Local Government and Communities Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Official Report 564KB pdf

---

Disabled Persons’ Parking Places (Scotland) Act 2009

We move to agenda item 2, which is post-legislative scrutiny of the Disabled Persons’ Parking Places (Scotland) Act 2009. The committee will take evidence from local authorities and Police Scotland. We welcome David Brown, who is service manager for network management at Fife Council, Campbell Dempster and Mark Henry from the roads service at North Ayrshire Council, and Chief Inspector Mandy Paterson from Police Scotland. I have received apologies from Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Mawson, who has other commitments this morning. We have also been joined by Jackie Baillie MSP, who introduced the original bill. Thank you all for joining us.

It would be a helpful starting point if the local authorities would describe where they are in the process of converting advisory on-street disabled person’s bays into enforceable bays.

I will kick off. That is a relatively straightforward question for Fife Council to answer. We had a lot of advisory on-street bays when the act first came into force and we have converted all of them to enforceable bays. All the on-street disabled persons’ parking and the off-street disabled persons’ parking in the public car parks that we manage is enforceable.

There is a good story there, then.

In North Ayrshire, we have converted all our on-street disabled persons’ parking spaces to enforceable bays. We have 407 bays; we have promoted four orders since the act came in and we review the situation regularly. The 187 off-street parking bays in our council car parks are also enforceable.

Significant progress has been made by the local authorities that are here today, but the picture may be a bit more patchy across the country. Why might there be more reluctance among other local authorities to take the steps that they are required to take? Diplomacy is always welcome.

David—knew that if I left the silence long enough, someone would answer.

I am unsure about the answer, although I am aware that some authorities are moving towards decriminalised parking enforcement, which might allow them to take steps forward. We are getting to the stage at which the majority of the 32 councils are using DPE. Everything is entwined—we need enforceable bays to be promoted in a way that is worth while.

We will come to enforcement later.

There is an obligation under the act to approach the owners of private car parks every two years and to work in partnership with them to make disabled persons’ parking bays enforceable. What has been the experience of the local authorities that are present in relation to that?

North Ayrshire Council put a notice in the local newspapers asking whether there was interest among private car park operators in engaging with us about making disabled persons’ parking bays enforceable. No interest has been expressed by them.

Okay. Thank you.

Fife Council has also not followed the Edinburgh example of writing to several thousand operators. We concentrated on getting our own house in order first, particularly with regard to the on-street and off-street car parks that are managed by the council for general public use, which are mostly in town centres and shopping areas. Beyond that, we have done the housing areas, other council facilities and so on.

Through that process, we have taken on board some of the hospital sites in Fife and we are currently working with a couple of clinics that are going to come on board as well, through DPE. In terms of the wider two-year approach to the private sector, we have a page on Fife Council website that is there 24/7 365 days a year. It suggests that private operators that want to pursue that option with us get in touch. As with my colleague’s authority, there has been no uptake.

However, we have discussions with local private car park operators—for example, supermarkets, when there are development discussions. Our development management teams ask whether they wish to come under the wing on that basis and how they will otherwise manage their car parks. We have had no take-up whatsoever through that process. That is our approach at the moment.

Okay. We heard in a previous evidence session from National Car Parks representatives, who seem to be quite happy to consider working in partnership with local authorities. I want to double check the name of the gentleman whom we had at committee last week; I want to put his name on the record, so I apologise for not having that in my notes. [Interruption.] I am sorry—I have just caught the committee clerk out. Duncan Bowins—I apologise to him for not recalling his name—who is the managing director of NCP, seemed to be quite keen to talk to local authorities to see whether there is a deal to be done. A lot of car parks are not car parks in the sky but are just open car parks with a barrier for getting in, so it might make sense to do some proactive work on them. I do not want to target that company in particular, because there might be a number of companies that take a similar view. Is there an opportunity for your local authorities to approach the car park operators in your areas?

North Ayrshire does not have any NCP or other private operators of car parks; we have supermarkets and the like, so we would not have the opportunity to take that forward.

I think that there is one NCP car park in Fife; I am aware of one surface car park. There are a couple of multistorey car parks at shopping developments that are privately managed. I do not think that there is a great opportunity in Fife to do anything with NCP.

Okay, but I hope that other local authorities are following this post-legislative scrutiny and will be proactive.

My experience of the privately managed car parks in Fife is that they are run properly by the likes of NCP or the shopping centre developments. They are well run: as far as I am aware, there is enforcement on parking outwith bays, as there is with abuse of disabled persons’ parking bays.

We heard in evidence last week that whether enforcement switches to the local authority or otherwise, there could be some kind of formal partnership agreement to show that the conversation has taken place, so that there would be effective enforcement, which is the outcome that we are all looking for.

11:15  

We also asked supermarkets; I mention Tesco because it believes that there is a good story to tell, despite our probing of the Tesco representatives when they gave evidence. Supermarkets seem to want to protect their own brands and quality of service within their car parks, so there is a slight resistance to working in partnership with local authorities. Have either of you deliberately targeted a supermarket chain—you do not have to name them—to see whether partnership agreement can be reached?

North Ayrshire Council has not actively engaged with the supermarkets in that way. There has only been an advert requesting interest from them.

Okay.

Any discussions that Fife Council has had with supermarkets have tended to be through the development management process, either when they are making alterations to premises or are looking to establish new ones in Fife. On the whole, the supermarkets do not seem to have an appetite for the council to run their car parks. The brand comes first and they want to keep control of what they see as their premises and car parks.

It was a one-off evidence session, but I was left with the impression that, by and large, supermarkets would like to do the right thing and go beyond the minimum standards. The problem is that we do not know what minimum standards would look like in that sector for a blue badge holder who needs a disabled persons’ parking space. There are definitely opportunities. Would you go back and approach supermarket chains on that? It might be better to speak not to individual stores—the store managers are quite busy, and are dealing with a thousand things at once—but to corporate affairs individuals to see whether there is an opportunity at the level of the local authority or COSLA.

Having read the evidence that the committee heard previously and having seen all the issues that were discussed, I think that that it is something that we need to consider. What you have said about the supermarkets looking to go a bit further than the requirements of the legislation is interesting.

I want to throw in something else to give that a bit of context. When we have discussions around supermarket and retail park developments, we often try to apply council design standards to layouts—for example, the type of layout that you would expect to see in a public car park that is operated by the council, which would have very clear circulation routes, layouts of bays and so on. Retail parks and supermarkets often want to have completely different layouts, which we think are not best suited to the mix of pedestrians and vehicles in car parks. On the whole, they want to stick to their brand, layout and way of doing things. It is all packaged up together.

The supermarkets like to do what they do and it works successfully for them. The customer is first, the brand exists and that is how they like to take everything forward. However, as I said, having read the evidence, I think that there is an opportunity for us to engage further with the supermarkets.

I am not sure whether I articulated that accurately—I am not saying that the supermarkets all want to go beyond minimum standards. I am not sure what minimum standards would look like and what consistency there would be across the supermarket sector. The point that you are making is about the balance between the supermarkets’ corporate brand and what they want to do for their customers, and what a local authority expects in the planning and delivery process for an acceptable parking scheme for blue badge holders. There is scope for more clarity on that. I found that exchange to be very helpful. We will move on with questions.

Some local authorities have called for regulations to be amended to allow enforceable disabled persons' parking bays to be created without the need for a designation order. Does anyone have any views on whether that would be a good thing?

That would certainly be a good and positive step and would save a lot of time in making the bays enforceable.

Fife Council would echo those comments. In our set-up, we have seven area committees to which orders for bays are reported. It is quite an onerous process and it is time consuming. It can be six to nine months after somebody is granted a bay in a residential area before it becomes legally enforceable: there is a period after the bay is marked on the ground when the person can use it but it is not enforceable. Anything that helps to remove that problem will be helpful.

One of the potential downsides is that that statutory process is subject to public consultation and the interests of other property owners, road users and so on. Are you concerned that other users of the public road might not have the opportunity to be consulted on such proposals?

Virtually everything that we do now on the road network involves quite heavy consultation. Whether or not it is required by statute, we regularly engage with communities, locals and other people who would be affected. We would see promotion of disabled persons’ parking bays as an extension of that.

I would echo what Mr Brown said.

Okay. Thank you.

Glasgow City Council has called for repeal of the requirement to engage with private car park owners every two years. Do you have views on that?

We have not been doing that in the way that the City of Edinburgh Council and Aberdeen City Council have done because we see it as being extremely onerous, so we would probably say that it would be good to repeal the requirement to do it every two years. We think that there are other ways to do that—through local meetings, for example, at which we have local contact anyway, and through our website. We think that that would be the way to go.

I agree. North Ayrshire Council only put an advert in the local papers inviting interest from private operators, but there has been no take-up. We regularly attend meetings including North Ayrshire access panel meetings, so if particular issues were raised—there has been none to date—in relation to abuse of disabled persons’ parking spaces, we could engage with a particular supermarket or whatever. However, we have never had to do that because we have not had those issues raised with us.

Fife Council has called for the signage requirements for enforceable disabled persons’ parking spaces to be reduced. What specific changes would you like to see in terms of signage?

We would be happy with bays being marked and designated as a disabled persons’ bays by the white paint marking, so that there is no need for a pole or sign. It is relatively easy to mark out a bay on the ground, and the pole follows that. Placing a pole does not involve engineering works as such, but a hole has to be dug and getting that programmed requires checking utilities and all sorts of things, so the process takes longer than marking.

When the bays were first introduced as advisory spaces, we would simply mark them out. It was only when the traffic regulation order on the bays was amended and a bay was added that we would put up a pole with a sign. That gave us a bit of clarity about what were enforceable bays and what were not. However, if all that was needed for it to be instantly enforceable was the bay marking, we would not need poles.

Poles can sometimes cause problems for the people using the bays—for example, the pole might hinder them opening their car door or affect how they can park their car. The poles also add to street clutter, which we are generally trying to reduce. If we could have bays without the signs, that would be ideal.

Absolutely. North Ayrshire Council would agree with that.

Okay. Thank you.

Can I add something?

Of course you can, Mr Henry. I sometimes do not spot that people want to speak, so please telegraph to me that you want to say something or I will miss you.

Okay. The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 are the updated model. They allow us now to have bays without posts and signs. We are not taking away any of our signs and posts, because there is no requirement to do that. However, if we revoke any bays by taking them off a traffic regulation order, we will remove signs and posts. There is nothing to stop a council continuing with that practice, which allows people to identify which bays are enforceable and which are not, but it is a resource commitment that the council would rather not have to make. Being able to have the markings only, without having to have a traffic regulation order to go with them, would be a definite step forward, but it would leave us needing to consult the locality as a follow-up, because the use of markings alone would make the bay unenforceable.

Chief Inspector Paterson, I promise that we will talk about enforcement shortly. However, first, Mr Stewart has a question on another matter.

I want to talk about the length of time that it takes and the processes that you have in place to ensure that a request for a new disabled parking bay is handled quickly. What is the timescale from someone making such a request to a bay being put in place? If a bay was required to be removed, how long would it take for that redundant space to be processed?

The approval process, from the moment that the application arrives at North Ayrshire Council to the moment that it eventually lands on one of our technicians’ desks, is fairly swift. Moving forward to the bay becoming active on the ground can sometimes take a little longer. We suffer from a large amount of rain in Scotland and markings have to go down when the road is dry, so our programme to deal with our backlog of markings can often be restricted to dry days, so there is a lag. The process for the application arriving on our desk is pretty quick, but moving on to the next stage can take anything between one month and two months, depending on the programme.

What about the process to remove a bay?

Our corporate fraud team deals with the applications that come in, and they inform us when the bays are due to be removed. For example, if somebody is deceased, the team phones us to say that the bay is no longer required. We are keen to keep that moving on quickly, because road space is key for the roads department and removing disabled bays allows other people to park in those places. Taking out the road markings takes probably another one month to two months.

Is the process similar in Fife, Mr Brown?

Yes. There are similar timescales. It would be a matter of one week to two weeks from when we get the initial contact from an applicant to an officer visiting them and deciding what to do. We do most of the disabled bay markings for residential areas ourselves—we have an in-house lining operation—so we have a degree of flexibility to react. We would expect any bay to be provided within probably a couple of months. Occasionally, a bay throws up issues and there are other things to be considered—the resident may not want it where we can offer it, and it can take a while longer to work through that and come to an agreement about where we can provide it. Nevertheless, the process is fairly swift.

We do not always remove the bays in a residential area unless there is real pressure on parking in the area, because there is a cost to removing them and the bays are a facility that anybody with a blue badge can use at any time. However, in areas where there is pressure on residential parking and we have been asked to take the bays away, we will do that. Sometimes, a bay is given up by someone who has moved out and the next person who moves in also qualifies for a bay. Although our records show that a bay is provided because a specific person asked for it, they are public bays and it is easy enough to pass them on.

That is helpful and saves me asking my supplementary question. Not a lot of people realise that a disabled bay is provided on an assessment of need in a street and is not assigned to a specific blue badge holder. That can occasionally cause a lot of consternation, so it is good to have it on the record.

I have a supplementary question for you, Mr Brown, because you are here from the kingdom of Fife, which is where my constituency is. I have a constituency case involving a housing association—I will not name it—and a number of my constituents who qualify for a disabled parking bay. To what extent do you work with housing associations and compel them to ensure that there is enough disabled parking? In the case that I am dealing with, there is not enough parking for my constituents in the area.

11:30  

It is interesting to hear that, because we work with a number of the housing associations and, generally, if they want us to mark a bay for them and add it to the order, we will do that. I am not sure that we are putting pressure on them to provide a fixed number or a percentage of disabled parking bays but, generally, the councils all work to the national guideline that there should be, say, 6 per cent within our car parks—the number varies depending on the size of the car parks. In residential areas, it is very much about the assessed need. If there is a need for bays, they should be provided and, although the able-bodied people with cars should not be disadvantaged, they should work a bit harder to find parking spaces near their homes.

That is helpful. Thank you.

You are able to tell your constituents that you have raised the matter at committee, Ms Gilruth. Mr Brown might even offer to have further discussions on the specific case offline.

Absolutely.

That was a definite “Yes”, Ms Gilruth. That is quite handy.

I promise that we will get round to questions for Chief Inspector Paterson, although this is not one of them.

I would like to explore the different approaches of the two councils that are represented. North Ayrshire Council has chosen not to pursue decriminalised parking enforcement, whereas Fife Council has. I ask the witnesses from those councils to explain why they went down those routes and what impact each decision has had on blue badge holders and the misuse of parking spaces.

We took up DPE powers in 2013. Up to that point, we had had strong relationships with Fife Constabulary, which was the police force at the time. The force found it more and more difficult to prioritise parking enforcement alongside all the other duties that it had, and we began moves to take on DPE powers in Fife.

We have a parking warden operation with, I think, 18 wardens who cover Fife seven days a week. They work mostly 12-hour shifts, and a big part of what they do is look after the blue badge enforcement throughout Fife. When we moved to DPE, enforcement was less rigorous than it had been previously, for the reasons that have been stated. There has been a lot more enforcement of the disabled bays since we moved to DPE. Our written submission gives the number of penalty charge notices that we issued for the abuse of disabled bays. Off the top of my head, I think that, in round numbers, it was about 1,000 out of the 21,000 PCNs that are issued annually.

In about 2010-11, we carried out an investigation and prepared a business case for the introduction of DPE. We engaged with the then Strathclyde Police on the proposal and would have had its support had we chosen that route. However, it did not add up for us financially to do that. It was not affordable for us, we chose not to pursue it at the time and we have not done so since.

In Fife, enforcement improved when the council took it on.

Yes, definitely.

We do not know what the situation would have been in North Ayrshire.

We do not know. If we get any reports of abuse, we engage with the police to carry out a check, but we do not get a lot of complaints about parking in disabled spaces.

Do people tend to come to you or go to the police?

I imagine that they come to us both. We might get the first call and then raise the issue at our monthly local police liaison meetings. We might also call the police to engage with them if there is a particular problem.

Mr Brown, is it your council’s view that the police perhaps have better things to do—if I can phrase it in that way—and that parking enforcement is not a priority for them? Is that why you felt that you should take it on?

It was not seen as the highest priority, given what the police were being asked to do in other areas, and there was an opportunity for councils to take it on. We had regular roads liaison meetings with Fife Constabulary, so discussions about DPE started early. The issue was always there, and we decided in around 2010-11 to introduce it in 2012, because we were seeking a better level of enforcement. We did not just want to tackle the disabled parking side of things; we wanted to aid town centre vitality by generating turnover of parking spaces and making sure that people paid for their tickets and so on. We can do that only if we have in place a reliable system of enforcement that works all the time.

Chief inspector, will you comment on the general view that the committee has heard—not just today but previously—that the police are perhaps not enforcing the legislation?

First, I thank you for the invitation. Mr Mawson extends his apologies for not attending.

The police service has varying priorities. The events of recent weeks show the breadth of priorities that we have to address for the public.

In anticipation of the meeting, I tried to get a flavour of the enforcement activity that is taking place around the country, particularly in areas where parking is not yet decriminalised. I spoke to area commanders around the country to get a sense of how things are working. On recording practices, a couple of call types come in: those requesting assistance to the public and those relating to road traffic events. Five hundred calls of each type come in every week, so it was impossible to break the figures down to see how many reports of parking offences we receive per week. We tend to manage the issue by seeking local views on what is important in various forums, such as community council meetings and scrutiny meetings, and then working out what activity to undertake.

One of the areas that could break down the figures for disabled parking infringements was Falkirk, which is the area command that I used to cover. In response to local concerns, our community sergeant carried out a three-month operation on parking in general. I do not get the sense that we receive lots of complaints about disabled parking infringements per se, but we do get recurring queries about parking in general, which we respond to. As a result of the operation in Falkirk, just over 300 parking tickets were issued, 44 of which related to disabled parking infringements.

The information that the Ayrshire division fed back to me was that tourism plays a big part in the complaints that they get about parking, so they tend to focus their activity around that. They told me that, in the year from April 2016 to March 2017, they enforced more than 500 tickets, but they could not break that figure down to give a specific number of disabled parking infringements.

Parking is not yet decriminalised in Moray and is a standing agenda item for its community safety strategy group, in which the police work in partnership with other agencies.

To get some context from areas in which there has been decriminalisation, we spoke to colleagues in Edinburgh and Greenock, who told us that, when they get feedback, they work in partnership with local enforcement officers and try to carry out prevention as well as enforcement. For example, they deliver education through joint lettering to raise awareness.

Mr Wightman wants to continue that line of questioning, and the witnesses have indicated that they are happy with that.

Thank you for coming along today. What you have said is very useful, chief inspector. You seem to be saying that you assess, through your community engagement, the extent to which parking is a priority issue for communities.

Yes. That is a commonsense approach to our engagement with the public. I have not mentioned the fact that we link up with disability groups at national level. The feedback that I received from our safer communities event was that, although there are issues, parking did not come to the fore at that level of engagement.

People who need to make use of disabled person’s parking bays are in the minority, and the evidence that we have heard from them is that they are not satisfied with the level of enforcement. Beyond a general level of engagement with communities, how would you address the concerns of a blue badge holder or a group of people with disabilities in a community?

We have a process that allows people to phone in. If there are infringements or there is misuse of the blue badge, people should phone in, using the 101 number, and report that. The advice that our control rooms have is that, if someone phones in to report a parking infringement in a decriminalised area, they should be referred to the local authority. However, if someone phones in to report the misuse of a blue badge, that should be raised as a call for dispatch.

What about the persistent misuse of a particular disabled person’s parking bay? Would you escalate that and try to get a speedier response?

Everything is dealt with on a priority basis, and an escalation of an incident would probably be sent to the community team. In an area that I came from, an issue over a disabled person’s parking bay led to an escalation of general neighbourhood issues. When something escalates beyond the issue of the disabled persons’ parking bay, our community policing teams will look at it.

Thank you.

On awareness of disabled parking, irrespective of whether the bays are enforceable, there is a cultural acceptance of the use and abuse of disabled parking bays. Should we return to the idea of running a national co-ordinated information campaign? Would we have to wait until all local authorities were in the same position in respect of enforceable bays, or would that not matter? Should we look at doing something meaningful now?

As part of our post-legislative scrutiny, we will make recommendations to the Government, so it would be good to get on record what you think of the idea of having a national strategy to ensure that the public are clear about their responsibilities and the fact that they should not park in disabled bays.

It is a waste of both council officials’ time and police time if they have to deal with the abuse of parking spaces, because people should just not park there in the first place. Each time we enforce a bay because we have to it is a loss, because someone is not getting the space that they need to allow them equal access in society. Do you have any thoughts on the idea of a national driver awareness campaign?

We are not aware of a particular problem in North Ayrshire. However, given the response that you have been getting from disability groups, an awareness campaign might be a good approach in trying to resolve the issues.

Okay. You do not need to have a burning view on the issue, but this is an opportunity to get something on the record.

Absolutely. The police put out joint messages all the time, and messages come across powerfully when they are not from a single organisation. We can signpost people to how they can report disabled parking infringements. It does not matter whether the bays are decriminalised; there are ways in which we can manage the issue to make it clear to people how they can get help.

11:45  

There would be value in a national strategy. My team does not issue blue badges; that is done elsewhere in the council. Every time a blue badge is issued, we give its recipient quite a lot of literature about what they can do with it. We do not give the same information to drivers who do not have a blue badge, so there is a certain amount of ignorance about what people who do not have a blue badge can and cannot do. On the other hand, there are people who think that they can get away with misuse of disabled bays. They think, “I’ll stop here for 10 minutes.” However, in that time, a blue badge holder might come along. Any campaign that raised awareness of the issues would be useful.

Some committee members still have questions. Graham Simpson will explore enforcement further, and I want to leave enough time for Jackie Baillie MSP to answer questions.

I go back to our chat about decriminalised parking enforcement. We are in tight financial times and, as Mr Dempster said, the business case for introducing DPE has to be considered. DPE might be easier in large urban areas and more difficult in remote and rural areas. Are there cleverer ways that we could deal with enforcement? Should wardens deal only with enforcement? I am thinking of parts of my constituency where, although we could do with more enforcement in parking generally, it could not be justified to have someone whose job it was to do only that—a business case could not be made for it.

However, when I look at litter strewn everywhere and supermarket trolleys half a mile away from where they should be, I start to join the dots and wonder whether there is a job there for someone that could save a heck of a lot of money somewhere down the line. When you think about whose job it is to deal with decriminalised parking enforcement, have you considered different models? Could you upskill existing staff to multitask? Are there opportunities there, or would that not really work, and is it just a case of me going off on a tangent again?

We have not looked at that recently. We introduced a litter enforcement team not long ago and we could look at whether it could also be involved in parking enforcement. We would need to look at that as a council and make a decision.

At the root of my question is whether there are other models of decriminalised parking enforcement that would make it more affordable for local authorities. Are you aware of any such models? I am interested to know what you think about that, Mr Brown.

I am not aware of any model that addresses the multitasking, as you put it. The DPE model is self financing. We are striking a balance—it is about issuing enough tickets to generate an income to pay for the operation. If we start bringing in other activities, we might upset that balance.

Ten or 12 years ago in Fife Council, we discussed whether we could have one warden who did everything, but the practicalities did not stack up. With DPE, parking attendants rely on technology to do their job. They come in and pick up the handsets, which are linked to the in-house computers that generate the penalty charge notices and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency checks and all the rest of it. There is quite a hefty piece of technology behind DPE and anybody doing it has to have that. If you want to increase the number of units and the people who use them, there is a cost implication. When you add in other activities, it starts to escalate. We have talked about it quite often but we have not come across a practical way of achieving it.

That is helpful—it was just a thought.

I have a very quick question for Chief Inspector Paterson. Would it benefit the police for all councils to take on that work, given the extensive demands on your time?

I must be diplomatic. No public service would say no to passing on the responsibility to someone else—that is a given—but the reality is that we work with local authorities. If councils took on that work, that would be a great win for Police Scotland, but it would have to be agreed by both parties concerned. That would be my approach.

Fife Council’s approach has been very partnership oriented; others have different views in terms of finance. It is not an easy question to answer. We would have to feel that it was not going to disadvantage the communities involved. The outcome should be that, whoever provides it, the community should get the best service.

North Ayrshire Council has said that it does not think that it is worthwhile for it to decriminalise parking enforcement, and it is not for me to disagree with that. The council has carried out its inquiries and there is still activity going on for our service. I hope that that is an answer for yourself.

That is fair enough.

We operate DPE, but there are offences that we cannot deal with and for which we still have to rely on the police. For instance, if somebody is parked not on a yellow line but in a dangerous position, parking attendants cannot deal with that under DPE. That is only one example of a situation in which we still rely on the police. There are several situations that the DPE operation cannot deal with and that we have to refer to the police.

Should you be able to deal with those situations?

Yes, it would be useful if we could deal with some of them.

If you have wardens out there and they see dangerous parking, it seems crazy that they cannot deal with it.

Chief Inspector Paterson, without relying on your diplomacy any further, would you like to comment on that suggestion from Mr Brown?

The police would love the councils to do that too. This is going to be a great meeting for me. [Laughter.]

I should point out that we have no power to agree anything. We might just leave that one hanging.

I thank Jackie Baillie MSP for her patience. It is over to you, Jackie.

I am known for my patience, convener. Thank you very much for inviting me along to the meeting.

I am keen to understand an issue of enforcement. The bill was introduced five years ago, and things have clearly changed since then. At that time, when only five local authorities operated decriminalised parking, we felt that the police’s job was to be reactive, not proactive, recognising that it would be a less important issue unless there was abuse of a parking bay. Can you give us an idea of how many local authorities have now decriminalised their parking enforcement?

My understanding is that 16 local authorities have done so and that it is in progress in another two.

The situation has changed and there is, potentially, less of a burden on the police given that parking enforcement is now decriminalised in half of local authorities, covering heavily populated areas such as Glasgow and Edinburgh—is that correct?

Yes. Parking enforcement is decriminalised in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

That is helpful to know.

I do not know whether you have the statistics for this, but my impression is that something like 85 to 90 per cent of the population comply with the rules. Are you getting repeat offenders or is the problem by and large dealt with by your simply issuing one ticket?

I honestly do not feel that I could answer that question with any accuracy. What I can say is that, since we were given access to the blue badge scheme information, which was one of the proposals that was made the last time that we spoke about this, police officers have carried out only seven checks on suspected misusers of the blue badge. In four of those cases, it turned out that the badge was being used according to the terms. In the other three cases, one of the badges had been stolen and the other two were being used fraudulently. Only eight offences of misuse of the blue badge scheme that we are enforcing have been committed, and for me, at national level, that is not enough to suggest repeat offending.

I am not talking about blue badge enforcement. I understand that people conflate the two issues. I am simply trying to understand whether, because someone has been given a ticket for abusing a disabled parking bay, they might not do that again. Is there any data to suggest that that might be the case?

I could not comment on that.

Okay; that is fine.

I will turn to the issue of local authority resources. I remember tortured conversations, including with Fife Council, about whether there were sufficient resources at local government level. I also had conversations with COSLA and Stewart Stevenson, the then minister, about that. Leaving aside the fact that some authorities were more efficient than others at painting bays, were you given any additional resources for the first phase, which was to go back and designate all your advisory bays as enforceable bays?

No. All that work was picked up using existing resources through our traffic management teams. The work became the priority at that time—it was one of the items that had to be picked off.

Oh. My recollection was that the Scottish Government promised money. At issue was the quantum of that money.

There may well have been such a promise, but I cannot specifically recall that. All the work was picked up within existing resources, including human resources.

Do you have a rough sum of what the work in Fife cost, excluding the staff that you would have employed anyway?

I know that we have spent about £217,000 on the signage for the bays. That information is in the written submission. The cost of the lining was not quantified, so I do not have that information to hand.

Will Mr Dempster or Mr Henry shine a light on the matter from their perspectives?

I am not aware that we were given any additional funding; I cannot confirm whether that was the case.

I do not know what the work costs were. Are you able to comment on that, Mark?

I do not have an exact figure on that, but the costs were met within the service, by the service. I do not believe that any additional funding was provided.

You all appear to have coped with the work.

Witnesses: Yes.

Excellent. I always like efficient local government—it is a wonder to behold.

I will move on to the subject of off-street private parking, which has been an area of considerable interest. If you can cast your mind back five years, before the bill was introduced, would it be fair to say that although supermarkets and shopping centres had disabled bays, they were not enforced?

Witnesses: Yes

When I introduced the bill, there was a sudden rush of supermarkets competing with each other and, indeed, out-of-town shopping centres, to come forward with wonderful enforcement schemes. Some of them even took the money from the enforcement and distributed it to local charities and got good publicity out of that.

Although supermarkets and shopping centres might not have picked your enforcement scheme, they are enforcing the bays themselves, because it is what their customers demand. Is that typically what happens now?

We certainly have some that do that—they definitely enforce the bays and they operate robust appeal systems similar to those of the councils. Generally, they reinvest the income that they make from the fines in improving the parking.

I am sorry, but I cannot answer that question. I do not know what supermarkets or other organisations do in our area.

Their action might have been the consequence of the bill and, any time that you advertise or are in touch with them about enforcement, although they might not choose the local authority to do enforcement, they will choose to do the enforcement themselves, because you have raised the matter with them.

Perhaps. They will look at all their sites individually, pretty much as we would look at our town centres and determine from that which ones have the issues, where you need to patrol and where you need to concentrate resources.

A lot of the supermarkets, which are big national companies, look across their whole portfolio and react where they need to.

I am aware that, within North Ayrshire, some of the private operators, particularly the supermarkets, carry out the enforcement. They seem to do that in a remote, electronic way. There is no man wearing a high-vis vest or jacket and giving out tickets; rather, people get the notification through the post.

My perception, looking from the outside as a local authority that relies on enforcement through the police teams, is that supermarkets can choose between a local authority pursuing the misuse of the bays and carrying out their own enforcement. The revenue that is generated from such enforcement returns to the supermarket but, if the matter was handed over to the local authority to enforce, it would be returned to the local authority. There might be an incentive for supermarkets to retain the responsibility for enforcement.

12:00  

Or to do creative things with that income, such as give it to charity, which seems to be popular with their customers—or at least with those who did not get a ticket.

The original bill followed the existing legislation on enforcement and on traffic regulation orders, and the traffic signs regulations and general directions changed in 2016. I think—I will need to go back and check because it was a long time ago—that the 2009 act does not specify exactly what it is necessary to do, but refers to the legislation of the time that set out the requirements. If the requirements of the regulations and directions change, it would be easy to take away the requirement for signs, for example.

I have just checked the wording of the 2009 act, which talks about bays being “marked or sign-posted”—I emphasise the “or”—so the change would be accommodated by the act as it stands.

That would seem to be the case.

Good. That confirms my understanding.

If there are no other questions, I thank everyone for coming along this afternoon—it is 1 minute past 12 o’clock. We will continue our post-legislative scrutiny. I am sure that the witnesses will follow it. We will keep them up to date with the progress that we make.