Council back in the driving seat

Sep 24 2007 by Paul James, The Journal

THE controversial car parking regime in Sunderland will be taken back into the control of council bosses, it emerged last night.

In 2003, NCP began a seven-year contract to enforce parking fines after the city took over the regime from Northumbria Police.

But officials have moved to bring enforcement of parking rules back “in-house” after NCP attendants were filmed making racist remarks and abusive comments about disabled people. The comments, broadcast in a television documentary, followed a series of errors in implementing parking rules which forced the council to refund thousands of pounds in wrongly collected fines.

Council chiefs will have to pay £73,591 to NCP to terminate the contract, a one-off cost of £44,750 to transfer the service and £167,000-a-year to run it.

Director of development and regeneration Phil Barrett has told leading city councillors that council staff would promote awareness of the parking laws, not just simply issue fines.

In his report, Mr Barrett said: “New management arrangements will be required to develop and promulgate a new culture within the service to ensure that public confidence in parking services is secured.

“The new arrangements will contribute to making the city’s streets safer and more accessible to highway users.”

Last year a series of flaws were uncovered in Sunderland’s traffic regulations, forcing the council to pay back more than £30,000 in fines.

The undercover BBC documentary that followed, which alleged illegal ticketing, bribery, favouritism, vandalism and racism within the company, led to a number of dismissals within NCP.

In his report, which asks the council’s cabinet to approve the switch at their meeting on September 27, Mr Barrett added: “The new parking service will promote compliance rather than simply practice enforcement.

“It is proposed that the council publishes a parking charter which will inform the public in a clear and transparent way of the criteria to be used in assessing compliance with waiting, loading and parking restrictions.”

The council aims to take over the service from December this year, and would take on around 15 NCP employees in a new parking services department at the civic centre. And council officials are already preparing for extra public attention on their new decriminalised parking enforcement (DPE) regime.

Mr Barrett said: “Effective communications will be important to ensure that service improvements are understood and a new image for parking is established in the city.

“Notwithstanding that other authorities have experienced difficulties with DPE, it is anticipated that disproportionate media attention will continue to focus on Sunderland.”

Sunderland parking campaigner Neil Herron, who is still appealing dozens of tickets he claims were illegally issued, said: “The tickets which have been issued unlawfully, illegally and by parking attendants sacked for gross misconduct must be refunded.

“By doing all this, Sunderland is admitting they got it seriously, badly wrong.

“Instead of putting their hands up and saying ‘We’re sorry’ and giving people their money back, they’re attempting to paper over the cracks.”