Parking Complaints Online

A Change of Direction

Review: How can we best continue to promote customer service?

In keeping with the conclusions in the last post, Parking Complaints Online is making further changes to its programme of generating and reporting the critical debate that we see is linked to our aim of promoting customer service in parking services operations.

We will not name any councils, unless they have been named by other sources such as the Press or where they have made public announcements themselves. In the main, where specific references are made, they will know who the comments are aimed at. This blog is not about winning or losing. It is definitely not about naming and shaming. The experience of the last few weeks suggests that we have to change our approach and where specific information is needed to support an argument, we will look at committee reports, websites and reports of various Government agencies.

Councils Fail to Respond

Confirming the Expected: Councils ignore our requests for information...

'Parking Complaints' has been featuring various issues relating to customer service during the last few weeks.

• We have asked specific questions and sought further information from various councils.
• We predicted that the least we could expect was that our requests for information would be supported.
• We also hoped that where councils are named in connection with a specific problem, they would find it in their own best interest to supply accurate information.
• We had hoped that we could report on achievements as well as failures.

We were mostly wrong! Council-run parking services have ignored our requests for information and it has not made any difference whether we have written to senior managers or councillors. They have been uniquely cooperative with each other in ignoring our questions.

The good news for us is that we will continue with our mission and raise critical issues for councils to examine and respond where necessary.

The bad news for council customers is that there will be no answers that we can provide to questions that affect them.

It remains to be seen whether councils will respond at all.

However, these observations raise an important question: do councils take online media seriously? Experience shows that where local newspapers pick up stories on a regular basis, councils tend to be more responsive to the local Press. After all, some of the voters read the same papers. Where the national Press picks up an issue, the affected council does not always take them seriously.

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

Government promises action on parking

Top Ten Challenges for Government

While we await information on the Government's proposals to address parking complaints, we present our top ten recommendations for Government to consider and resolve the national parking problem.

1. Avoid the pitfalls of labelling the problem: For many people parking is an environmental management problem. For others parking is a transport planning problem. Many see it as a traffic management issue, with health and safety implications. For us it is best dealt with as a demand management problem. There are fewer places to park and too many drivers looking for parking. It is a management problem requiring action to deal with demand and supply factors.
2. Ask for true cost indicators: The analysis in the foregoing post shows that finance directors of council services need to understand their real bottom line for parking services and also, they must muster the courage to engage local politicians in understanding the cost structure.
3. Install a relevant operating culture: Parking services managers try to run the service on business lines but the real culture of management reflects their public service ethos. Other parking managers resent the discipline of a business-led service culture and do not want to be accountable for service failures.
4. Look into competition and procurement: Where parking enforcement contracts are outsourced to private firms, popular mythology suggests that there are only a few parking enforcement contractors, but also that they 'talk' to each other. One implication of the contractors' response to outsourcing of tenders seems to be that it is they who are able to demand the price and output criteria of their choice rather than the commissioners of the contracts- the councils who should set prices and standards for delivery.
5. Review enforcement rates: Is the parking ticket a 'tax' or a 'penalty' charge? There is a need to look into pricing policies. Should a council with high traffic volumes charge a high rate when the density of traffic congestion means that their operating costs per vehicle may be lower? These notions need to be challenged and the Government must look into pricing policies.
6. Provide clear direction of how councils can use parking surpluses: Most parking departments report healthy operating surpluses even when they are calculated by using basic accounting principles. While there is some guidance on how councils can use the surplus, it would appear that some councils are more creative in the interpretation of guidance than others.
7. Introduce mandatory learning and skills qualifications: This might sound harsh at the outset but there is no career structure in parking services. Entrants to the service come in with variable qualifications to work on diverse parking systems and procedures which are often arbitrarily designed. There is a need for a structured training and development programme which should reward merit and accuracy based on knowledge and not loyalty. The distinct lack of a policy of reward based on investment in standards for staffing results in staff turnover. The only solution available to some councils is to recruit agency staff who bring in a different set of problems.
8. Introduce new legislation to deal with non-payment: The present procedures for collection are more punitive and costly than parking managers seem to realise. When parking authorities deal with non-payment by using current appeals procedures, the true cost of recovery is not known to the council ( refer to item 2 above) on the one hand and the real cost to the customer can be punitive. It is not unknown for a defaulter to end up paying £500 for a £40 parking 'fine'. Legislation is needed to deal with serial defaulters who bump up the cost of recovery to such an extent that people who contravene parking regulations on rare occasions end up carrying the burden for others.
9. Introduce new registration requirements for imported or visitors' vehicles: It is well known that people from European countries regularly contravene UK parking laws and then go back to their well protected obscurity. The Government has to bring new legislation to recover charges from them as well as everyone else.
10. Introduce more congestion charging zones: Congestion charging has been seen as a local prerogative for councils. Regional council 'affiliations' and networks do not seem to work where councils need to talk to each other and produce regional policy mandates.

The overall result of some of these challenges is that where local providers are failing their customers, there is no form of accountability to a national watchdog. It is not clear whether the Audit Commission is going to inspect parking services as a core service. Reviews of reports from previous inspection regimes suggest that the standards for judgment have been variable.

Finally it seems that self-regulation and self management at local level has failed in many areas. There is little choice other than to introduce generic regulation that is provided in the context of a national standard for parking enforcement and recovery of penalty charges. Our 'demand management' model provides the relevant 'business' discipline and also deals with variable policies which emanate from different councils. Further insight into the demand management approach can be gained by examining our 'parking market' model. Please see posting no 4.

Government Promises Action

New parking proposals are eagerly awaited.

During the last two weeks, Government departments have taken an interest in addressing the critical issues relating to parking. Government departments seem to have taken a high profile stance in reassuring customers about their dissatisfaction with parking services.

A working group appears to have been formed and given the task to propose a number of changes in order to address customer complaints. This is welcome but we hope that that they do not raise expectations that the councils and other parking providers may find difficult to deliver.

What is wrong with parking? Every customer does not reject enforcement. Most members of the public recognise the right of parking authorities to take corrective action. Many of the more informed customers also know that parking providers are responsible for a wide range activities that help to put the narrow perception of enforcement, that is when contraventions take place, into perspective.

Looking at the big picture, parking providers have not challenged their assumptions relating to their services. Parking managers are normally, reasonably good at talking to their peers and staff although the quality and impact of internal communication may be a problem in itself. Parking providers are not good at communicating parking policies and service aims to customers. Invariably, parking communications are developed by engineers, bureaucrats, ex-police and armed forces personnel who lack the sensitivity of predicting customer objections to the communications that they generate.

Parking departments have not developed empathy with customers and local authority PR teams or professional communicators have not been used fully to justify their plans and actions. Many Councils are still the Henry Fords of Parking. Customers choice has not always been addressed and users have to comply to instructions and directives or not use the service at all.

Parking providers are also very defensive, having being driven to adopt defensive positions by regular exposure to many aspects of their work by customers and the media. An irate customer is seen as a problem and not as the provider of feedback to what might emerge as systemic failures in their operations. We have said here before that the focus of attention is on the 'micro-problem' that is, why did a given parking attendant issue a disputed ticket when the focus should be evaluation of operational and strategic plans, resourcing options, investment in systems, skills development and management training to re-skill the parking services teams. In other words, the management of complaints becomes a firefighting exercise. Agencies which learn from their complaints system do not become immune to the volume of complaints. They analyse their complaints and track them backwards to specific locations and drivers. Then they take action to stem the complaints.

Parking services are generally under-funded relative to the expectations for these services to manage traffic flows and congestion, address the traffic bottlenecks on a regular basis and to provide the more static solutions such the design and implementation of parking zones for customers. It would be most illuminating to see which parking departments have a development plan with business options - based on accurate costing of services, projections to show challenging options, valuation of assets and the management of cash flow. In most cases, top managements deprive parking managers of internal expertise in accounting and IT systems. The result, in many cases has been that parking managers have been driven to 'work in the dark'. They do not know their operating costs and surpluses on a regular basis, if at all.

The public is suspicious of the motives of parking services. The charge that the public makes is that parking depertments are the 'money machines' for councils. Invariably top managements and local political leadership respond to this charge by ignoring it. This is another symptomatic failure in communication. On the average, London boroughs will generate parking revenues in the region of £5 million to £15 million every year, if the larger councils such as Westminster are excluded from this analysis. There is no information on the amount of money that councils actually reinvest to improve and upgrade their parking services. There is no information made available to sustain a potential argument that in effect most parking services are probably run at a loss, when the fixed costs of their operations such as cost of buildings and signage is taken into account. The actual cost incidence is recorded in several different accounts and it appears that very few managers or their accounting advisers have actually ever understood their bottom line. It would not be surprising if many managers did not actually know of the fixed cost of assets. How much does a multi-story car park actually cost to run? What is its saleable value? More important, what is the cost of capital that service managers take for granted? Where a council borrows money and pays interest charges, the real cost of running services must reflect the true cost of capital.

The next post continues this analysis.

What Customers Expect from a Good Parking Service

What Parking Customers Expect from a Good Service

This list of customer expectations has been developed for parking authorities after many years of working with various clients and by using published sources. The wording of the list reflects the reporting language used for customer feedback.

A future post will look at this list from the point of view of the customer. How does the customer interpret this list? How do these issues connect with the customer?

A Good Parking Service....

1.      Provides an attractive service environment to ensure high levels of public satisfaction

2.      Provides a single point of contact to resolve all parking related issues

3.      Runs a flexible service which deals with urgent issues

4.      Carries out well planned and efficient delivery of maintenance work and improvement projects in car parks and street parking

5.      Implements a clear customer service policy with competent and friendly staff

6.      Operates a responsive fault reporting system for parking facilities, meters, lighting

7.      Makes a positive impact on quality of life of residents through customer care

8.      Offers clarity on future aims of the parking as a responsive service

9.      Creates access to services for people from diverse backgrounds

10.  Deals with congestion on roads caused by traffic, abandoned vehicles and traders

11.  Consults and engages customers regularly on improvement planning

12.  Provides access to electronic means to report defects and to obtain information

13.  Runs an efficient system for processing insurance claims made by customers

14.  Runs a rapid response systems for emergencies

15.  Demonstrates an openness to challenge by customers, the Press and critics

10. Council Responses

Councils Respond to 'Parking Complaints' Online

It would be helpful to report how some of the Councils that have been mentioned in this weblog so far have responded, while others have been quiet or even ignoring our posts!

Ealing, Hillingdon and Haringey have been very helpful in providing contacts and assisting us to reach the right people in their policy making and operational areas. We have not had any response from these service providers on the content of these communications.

One local authority has asked about the reasons for our interest, why we need the contacts and how we will use the information. They are entitled to ask for that clarification and we hope to hear from them soon. We are yet to hear from others but it is early days yet.

The questions asked by the authority which wanted to know of our interest in these issues have helped to formulate an important question for us. How are parking related customer service inquiries handled?  Have parking service providers published any customers' charters?  Have they developed a code of ethics in dealing with customer complaints? Most importantly, how have the councils communicated their customer service routines or mechanisms to parking customers? Is this communication also available on their websites?

Councils are invited to submit this information for inclusion in a series of future posts. Please contact Kalwant Ajimal, Managing Editor at [email protected]

9. Online support systems seem to failing

Is the customer receiving acceptable levels of support for Online access to parking services?

This question is best answered by carrying out a systematic survey of Online capabilities of councils as a whole and then evaluating the impact of online access to the main customer facing services, of which parking is just one of the services. In reality, councils are at different stages of delivery of their e-government programmes and some of them have done better than others. There is no known assessment of customer service and online capability in parking services at a national and regional level.

Is a council that is receiving customer complaints from its other services as well likely to prioritise its actions for parking customers? The framework for dealing with parking 'offences' is stipulated by the law. The customer seems to have little choice in making their representations challenging or effective from their point of view. Councils are also likely to assume that every enforcement decision made by their teams is correct and valid unless proven to the contrary.

Councils with poor customer services ethos will generally have less effective complaints resolution systems. The development of 'One Stop Shops' in some councils has shown how customer services management needs to be connected internally by a common 'backbone' consisting of secure and reliable complaint handling and resolution processes. In other councils, one stop shops have failed where the sites have been located in the wrong part of the town, or are poorly staffed and most commonly, run by staff who are not trained in the specifics of parking issues.

We carried out a simple 'survey', the purpose of which was to a) determine how parking complaints are handled, b) how the council websites guide the customer to specific areas for dealing with parking complaints, specifically by using online systems.

Birmingham provides an excellent breakdown of parking service components and the customer can select the area to which their complaint belongs quite easily. Overall we did not feel, using our subjective criteria, that the council's site was customer friendly. The home page is overcrowded. As is often the case with council services, there appears to be a strong production bias. This means that they are more concerned with the make up and delivery of the service than the problems it helps to resolve. In other words, it does not bring out customer service 'benefits' to the surface.

Leeds also has an overcrowded website site. It does not guide the customer to sources of help within the council. It does offer a link to Customer Direct, the Government sponsored service, but its benefits are not explained. Where links to staff are provided, there are mostly telephone numbers.

Newcastle also provides a comprehensive breakdown of the various components of their parking services. However, there is no direct link to a complaints procedure. However, the site does say that the council is working on a customer services programme and a list of services under development is provided. The graphics are blurred, the text is too small and the categories used for classifying services are more likely to be understood by council officials than by customers. In some ways, Newcastle also seems to be trapped by a production bias where councils are more concerned with producing the service than highlighting the benefits to a predefined customer base.

Finally, our crude sample showed that Coventry has a refreshingly clear and simple approach to facilitating customer access to service providers.

Is the customer really not 'the king' in parking?

The foregoing survey, if it can be called as such, only provides anecdotal evidence. What we do know about customers is that they assess things in their own way, and they have the absolute right to make judgments. Is the customer the king in parking services provision? The vast majority of customers of parking services do not feel that they are in control. They mostly feel that they are trapped and hounded by a service ethos which is legalistic and process driven.

The customers needs to know what proportion of their representations may actually succeed. The councils need to assess why the level of representations may be increasing and what proportion of them is always expected to fail. There seems to be no 'meeting of the minds'. Does this mean that the customer should remain unconvinced and negative because the parking providers' actions are not going to be helpful?

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8 Towns, Cities and Boroughs of Special Interest

We identify the 12 authorities of special interest for analysis and debate

London Boroughs: Three London boroughs have been selected. These are Hillingdon, Ealing and Haringey.

Group 1: Bristol, Birmingham and Coventry

Group 2: Leeds, Newcastle and Darlington

Group 3: Cambridge, Southend and Norwich

The above authorities will receive the blog on a regular basis. Council Officers and Elected Members will be invited to comment on issues raised here.

One of the key factors that will determine the success or otherwise of critical debate for the benefit of customers is the responsiveness of councils to general enquiries and questions put to them. We have received invaluable help from Ealing and Haringey - they have provided names of key contacts. Other authorities are being approached to ensure that our work is enriched by the responses of the most relevant officers and councillors who are connected to the planning and delivery of parking services.