NCP conduct on-street enforcement for Westminster Parking Services. At the invitation of the Chief Executive of NCP (Bob Macnaughton) I spent a morning in February 2005 shadowing a Westminster Parking Attendant. This is how it went.
I learn the hard way that Parking Attendants on the early shift (8am-5:30pm) really do have to be up early. I arrive at "base" (a basement in a building somewhere around Victoria Station) around 8 o'clock - acutely aware I am ten minutes later than my appointed time. The door to the briefing room is locked even though I can hear the briefing going on inside (I learned later that this locked door policy is to encourage punctuality on the part of PAs). Fortunately after I knock loudly a kindly soul lets me in and (after scolding me for being late and checking who I am) gives me a prime seat from which I can observe proceedings.
The supervisor leading the briefing is reading out to each of the 30 or so PAs in front of him details of (what I later learn are) patrol areas and lunch break times (in suitable phonetic-alphabet-ridden PA-speak). Then he gives some general words of advice about the issuing of Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) e.g. telling PAs to go leniently on motorists who inadvertently park across borough boundaries. This causes a bit of consternation among certain of the PAs who start arguing whether they are really required to do this by law, citing the example of Queen's Gate (a peculiar road with very complex borough boundary rules along its length). The dissenters are quickly shouted down, however, and the PAs synchronise their watches/hand-held computers to a phone-dialled clock played over the phone (I learn that time is sponsored by Accurist no less).
The parking attendant I am to shadow is allocated a beat area in SW1 referred to as "Delta-3" (beat areas seem to be denoted by a letter of the phonetic alphabet followed by a number). This sounds promising, but I feel a little let down when I am told that this is in fact a pretty quiet beat (apparently "Echo-3" is a lot more lively - wherever that is) so that we are "expected" to issue only around 13 tickets over the entire 8 hour shift.
We are barely out of the base and on our way to our beat area when we happen upon a Royal Mail building. Outside the building, and in the surrounding streets, seven Royal Mail vans are parked on yellow lines. The building is on a quiet road, with little to no through traffic, and the vans do not appear to be parked in any way that would obstruct any traffic. But at 08h30, waiting time restrictions on yellow lines come into force, and these vans become public nuisances that are commiting an offence. The law leaves us in no doubt that we must take action:
| Offence code: | 01 |
| Explanation: | Parked in a restricted street during prescribed hours. Parked on a yellow line or in a street where there is a temporary waiting restriction. |
Unfortunately we are not the first to arrive at the scene of this golden pot of opportunity - another parking attendant has beaten us to it. Rotten luck since we might have bagged over half of our target within 15 minutes of starting our shift! Fortunately for us, the other PA has not started to issue any PCNs yet (it has only just gone 08h30 and five minutes observation time is required to be sure no loading/unloading is taking place). After some negotiation, the early bird attendant generously allows us to ticket two vans, on the condition that he gets to do the other five. And so, after the required observation time and suppressing only the briefest flicker of moral revulsion at the thought of ticketing postal vans, we leap into action!
And so I present to you our first (technically correct and perfectly issued) PCN:
And here is our second (technically correct and perfectly issued) PCN:
Just for the record here are some of the PCNs issued by the other PA on the scene. You will notice how a sneaky Royal Mail employee attempts to drive one of the vans away (presumably to go about some Royal Mail-type business) but the Parking Attendant manages to get the driver's attention and hand the PCN to him as he drives off. Take that Royal Mail! Or more aptly, "Take that UK taxpayer!" (since the sole shareholder of Royal Mail Group PLC is the UK Government!)
Just out of interest, I selected one of these Royal Mail vans (our very first victim in fact) and put in a Freedom of Information request with Westminster City Council to find out how many PCNs it had received in 2004. The answer was SEVENTY FIVE!!
My PA guide tells me the PCNs we just issued are typical in that most PCNs are issued for violating yellow line restrictions. However, on our particular beat, this will be the last yellow line enforcement we see, since yellow line enforcement within our Delta-3 beat area is carried out by the Metropolitan Police "for security reasons" (the area contains sensitive buildings such as New Scotland Yard and the Home Office).
We don't have to go far before we catch those inveterate law breakers, the Metropolitan Police, up to no good committing parking offences. Apparently they have the nerve to think they can park their unmarked police cars in metered bays right outside New Scotland Yard without paying three pounds an hour for the privilege! But don't worry, we are on hand to make sure that they aren't going to get away scot free!
"But wait a minute," you're probably thinking to yourself. "If these cars are unmarked how do YOU know they are police cars?" It's a good question, but the answer is not that hard to see:
Also, every "unmarked" car displays a logbook on the dashboard reading "Metropolitan Police Service". Nevertheless, just because these miscreants are the law they can't get away with not paying for their parking, can they?. And it really is a fair cop - just check out the horrendous penalty time on the meter:
So to go with that nice logbook, the unmarked police car gets a Penalty Charge Notice (£50 if you pay up quickly, at least £100 otherwise). Again, everything is perfectly legal and correctly issued. Although we do have to rapidly suppress the sudden thought that maybe we shouldn't really be ticketing the very people we will be calling upon if a member of the public - or MOP as they are affectionately known in PA logbook speak - assaults us!
Throughout the day we encounter four other unmarked police cars against whom the law forces us to take vigorous enforcement action. Technically we're dealing with:
| Offence code: | 04 |
| Explanation: | Parked in a meter bay when penalty time is indicated. You must move your car before the time purchased has expired. |
For the record, here is the evidence of the other Metropolitan Police offenders that we nabbed (again - to the best of my knowledge - all tickets are legal and were correctly issued):
Obviously this kind of activity does not encourage harmonious relations between the police and borough parking services. In May 2004, for example, an NCP parking attendant in Islington placed a PCN on an unmarked police car parked outside a police station on a bus stop. This led to a rather heated exchange between police officers and the parking attendant, with comments including "[the] war has started" and "all NCP drivers will lose their licences and you won't be able to do anything."
In case you're wondering, the Metropolitan police are funded from a combination of central government funding and a portion of council tax. (So I'm sure Westminster City Council and NCP would like to thank all UK taxpayers again!)
Fresh from the thrill of issuing our first ticket to an unmarked police car, we didn't have to go far before we stumbled across our next offender. Look at the picture below and see if you can guess what offence number this BT van is committing (if you look closely you can also see the PCN we just slapped on it):
If you guessed offence code 01 (Parking on a Yellow Line etc.) then that is not a bad guess, but that is also why you are (probably) not a PA. In fact the vehicle is displaying a completely correct emergency call out notice:
So under normal circumstances, Westminster Parking Services would not usually issue a PCN to this van (Kensington and Chelsea on the other hand would certainly consider it if the BT van remained parked on a yellow line for 20 minutes - or so their on-street PAs tell me, even if they are instructed not to ticket NTL vans!)
Nevertheless, the law is very clear about the specific offence being committed here, and we must take action to punish the guilty:
| Offence code: | 62 |
| Explanation: | Parked with one or more wheels on any part of an urban road other than a carriageway (footway parking). |
PAs are required to make notes in their logbooks every three minutes giving their position (and also to update their positions on their hand held computers). They also have to give full details of all PCNs issued. As the PA is making a note of this crime scene (all right, so parking is technically decriminalised) in his logbook, I have my first (and only as it turned out) slight worry that maybe he hasn't quite represented the situation exactly. He's drawn a picture in his logbook implying that half of the vehicle's width is obstructing the footway, and I believe he's indicated the front and rear of the vehicle incorrectly. I point out the direction problem to him but he's happy with his diagram. I'm a terrible artist myself and quite impressed at his robust defence of the public footway so I am happy not to pursue the issue further.
The issue of footway parking subsequently arose at the Second London Assembly Investigation into Parking where Nick Lester from the Association of London Government had some comments to make based on the legal principle of de minimis non curat lex ("the law does not concern itself with trivialities"; a principle of law, that even if a technical violation of a law appears to exist according to the letter of the law, if the effect is too small to be of consequence, the violation of the law will not be considered as a sufficient cause of action, whether in civil or criminal proceedings):
There is also advice on De Minimis rules that certainly the ALG has given [to London boroughs] in the past and footway parking is a case in point, where the advice we have given is that there should be a wheel - at least one wheel - wholly on the footway before a penalty charge is issued. Similarly, with parking outside the markings of a bay. There should be at least one wheel wholly outside the markings of a bay.
As PAs walk around their beat, they enter details about cars parked at parking meters into their handheld computers. This includes the meter number, the registration number of the car, the amount of time a car has remaining on the meter (with consequent expiry time) and the position of the front and rear valves of the pavement-facing car tyres (given as clock points - e.g. 9 means 9 o'clock).
The aim of this is primarily to prevent "meter feeding" (a malicious offence that we will shortly encounter), but also prevents the type of sneakiness tried on by our next "customer" - a building contractor. He had parked his rented lorry in a metered bay and paid for his parking. When the time expired he had moved his lorry to the next bay along (since he was keen not to be a meter feeder). His meter looked thus (note the 1 hour 29 minutes time on it):
Yet, the law is clear that he should be punished mercilessly:
| Offence code: | 22 |
| Explanation: | Re-parked in the same parking place within one hour of leaving. You must not return to the same parking place within a specified period of leaving it - details will be shown on the sign or meter. |
"Parking place" is apparently loosely defined as a set of bays (so if he had parked on the other side of the street he would have been OK) and there was indeed a sign up saying "No return within 1 hour" so we got him, fair and square:
During all of this excitement, a clamping unit drove past and the driver stopped for a friendly chat:
Unfortunately we did not require their services - while meter feeding is a clampable offence, reparking is not. So we let the lorry driver off with a PCN and (when we met him later) advised him to move his lorry to the other side of the road (where he had to pay another 6 pounds for 2 more hours of parking).
It wasn't long though before we got the chance to call in the clampers. A driver had parked in a metered bay, and paid for 20 minutes parking. We had logged this on the handheld computer. Subsequently (possibly because their meeting was taking a bit longer than expected - who knows) the driver had returned and paid for another 20 minutes parking. So this:
is not 16 minutes of paid for parking (which is what it might look like to the uninitiated). This driver is in fact a meter feeding menace and must be dealt with severely under the law:
| Offence code: | 07 |
| Explanation: | Parked with payment made to extend the stay beyond the initial time ('meter feeding'). You may not pay extra money into a meter/pay and display machine to extend the time you have already purchased - even if this does not take you past the maximum time allowed at that parking place. |
In fact this offence is so severe that it is clampable (and clampable immediately, rather than after the 15 minutes required after expiry of paid-for parking time). And if the driver does not return before the clamp is attached they have to pay over GBP 100 - at least GBP 50 for the PCN and GBP 65 for the clamp release fee. So we (and when I say we I mean the PA of course but we were starting to bond as a team) wasted no time in approving the vehicle for clamping and alerting a clamping crew via the radio:
It turns out PAs are relatively frequently assaulted while issuing tickets for 07 offences. An insightful account of one such incident by a Westminster PA reads as follows: "Whilst patrolling my beat, I came across a vehicle with minus 5 mins uxt so I logged it for meter feeding. I issued a PCN for an 07 offence. The driver returned and asked what I was doing. I tried to explain what had happened to him and he spat in my face repeatedly. I tried to walk away. He came closer to me and punched me in the face and on my chest. He then took an unidentified object out of his pocket and threatened me, saying he would 'do me in'. I called a code red and the driver later drove away. When the police arrived, I explained the situation to them but the officer told me I was stupid as the man still had money on his meter. I showed them the conditions of use on the meter and they said they never knew this."
We wondered if the clampers would get to our meter feeder in time, but there was no time to hang about. There were more offenders to catch. Next on our beat was this vehicle that was displaying a Blue Badge (for disabled parking) and the "clock" associated with it, set to indicate that it had been well under an hour since they had parked there:
The Blue Badge looked like it had been issued in Manchester. And in Manchester this vehicle would be perfectly legally parked. However, (apparently) in Westminster and certain other London Boroughs, you are not allowed to have more than 1 hour penalty time indicated on the meter. And this disabled miscreant had two hours penalty time. I can't tell you the exact offence this corresponds to (I'm sure my PA guide got it right - he knew his stuff) but I'm sure it was all above board:
By midday, my enthusiasm for this on-street PA business was waning somewhat. My feet were sore. I was physically and mentally tired. I was thirsty and hungry (having rushed out of the house early in the morning without breakfast in my failed attempt to make the start of the morning briefing). What's more, I couldn't but help having a sinking feeling that we weren't really succeeding in making an altogether positive contribution to the community at large.
It was true that we had executed the law superbly - finding ticket-issuing opportunities where many less astute people would fail - and in doing so we had managed to stomp firmly on several parking delinquents, raking in around GBP 550 in revenue (at least). As a bonus we had avoided being either abused (in any way) or assaulted by an angry (or otherwise) MOP. (The building contractor did want to talk to us but he was very good natured). But we had hardly pulled off anything like helping a disabled granny free up the illegally occupied parking space outside her home (a favourite example of council parking bosses for some reason).
So it was that my day brightened considerably when I saw this sight:
Now ask yourself two questions:
Yes surely it was time to strike a blow to free the proverbial housebound disabled granny! We WERE going to get some moral satisfaction out of this job after all!
But alas it was not to be - you see this vehicle is in fact displaying a Blue Badge, and so is entitled to park in the Disabled Bay for 4 hours. There was nothing we could do.
I have to stress that it is possible that this vehicle does indeed ferry disabled people around, or that a disabled person loads and unloads goods into it. I do not know. I just think it seems rather unlikely. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Feeling a little defeated (in more ways than one), I walked with my trusty PA companion (a great guy with a good sense of humour by the way) back to base. Out loud, I wondered how he managed to stick it out at the job - I was ready to give it up after 4 hours and he'd been doing it for over 6 months! I was especially surprised when I learned the pay for Westminster PAs that have passed their probation is only GBP 6.92 an hour. This does not include lunch or tea breaks (so they are not paid for 1.5 hours of their 9.5 hour working day). Also PAs are not paid for their first three days of sick leave and they only get half pay after the first three days.
Apparently most PAs sign up because they are in desperate need of money, or are new to the country and looking for a job (or both!) Once they experience the tough nature of the job, however, most try to get out of it as soon as possible (most leave within 3 or 4 months). "My staff are like water," complained a manager when we were back at base. "We recruit all the time but we can't retain anyone."
In fact, around the lunch table was a new recruit. He had just joined one week ago and had already passed his written exams (pass mark: 75%). "Welcome!" I said. "Yes, welcome to hell!" joked one of the more experienced PAs.
Well is there anyone Westminster Parking Services doesn't ticket you might ask? And the answer is somewhat surprising (well it was to me). It turns out they don't ticket Dynorod vehicles (yes, Dynorod the private drain cleaning company). Here is the proof (from the staff noticeboard):
So Dynorod Vehicles are EXCEMPT (sic.) from parking regulations by an agreement between themselves, Westminster and their former contractor APCOA. I was told the same arrangement applies under NCP (the new contractor). Did you know private companies were allowed to come to these extra-legal "arrangements" with parking contractors (in the same way as NTL did with Kensington and Chelsea who still use APCOA?) Neither did I.
In four hours (i.e. half a shift) we (I mean my excellent PA guide - I was just the irritating MOP who followed him around and talked to him a lot) managed 11 tickets:
We cleared 0 disabled bays occupied by suspicious-looking commercial vehicles, thus saving 0 grannies trapped in their homes. We called in the clampers on the meter-feeding menace but we learned later the driver had fled with their car before one of the (very busy judging by the radio traffic) four clamping vans patrolling the area could arrive.
We cleared no obstructions and had no effect on traffic flow (at least none that I could detect) but our 11 tickets should raise (if all paid early at the discounted rate) a minimum of GBP 550. Of this, our PA will be paid GBP 27.68 for his trouble. The PA will also receive a small monthly bonus according to, amongst other factors, his attendance record and the number of PCNs paid early. The remaining money will be split between NCP and Westminster Parking Services. The exact percentage split is unknown (the terms of the contract between them are not public) but is rumoured to be 50/50.
Our PA's performance will be aggregated with other members of his "team" and noted on a "leaderboard":
I was assured this information is used for motivational purposes only. There are no (longer) any (direct) incentives or prizes (e.g. holidays or cars) for being at the top of this (or any other) list.
I think the Chief Executive of NCP (Bob Macnaughton) was right when he said (at the recent London Assembly Investigation into Parking in London) that the problem with parking enforcement does not lie with PAs, nor does it lie with contractors like NCP. PAs are not (by and large) evil people. They work a physically demanding, stressful job for low pay under appalling conditions (under pressure both from the public and their supervisors). Nor is NCP inherently evil (although their role in providing both on-street parking enforcement and off-street parking in some Boroughs should be looked at). NCP are merely enforcing parking regulations in such a way as to maximise revenue (which is what councils want).
The problem really lies with the flawed regulatory framework. Under this framework well-meaning people who have every intention of paying for their parking and/or parking legally can inadvertently incur horrendous financial penalties (esp. after clamping/removal) for parking offences that seem trivial, are against commonsense or which are easily explained as arising from understandable confusion. Drivers receive no training in parking regulations and naively think that taking all commonsense steps to pay for their parking and/or to park legally will protect them. Well it should, but under the current system it really isn't the case (as another example, consider this case study). Drivers are also unaware of their rights. At the same time, those who know the system well can exploit it to evade paying for their parking altogether. So it is time the Government took a serious look at the underlying legislation and/or instituted an independent body to revamp the regulations and oversee parking enforcement (given the London Boroughs' direct financial interest they can hardly be expected to be objective in this regard). The London Assembly investigation into Parking in London should only be the start of this process.I would like to thank everyone at NCP (from Bob Macnaughton to my friendly first class on-street PA guide) who had a hand in arranging or carrying out my PA "shadowing". It was a fantastic learning experience and it really brought home how hard the job of being an on-street PA really is. And thanks to Alex Buckley for pointing out to me that the sole shareholder of the Royal Mail is the UK Government!
William Knottenbelt
February 2005