Parking tickets: quality not quantity says report

University study highlights best practices

By PH Staff / Wednesday, 13 July 2005 / Loading comments

Parking quality not quantity

Is parking a problem where you are? It is in most towns around the country -- and part of it is down to unprofessional and over-zealous parking attendants, according to a new study.

A report from the University of Birmingham said that councils ought to add quality to the list of criteria for parking regulation enforcement policies, as opposed to just quantity. They should put customer service and public accountability at the heart of enforcement regimes, and need also to improve their recruitment practices for parking attendants, said the report.

The report came out of a six-month research project to investigate the very best practices in council-run parking enforcement by a team from Birmingham University's Institute of Local Government Studies.

Six local authorities were nominated as top parking places in terms of their policies and practices:

Winchester
Hammersmith and Fulham
Manchester
Cambridge
Weymouth and Portland
Sunderland.

Professionalism and commitment to customer service are part of the routine in other areas such as planning, environmental health and licensing -- so why not parking, argued the report. This could include more face-to-face customer service desks, prompter responses to correspondence and higher standards of communication generally. They would make a big difference for motorists wishing to challenge the actions of their elected representatives.

More specifically, the report said that councils could improve recruitment and retention practices for parking attendants, with the aim of improving professionalism. Right now, the emphasis is on number of tickets issued. Instead they ought to look at quality in parking enforcement, with one solution mooted being to join up parking enforcement with other areas of street management. This could include developing teams of multi-functional street wardens to deal with issues in addition to parking tickets, such as