Defeat for in-house parking

Sunderland Echo
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
By Marissa Carruthers

Handing parking powers back to Sunderland Council was compared to putting "King Herod in charge of a nursery" at a meeting last night.
Last month, Sunderland City Council unanimously backed a decision to seize back control of on-street parking after a shocking TV documentary.
The undercover Inside Out programme showed city parking attendants making racist remarks and mocking disabled drivers.
They were also heard claiming that they had "tortured" drivers on Villette Road, caused criminal damage to vehicles and accepted drinks in return for not issuing parking tickets.
Five employees were sacked after an investigation.
But some councillors slammed the decision to take parking enforcement back under council control, and yesterday Conservative Councillors Peter Wood, Paul Maddison and Independent Michael Tansey used the authority's calling-in powers to challenge the decision.
Coun Wood said: "We have had two special meetings relating to parking in a 12-month period. Questions have been raised about whether yellow lines are in the right place and whether notices have the right information on them.
"Those problems, in my view, are really the result of serious failings within the council's own directorate of development and regeneration yet the cabinet is seriously considering giving the directorate more responsibility for parking in the city.
"My suggestion is that giving more responsibility to the directorate is like putting King Herod in charge of a nursery."
He added: "If NCP is no longer appropriate to run on-street parking, why are they okay to retain off-street parking?"
He suggested the council should have handed on-street parking over to another organisation to "restore public confidence" in the system.
But the majority of members of the council's environmental and planning review committee backed the bid to take on on-street parking in spite of these fears.
Coun Les Scott said: "I think the decision by the cabinet to bring parking back in-house was measured, considered and it was the right thing to do."
He said he felt the public felt most "comfortable" with the council seizing control of on-street parking.
The council contracted out parking enforcement in the city to NCP in 2003 when the responsibility was taken from the police and given to the council