Parking Complaints Online

Lambeth claims "Financial incentives removed from parking contract"

"Financial incentives removed from parking contract"

Councillor Steve Reed, Leader of the London Borough of Lambeth, explains how the authority has tackled the issue of removing financial incentives from its parking scheme.

“ In 2003, Lambeth Council signed a new contract with its parking contractor, Control Plus. The contract included thresholds that reduced the contractor’s income if specified levels of ticketing were not met.

Arguably, these operated as incentives to issue more tickets.  Appeals against unfair tickets shot up by 71 per cent in a matter of weeks. The press was full of lurid stories about over zealous ticketing and claims that parking attendants were under pressure to meet targets and maximise the contractor’s income. 

By the time of the council elections in May, parking had become a key is in several marginal wards. All the political parties offered new approaches to parking enforcement. Our preference was to renegotiate the contract immediately to remove the financial incentives. 

Following our election win, councillors confronted sceptical town hall officers with the unwelcome news that we were serious about renegotiating the contract. Without a precedent, Lambeth’s transport staff were going to have to break new ground.  Following a clear political steer, officers moved fast and completed negotiations within months. 

By October, the council was ready to announce a new contract that would no longer rely on financial incentives. In an attempt to simplify the contract, the 21 areas of activity previously monitored have been reduced to just nine.”

The full article can be accessed by using this link to the IDeA website

http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=5474686

Parking Complaints Online will be asking a number of questions both to the Council and to the contractor. We hope to highlight any innovative aspects of the new contract but in the absence of hard information on contract volumes and enforcement numbers, the Council’s decision seems worthy of further consideration. The details of the contract are unlikely to be withheld on grounds of commercial confidence. Readers are invited to submit questions. We will add any queries that you may have to our own list of questions.

Do you model?

How to avoid being shocked with traffic congestion at Christmas

In an ideal world, parking managers would be able to run their departments in a way that enables their customers to view them as a helpful resource. Most responsible motorists want to find parking, save time and money and leave the area as soon as they can. The rush for Christmas shopping used to start in early December. Then shoppers responded to the increasing congestion in our towns and cities and noting the declining availability of parking, people decided to start their shopping earlier and one started to see congestion in mid-November. This year, some shopping areas have seen parking queues in October. Shoppers see parking services providers as a invisible service. They are nowhere to be seen.

This leads one to a second point. Shoppers see their councils in terms of their willingness to be active service providers. They want to see their council wanting to listen to them. They want to see their parking managers considering the shoppers’ best interest at this busy time of the year. However, preparation for this year’s Christmas shopping congestion should have started three Christmases ago.

Most Parking ‘Service Plans’ are not only linear, they are written by engineers for implementation by engineers. Most service plans provide technical solutions whilst maintaining as much of the ‘status quo’ as possible. The real blockages are not engineers though. It’s the policy makers.

Parking services need strategic business modelling that allow them to distinguish between expansion and growth. Short-run incrementals for expansion can be funded from current resources and from improvements in productivity or cashflow. Growth can only come with strategic investment. The business model selects 4-6 variables and allows policy makers to see the impact of this type of challenge.

There is one problem, though. Policy makers are normally politicians. The business model invariably throws up a few harsh realities. A parking manager should be able to say, “ This problem can be solved with an investment of say, £1 million. However, for services to improve, policy makers need to find £20 million over five years”. Managers generally prefer not to provide accurate modelling forecasts to policy makers, who in turn would not want to concede that for a London borough’s traffic congestion to ease, for example, it is going to cost them £20 million. Apart from the old ‘hostage to fortune’ explanation, managers like to be safe in their jobs. Policy makers also want to remain in their roles as long as possible.

However, in the course of inspection work for the Audit Commission, I have had the privilege of meeting at least one executive director of a major local authority, who said, “ Yes, I do have a business model, but it is secret”. Only he knew the real scale of investment required to solve his council’s parking problem.