Verbal update by Tom Smith, Assistant Director, Community Safety & Streetscene
Minutes:
Tom Smith, Assistant Director, Community Safety and Street Scene, reported that the Council had made a decision whereby the Authority could immobilise vehicles of persistent evaders and those who had not paid parking tickets. Where they were subject to 6 or more unpaid PCNs the Authority could now clamp the vehicle and call for assistance in terms of vehicle removal and impound the vehicle. It was much safer for staff and also meant that there was a much stronger enforcement process.
There had been a number of successes since it had been in place and enabled the Service to be much more robust for repeat evaders. There had been a number of people who had been subject to 6 PCNs and paid the fine and not been in same situation again.
The Overview and Scrutiny Management Board had recommended that it be reduced from 6 PCNs to 3. An analysis had been carried out and very shortly there would be a delegated decision to reduce the number down to 4. It was felt that reducing it to 3 PCNs would vastly increase the number of evaders and there would not be the confidence of resource availability to ensure robust enforcement of the policy.
Martin Beard, Parking Services Manager, was in attendance to assist with any questions.
Discussion ensued with the following issues raised/clarified:-
- Monitoring was already taking place. It was the intention that people got the message that they could not avoid paying with the ultimate message that hopefully people had parked properly. It was known how many people fit the categories and would like to see the numbers fall in those categories. It was also known how many people paid and something that was monitored very closely
- The Traffic Management Act clearly set out that an Authority could not hold someone’s vehicle to ransom. The Act stated that they had to pay the release fee of £105 plus the PCN that had been issued on the day. The Authority did not let anyone do that until there was absolute certainty as to their identity and address. If every piece of documentation requested could not be provided, the vehicle would not be released and they then incurred storage charges
- A vehicle was stored in the compound for up to 35 days. If a vehicle was not claimed within that time and, if there was a registered keeper, they would be written to giving them 7 days to collect or the vehicle would be disposed of
- It was not known if a person would be allowed to buy the vehicle back if it went to auction and an answer would be sought. The initial reaction was that it could not be prevented
- 2 of the first 8 vehicles that had been removed and impounded had belonged to the same person. The process now gave the Authority a fair and better chance and had already seen a decrease in the number of cases of persistent evaders
- Data could be provided to support the decision to reduce to 4 PCNs and not 3. Limited benchmarking had been carried out due to Rotherham being at the forefront of this approach with others waiting to see how successful it was. There was some information from the British Parking Association but was limited due to the small numbers taking the action
- The removed vehicles were taken to the contractor’s compound at Maltby
- It is so successful it has generated income, it may be possible to extend the scheme and reduce to 3 PCNs but there was a need to ensure there was the officer time to do so. Part of the success of the Policy was hopefully that there was less indiscriminate parking and therefore no income generated
- An unpaid parking fine was only unpaid at the point when the full process finished. If someone had appealed a ticket it would not be part of the numbers until the appeal process had finished and proven that the ticket was issued correctly
- The possibility of the services being provided inhouse had not currently been explored. However, it was felt that the constraints of it being a relatively specialist job, having the appropriate kit to remove vehicles and it being relatively sporadic would be cost prohibitive. Whilst there were a number of people who committed repeat offences there was probably not enough on a daily basis to employ a team or vehicles just on removing vehicles off the street. Since the Authority had started clamping vehicles in January 2019 it had collected approximately £3,000 in release and PCN fees; the cost of the contractor involved in those lifts had been £1,365
- A very specialist vehicle was required to remove vehicles from the highway
- 35 vehicles had been impounded since September 2016-2019, 17 from January 2019 to date
Resolved:- That the update be noted.