Issue - meetings

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Mace)

Report of Corporate Director (Regeneration).

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Mace)

The Corporate Director (Regeneration) submitted a report informing members about the future options for Civil Parking Enforcement (CPE), previously known as Decriminalised Parking Enforcement (DPE) after the expiry of the current Agency Agreement with Lancashire County Council in September 2009.

The options, options analysis, including risk assessment, were set out in the report as follows:

These are the options considered by the County’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the options from which the districts have been asked to indicate their preferred option by 1^st October:

Option 1 a

This option is to continue with the current arrangements. This would build on the success of the current operation and would provide a sound basis for the future of parking enforcement across Lancashire. The County Council believe this option is not sustainable owing to the overall accumulated deficit despite the recent improvement in the financial position. It is therefore not their preferred option. Lancaster has demonstrated that it can deliver effective parking enforcement from both an operational and financial point of view and this originally represented the best option for the City Council. This is where effective parking enforcement could continue under the current operational and financial arrangements.

Option 1 b

This option would again build on the success of the current operational arrangements but requires the majority of the districts to sign up to accepting capping arrangements that would limit the cost of providing the on-street element of the parking enforcement. Detailed information is not available at present on how the capping limits would be applied but these would be linked to ensuring the ongoing cost effectiveness of the current arrangements.

This option does not represent a significant risk for the Lancaster operation due its good performance within the current partnership arrangements that resulted in a small deficit in 2007/08. Furthermore, there is no longer a financial issue with this option as funding any deficits from on-street pay and display surpluses has been agreed in principle. As previously mentioned this option is the preferred option of the Lancashire Leaders Group and the majority of the districts.

Option 2

Under this option the County Council would undertake the on-street enforcement and the district councils would carry out the enforcement of restrictions and charges on their own car parks. The City Council would be able to utilise the County Council’s enforcement contractor and have the ability to increase or decrease these resources to suit local operational arrangements. The Council would also be able to use the back office function that deals with PCN processing, correspondence, telephone calls and payments. The City Council would still undertake the issuing authority statutory functions required by the Traffic Management Act 2004. It is likely that SLAs would be prepared for the districts requesting these services from the County Council.

This option does not allow an integrated approach to local parking enforcement which contributes to the wider management of parking and traffic within the district. There would be duplicated  ...  view the full minutes text for item 53