British Parking Association: Scottish Conservatives just scaremongering

21 February 2014

Scottish Conservative transport spokesman, Alex Johnstone MSP has declared that the move from police wardens to private parking operators in Scotland would provide a gravy train of profits for the private operator. “This is just scaremongering ”, says Patrick Troy, Chief Executive of The British Parking Association (BPA).

He added: “Scottish local authorities taking on parking enforcement powers do so to tackle congestion and improve safety on our roads. Parking enforcement powers cannot by law be used to generate revenue.”

Traffic Law stipulates that surpluses generated above and beyond the cost of enforcement must be used for transport-related items and cannot be used more generally by the local authority, clearly refuting the idea that any “profit” can be made.

“It would be unlawful for local authorities to set ticket targets for their Parking Attendants. If they use private firms the firms will not be incentivised by the issue of tickets but by other performance requirements like numbers of visits to locations” continues Patrick, “although the shift from Police enforcement to local authority enforcement could have been planned better by the government, actually motorists in receipt of local authority tickets have a more user-friendly means of redress if they think the ticket is unfair.”

Motorists can talk to the Authority that was responsible for both the parking restriction and the ticket (making the Authority more accountable for its actions) and can take their case to the Scottish Parking Adjudicator, a less adversarial process than the courts applicable under police enforcement.