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SPARKS heads east to win new membersby Bill Blakemore - 17:03 on 29 May 2009  Last week I took the train to Ipswich, a town in Suffolk I haven't been to since my BT days (BT is a major employer in Ipswich as its research laboratories are based there). For those who don't know it, Suffolk is part of the flat UK region known as East Anglia. It's a pleasant, peaceful, rural area stretching up to the north east coast of Norfolk and a popular holiday destination in summer.There aren't many cities in East Anglia, but Ipswich is one of them and my destination was one of Ipswich’s landmarks - the Portman Road football stadium, famous for past glories including former Ipswich and England manager Bobby Robson. My colleagues and I looked down onto the green turf from the Bobby Robson suite and it wasn’t hard to imagine the terraces packed with roaring crowds and two local teams battling away for the FA Cup.  Sadly that day the stadium was empty: I was there to promote the SPARKS Network to the British Parking Association’s eastern group, some thirty people from a mix of local authority and private sector organisations.My visit to Ipswich reminded me that the world of parking management in the UK is complex. Present in that room were private parking operators who offer parking services for a contractual fee, and who issue private parking tickets to motorists who overstay their time. There were also local councils who manage their parking under the familiar on-street civil enforcement statutory regime. But I had not expected to find local authorities who manage parking under the old regime of traffic wardens and magistrates courts. Suffolk's district councils are still in the business of issuing fixed penalty parking tickets – rather than the civil penalty charge notices that SPARKS has spent so much time on. Issuing a fixed penalty is essentially an alternative to taking criminal proceedings in the magistrate’s court. Apparently all local councils in Suffolk, except Ipswich Borough Council, work this way and there are no immediate plans to roll-out decriminalised parking enforcement across the county. Only part of the income from fixed penalties is credited to the local authority in which the parking ticket is issued. So councils arguably don't have the same incentive to maximise compliance, and in all probability the local police force does not prioritise parking enforcement either. I had a long conversation with David Abbott of mid-Suffolk District Council, who explained to me that parking enforcement was just one of many enforcement responsibilities he had as the Enforcement Officer. He was also responsible for the prevention of littering and dealing with abandoned old cars, dumped in some cases by visiting foreign workers who have completed their business in the area and returned to their own country. As David explained, these vehicles often have a UK registration plate with a UK address as the owner’s residence. But he knows that once their owners have left the UK there is no reasonable prospect of enforcing a fixed penalty. An interesting twist on what we’re trying to do within SPARKS and a good insight into some difficult challenges faced by our local authorities. 
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Are headcams the answer?What ever happened to Sleeping Beauty - the cross-border enforcement directive?Sparks travels to Newcastle and spends a morning with a bailiffSparks goes to the seaside and learns the new meaning of 'foreign'SPARKS heads east to win new membersMaltese visit highlights traffic challenges in one of Europe's smallest countriesForeign vehicles are invisible on the roads |
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