Parking Complaints Online

Council starts a process of intimidation

Leeds City Council's parking services is one of the 'pilot' departments selected by Parking Complaints Online for objective analysis and for reporting of service efficiencies which may impact on customers' understanding of service benefits. However, the Council has sent in this response:

" We were rather taken aback by your website suggestion that Leeds is party to your work. We were not consulted upon this and do not support such things without fully evaluating the consequences.  We do have a procedure for dealing with parking complaints - any enquiries can be sent to our offices in Leeds, or can be e mailed to [email protected] 

It is inappropriate to include Members' contact details on any such site as they are able to access such information upon request and may also change responsibilities during their term of office. Due to volumes and computer server handling capacities in Leeds, e mails received at personal e mail addresses concerning representations or appeals will not be responded to. These should be addressed to the parking services e mail account.

I have been asked to request that you remove Leeds' personal contact details from your site forthwith and request that your site removes Leeds from the group system as we shall not be responding to this site unless we have considered the implications/ramifications previously.   

Please confirm that you have removed our references"

Parking Complaints Online makes an independent and objective selection of Council services and does not seek collaboration from any specific council service that is of interest to us. That would compromise our objectivity and independence. We wish to emphasise that we do not provide Members', staffs' and managers' contacts in the text of the weblog.

We leave the readers of this blog to judge Leeds City Council's response for themselves.

Hospitals under attack

Hospital parking policies under serious scrutiny

It started with a trickle of complaints in the UK media but now there is a possibility that a major campaign is likely to start against the governing bodies of hospitals, normally the  Primary Care Trusts, (PCTs).

It would seem that here is a campaign that may be looking for a leader!

Hospitals have been quite ruthless in enforcing parking tariffs. Media reports also highlight the following cases of harsh treatment of patients and their families:

• Cancer and other long-term patients who visit clinics for treatment on a regular basis
• Carers and families of long-term patients who have to pay standard parking charges for several weeks and months
• Out-patients seeking treatment for long periods.

In all cases, the PCTs appear to have disregarded pleas from parking users to take special circumstances into account. Parking Complaints Online will attempt to get accurate information from PCT accountants.

We need to know many facts about this situation but please, dont hold your breath or say 'aaah'. Patients see these charges as the additional costs of being ill. They also have to pay higher tariffs for telephones and in one example the incoming calls on a hospital telephone network cost more than the outgoing calls!

Parking Complaints Online