse of parking orders in Sunderland and lead to penalty ticket refunds for hundreds of motorists. He faces paying the fines should he lose.
04 October 2006