Councils urge penalty charge rethink

15 November 2007

Local traffic authorities have urged the Government to re-think its proposal to lower the penalty charge notice levels for off-street parking offences.

The Midland Service Improvement Group, consisting of 17 county and eight city or unitary councils, has warned that cutting the £60 PCN level to £50 for overstaying in parking bays ‘will have a serious effect on the viability of the service’.

The group, chaired by Lancashire County Council, warned that this would mean drivers parking illegally would not meet the cost of enforcement, making the service ‘a further burden on council tax’.

More than half the motorists receiving PCNs pay them within 14 days, and so, under the new levels, would pay £25, which would mean that overall income would decline. Councils would need to either increase parking charges, or cut enforcement costs in response.

Nick Miller, Staffordshire County Council’s parking manager, who co-ordinated the councils’ response, told Surveyor: ‘Many authorities have been planning decriminalised enforcement for a number of years. ‘Our plans are based on the current PCN levels. If income is to decline, that will mean that the service will be affected.’ But increasing parking charges in off-street car parks could increase on-street parking stress; decreasing on-street enforcement would mean that community expectations were not met.

Staffordshire, for example, which introduced decriminalised enforcement in four of its nine districts in the last few weeks, has 450km of yellow lines. ‘Parking attendants will have to travel very large distances to meet community expectations,’ said Miller, including, for instance, the need to enforce restrictions outside schools around the whole of the county.

‘This comes at a cost.’ A number of authorities are already running up a deficit on their on-street parking services, and are expecting this to further increase. More contraventions occur in off-street bays. Kent County Council made a loss of £298,076 in 2006/07, and expects that this will go up, if the Government presses ahead with its proposals.

David Joyner, Kent’s sustainable transport manager, said: ‘There’s going to be less money for enforcement activities overall.’

Peter Moore, chief transportation engineer at Cornwall County Council, said that two districts would have their off-street parking PCN levels cut, when they had been looking to increase them. But running a countywide, joint on and off-street parking service would ‘allow us to run a viable service,’ he said.

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