Winchester Annual Report 08-09

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A PARKING REPORT FOR WINCHESTER CITY

COUNCIL APRIL 2008-MARCH 2009

Winchester Parking Report 2008/09

Example of artwork commissioned and being installed on the Tower street car parkrefurbishment project


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Introduction

The parking service operated by Winchester City Council covers an area of250 square miles. Winchester itself is a heritage city attracting an estimated 4million visitors each year creating obvious traffic and parking issues in a citywhich was never originally designed to manage large numbers of vehiclesthrough some of its narrow streets.

The 2001 census indicates that the number of people commuting intoWinchester each day is 26,648 (many of these by car), whilst the numbercommuting out was 16,602. Many of those commuting in work at some of themajor employers such as the Hospital or Hampshire County Council and alsoincludes both students and staff at Winchester University, the majority ofinbound commuters come from the south of the city.

In addition Winchester has a vibrant shopping centre and as previously stateda high number of visitor numbers, all of this means that a robust parking andenforcement policy needs to be in place to balance the needs of workers,visitors and residents and aid the free flow of traffic whilst taking into accountthe need to maintain the economic vitality of Winchester and its District.

The Council serves a population of approximately 110,000 residents however,

only 33% of theses residents live within the city, the major towns outside ofthe city are:

Bishops Waltham (pop 6700)Denmead (pop 6500)New Alresford (pop 5000)Wickham (pop 5000)

(Population figures taken from the 2001 census)

These market towns require the same care and consideration with regards toparking and enforcement as does Winchester city itself.


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Management of car parks

First line repairs to payment machines and equipment

Back office processing and appeals Front office customer interface/payments Permits and waivers/dispensations Concessionary travel.

Park and Ride

The section is part of the operations group in Winchester City Council and worksclosely with colleagues as part of the Access and Infrastructure division.

A copy of the sections structure chart as at Nov 2009 can be found as Appendix 1.

The Council follows parking best practice and is committed to the ethos of section 6of the 2004 Traffic Management Act as introduced on 31st March 2008, bothStatutory and Operational guidance are followed as set down within the Act.

The section has clear policies which conform to both national standards and local

policies, a local traffic management policy has been developed from HampshireCounty Council for whom Winchester act as agent

WINCHESTER CITY COUNCIL TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT POLICY

VERSION 1.0 9th September 2009

Winchester City Council now act as agent on behalf of Hampshire CountyCouncil, the highway authority, for various traffic related issues within theWinchester district. The City Council does not have a set traffic managementpolicy but follows the policies and guidance of the County Council.

The County have produced their own guidance notes which reflect nationalGovernment policy and advice as published by the Department for Transportand the Highways Agency. This includes various documents, both statutory(Acts and Regulations) as well as advisory leaflets and guidance notes. WCC

therefore also follows this approach.The principal Acts relating to traffic management issues are:-

Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984

Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002

T A 2000


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The website gives details of all council car parks including pricing structuresand number of disabled parking places.

The Council also seeks new ways to supply further or improved information tocustomers, the latest project being the design and distribution of aninformation leaflet for disabled users of the Council parking provision.

At Winchester we believe in educating the motorist, the image above appears as an insert inall of our PCN carriers

Quality and Standards

As often seen as the public face of the Council, all enforcement staff or otherparking service staff who interact with the public are expected to adhere to theCouncil code of conduct for standards and behaviour. All staff are expected tobe trained and have a suitable level of knowledge to undertake their job rolewhich will therefore help to maintain the reputation of a Council that provides


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Other training is undertaken on an adhoc basis when identified, in the 2008/09financial year; all staff in parking services received some specific type of

training to help them to undertake their post more efficiently.

Winchester City Council, takes its responsibilities towards training andcommunication seriously, all staff are made aware of the Council core briefwhich is cascaded down from the Corporate Management Team on a monthlybasis for upward feedback, in addition a weekly newsletter is sent out to allstaff electronically (City voice) regular staff meetings take place within each

section.

All procedures relating to the operation of parking services in Winchester areset down in our quality manual and conform to BS EN ISO 9001:2008, theseprocedures are subject to regular audits and a 6 monthly external assessmentby BSI inspectors.

Customer Services

Parking information is provided to customers in a number of ways, these canbe by:

Our website.

The Councils magazine for residents Perspectives.

Information leaflets in the parking front office. Via Penalty charge notice carriers which contain information on why we

do parking enforcement and details of our park and ride service.

Notice boards of tariffs etc in Council car parks.

Communication however is a two way thing; customers are able to makecontact with the parking office in a number of ways:

Via the parking inbox

By telephone

Letter

Personal visit

Also by the Council suggestion scheme


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Location usage to date %

1 7560 Cattle Market 5931 10%

2 7561*Coach Park 1365 2%

3 7562 Gladstone St 7203 13%

4 7563 St.Peters 2694 5%

5 7564 Worthy Lane 6359 11%

6 7565 Tower St 31763 55%

7 7566** ColebrookSt 2131 4%

total 57446 100%

The table above represents the amounts of transactions in the car parksinvolved the scheme since its inception in April 2008, a steady rise in usernumbers has been ongoing month by month.

A business process review has recently been undertaken to explore ways tofurther enhance the ways for the service to continue to be improved for thebenefit of our customers, options that are subject to further discussion include

Expansion of the ability to purchase residents permits on line

Virtual permits

Introduction of 2 part season tickets to replace some top up cards forpark and ride.

Citizens Gateway for 3sixty-Online portal for pcn processing.

Chip and pin payment for parking is being progressed for introductionin the 2010/11 financial year

The opening of Winchesters new park and ride in April 2010 will increase the

number of park and ride spaces available from 780 to over 1600 spaces andwill include a new linked bus service using Dennis Dart enviro 300 buses builtto euro 5 emissions standard serving additional customer areas of theHospital, Hampshire County Council and the University will help to alleviatesome traffic congestion in the centre of the city which will in turn have anongoing benefit for the air quality levels.


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We consider that all of these continuing improvements will go some way tomeeting or exceeding our customer requirements.

Performance

In line with the TMA 2004, Civil Enforcement Officers (CEOs) do not work toset targets for the production of penalty charge notices and receive nofinancial rewards of any kind for issuing additional tickets.

Each member of the enforcement team is allocated an area to cover either onfoot, by car or on a powered two wheeler each day, all enforcement staffreceive a daily briefing on special events or item of note before commencingshift.

CEOs work shift patterns Mon-Sat inclusive between 8am and 10pm andsome enforcement work is also undertaken on Sundays.

All staff receive a yearly full appraisal which is reviewed on a 6 monthly basiswhere performance, attendance, section objectives, complaints and personaldevelopment and training requirements are discussed, goals are reviewedand set for the next period.

Enforcement staff are monitored by their own team leader.

The back office teams are managed by the Office manager who carries outannual and 6 monthly appraisals and deals with any day to day work issues.

Members of staff are at times allocated special projects to become involvedin; this helps to install a sense of ownership.

Civil Parking Enforcement (CPE) was introduced into Winchester on 31stMarch 2008, Winchester already worked fulfilling most of the requirements of

CPE prior to its inception and therefore apart from much of the paperwork nota great deal of additional work has been required, however all staff fullysupport its introduction and understand the reasons for the change.

Winchester is not unlike many other towns and cities in the problems thatparking can raise the increasing number of vehicles on the road fighting for


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air quality management area and does have an air quality issue, the new parkand ride site opening on 19th April 2010 does go some way to resolving this.

Winchester as previously described does cover a large area, and staffresource does at times become stretched to cover all of the District, areduction in 2 members of staff in early 2009 due to the requirement to makesavings has stretched resource, this is coupled with the introduction ofadditional waiting restrictions to patrol and the new car park at Perins, furtherpressures will come on line with the requirement to patrol the new 800 spacespark and ride in April 2009.

As a two tier authority, Winchester City Council has little direct control overthe maintenance of signs and lines on the public highway which it has toenforce, due to this, although the parking enforcement section does notify theCounty Council, there are a number of locations where enforcement does nottake place as the enforcement team to not consider the restrictions to beclear.

This is in line with operational guidance.

Winchester does benchmark with neighbouring authorities of a similar size togauge its performance.The benchmark group involves Eastleigh, Test Valley, Fareham and Havant,who all cover a similar type of area and are similar in terms of operationalsize.

Data is not available for Test Valley for the financial year 08/09 as they haveonly recently joined the groupThis benchmarking exercise compares the number of PCNs by the differentauthorities and then produces figures for the numbers paid and the number ofappeals which have been accepted by the authority.

Each year an annual report is also produced by the Parking and TrafficAppeals Tribunal. The latest information available on Winchestersperformance shows cases taken to the Adjudication Service are minimal, asWinchester city council strives to resolve all appeals before this point.


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The table below shows the number of cases received by the tribunal service,and the outcome of those cases.

Incidentally, the case awaiting decision was refused by the adjudicator thuschanging the percentage figure to 37%.

AppealsRecd

PCNsissued

RateofappealperPCN

NotContestedby council

Allowed byAdjudicator

Totalallowed

includingnot

contestedby

council

Refused byAdjudicatorincl. out oftime and

withdrawnby appellant

Awaitingdecision

Incl.other

decided

2 3 5 2 18 14,204 0.06%

25% 38% 63% 25% 13%

Officers in the back office do consider all cases on there merits and will takeinto account mitigating circumstances such as medical evidence or the validityof a traffic regulation order before deciding on the outcome of arepresentation.

They will also review the ticket itself and any notes made from the civilenforcement officer when issuing to ensure that no mistakes have been

made.

A number of cases may be noted by the tribunal as no contests by theCouncil, this may appear to some that the penalty charge may have forexample have been issued incorrectly or the councils case is weak or lackssubstance, however in these cases it is often a fact that while the case iswaiting to be heard the appellant supplies additional evidence and therefore

the Council decides not to pursue further or uses its powers of discretion.

One aim of the introduction of CPE in 2008 is to ultimately reduce the numberof PCNs issued to a nil figure, in Winchester the number of PCNs issuedbetween 2007/8 and 2008/9 actually rose, this can be partly attributed toreduced absence levels, however despite the number of tickets increasing,


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this will provide further low cost all day parking outside of the city, in additionthe hope is to reduce congestion, improve air quality and serve parts of the

city including some of the major employers more effectively.

CEOs however as well as being a tool to manage poor and inconsiderateparking also deal with other issues when going about their duties, includingassisting members of the public, managing car parks and being generally auniformed presence on street, reporting issues such as abandoned vehiclesand damaged/dangerous street furniture to the councils environmental teamand carrying out bay suspensions.

Winchester does not operate any clamping or removal operations and haveno plans to undertake such operations in the future.

Statistical Information

PCNs Issued

Number of PCNs issued at the higher rate 5,489Number of PCNs issued at the lower rate 8,704Number of regulation 9 PCNs issued 14,160Number of regulation 10 PCNs issued 33Number of PCNs issued on street 7,563Number of PCNs issued off street 6,630

PCNs Paid

Number of PCNs paid 11,024Number of PCNs paid at discount 9,399

Unfortunately in a number of cases the person who receives the penaltycharge makes no attempt to settle the debt, in these instances many cases

end up going through the county court process to recovery agents acting onour behalf.

Marstons undertake this process for us, between April 2008 and March 2009304 warrants were issued, of these 146 were traceable and paid this is arecovery rate of 48% which is above the national average


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% of informal rep dismissals 12.62%% of PCNs paid at full rate pre NTO 2.13%

% of PCNs paid at full rate post NOR 5.40%% of PCNs paid at full rate post appeal 0.01%% of PCNs paid at charge certificate 1.74%% of PCNs paid at reduced rate without challenge 81.71%% of PCNs paid at reduced rate following challenge 18.29%

PCNs Challenged

Number of PCNs against which an informal or formal representation wasmade. 4,446

Number of PCNs cancelled as a result of an informal or formal challenge2,269

% of PCNs where informal reps are made 27.35%

Number of NTOs issued 2,511

% of representations that were allowed as a result of the Council exercisingdiscretion 6.11%

% of PCNs cancelled at any stage 15.99%

Number of PCNs written off for other reasons, (CEO error, unable to tracedriver etc) 569

Financial Information

Total income on parking account 08/09 4,950,509

Total Expenditure on parking account 08/09 3,713,397

Income by source

Income from PCNs and waivers 383,903I f id t d i it it 231 496


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Copies of this report have been sent to:

The Department for TransportTraffic Penalty Tribunal for England and Wales.www.winchester.gov.uk

Mr Richard James Hein

Parking and Concessionary Travel Manager

Winchester City Council.

3rd December 2009.

Some of Winchesters CEOs receiving training awards from Winchesters Mayor


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APPENDIX A

WCC Parking Office Staffing Structure Diagram

Parking &

ConcessionaryTravel Manager

7 Administrative Assistants

(5 Full-time, 2 x Part/Time)

Admin. Asst.(P/T)

Equipment &Operations Officer

Senior TeamLeader

Team Leader Team Leader

5 Civil

EnforcementOfficers

5 Civil Enforcement

Officers

5 Civil

EnforcementOfficers

Operations Administration

Assistant Parking &ConcessionaryTravel Manager

Accounts &Finance Officer

Office Manager Appeals Officer

Head of Access andInfrastructure

Winchester Annual Report 08-09

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