Barnet motorists - hefty bills - are councillors really bothered?

a large bill if ever there was one

Mr Mustard read this story in the local Times newspaper

https://www.times-series.co.uk/news/17379165.drivers-in-barnet-could-be-punished-by-air-quality-rules/

This snippet suggests that ruling councillors aren't bothered enough about air quality

What they are usually bothered about, in Mr Mustard's experience, is balancing the budget, which always includes a hefty contribution from the Special Parking Account i.e. from drivers.

Here is some procurement activity that they voted in favour of at a meeting of the Policy & Resources committee in December 18 at which councillors Cohen & Zinkin were both present

They plan to spend far more on implementing money raising levies than on air quality.

You have been warned. Best start the uprising now before they get too far into your wallet or purse & make the ULEZ look like chicken feed.

You can contact Dean here cllr.d.cohen@barnet.gov.uk 

& Peter here cllr.p.zinkin@barnet.gov.uk

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

 

Someone show Dean where his elbow is

Barnet Times: Link to paper

So Councillor Dean Cohen says that each bay has its own unique code. Let's see. Here are extracts from the council's own map of bays in the Broadway, Mill Hill of two adjacent bays, separated by a yellow line.

outside 52

outside 56-66

So there are two adjoining bays both of which are numbered 9509 which could easily lead motorists to think all the bays in that road have the same number.

So where is Dean's elbow in case he asks? He sits on it.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

p.s. In Enfield they do it differently. The whole of Southgate shopping district has just the one code.

The defence to this PCN is that the council have been paid the appropriate parking charge and that on your phone it does say you have paid in the Broadway. The PCN says you haven't paid in the Broadway. It does not refer to a failure to pay in bay 1234. You can beat a PCN like this one if the circumstances are suitable & properly argued.

Parking in Barnet - Focus group messages

Focus

Although the Questions to and answers from the Leader of the council (not all answered by him, just what they are called) are full of pointless petty political point scoring (The Barnet Council chamber is not the House of Commons) the odd sensible question and answer do appear, like this one from Tuesday 6 April 14:

Question 26 Councillor Alan Schneiderman

Has the Cabinet Member now had time to identify the key messages coming out of the parking focus groups held in December and January; and if so what are they?

Answer by Councillor Dean Cohen

Yes and the key messages are as follows:

1. That we should relax enforcement – Civil Enforcement Officers are considered to be “ruthless and inflexible” (Absolutely no surprise there)

2. Free or cheap parking – free parking for 15-30 minutes are suggested in shopping streets and centres (what a good idea)

3. Straightforward payment methods (by which people probably meant cash)

4. Level of fines – it is suggested that there should be reduced car parking fines (but this is not under the Council’s control.) (Actually it is, the council could choose to accept the 50% rate at any time as they have a wide discretion. It would be an interesting experiment to see if compliance improved and payment collection percentages increased)

5. Council Policy and Engagement – This supports the development of a comprehensive parking policy and further engagement but suggested that residents would also like to have reviews of all controls and that we should provide additional parking.

6. Controlled parking – residents are concerned about the “myriad of variations in restrictions” so clearly we need to better explain the need for locally appropriate controls (or have less myriad variations)

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

CPZ - move your money back

Here is a link to the refund application email address, here

Thank you councillors Richard Cornelius & Dean Cohen (presumably you both had something to do with the decision).

Now how about getting that clamped and removed car returned like you promised Richard?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Verrus - PayByPhone - Not a bargain

You go abroad for a few days and you come home to an unexpectantly high bill or you let your child have your iPad and suddenly you owe £thousands; that is just like getting Verrus to supply a cash free service for parking (cash free not cost free).

Let us wind back to Cllr Brian Coleman's delegated powers report of August 2011, DPR 1375, entitled "Cashless Parking July 2011" which is reproduced for you here in all of its glory (gory?)

1375 - Cashless Parking July 2011 by MisterMustard

What gems did this DPR contain?

para 3.2 - ‘Pay by Phone’ or ‘Cashless’ technology is inexpensive to set up and administer.

para 5.1 - Estimated costs for the necessary signage work would be approximately £160,000

para 5.2 - In addition, the removal of machines including making good the footway would entail civil works estimated in the region of £80,000

para 5.4 Savings

	(£) Cost / (Savings ) Full Year
Pay by Phone fees (additional cost)	£80,000
Pay and display maintenance costs	-£200,000
Pay and display running costs	-£20,000
Cash collection costs	-£220,000
Staffing costs (E&O)	-£100,000
Totals	-£460,000

So moving to PayByPhone was meant to save bundles.

Para 8.10 - To date pay by phone transactions account for nearly 50% of all pay-at-time-of-parking transactions (Mr Mustard might just have to check this statement for veracity).

Let us see what we saved. Here are the PayByPhone costs for the year to March 13

Date	Invoice	Month	PbP on £	PbP off £	Paypoint £
11/07/2012	12958	May	26,504.52
09/08/2012	13325	June		2,706.74
09/08/2012	13326	June	21,114.32
09/08/2012	13327	July	23,146.21
09/08/2012	13328	July		2,926.98
17/09/2012	13755	Aug	20,094.95	2,623.79
30/09/2012	14046	Sept	22,671.82
30/09/2012	14047	Sept		3,013.97
08/11/2012	14521	June			188.15
08/11/2012	14521	Sept			302.36
08/11/2012	14521	July			305.60
08/11/2012	14521	Aug			308.60
13/11/2012	14572	Oct	24,178.39	3,426.97	358.76
10/12/2012	14917	Nov	24,847.25	3,406.22	448.66
11/01/2013	15314	Dec	22,295.72	3,273.92	337.83
12/02/2013	15759	Jan	23,666.62	3,127.11	108.81
13/03/2013	16255	Feb	23,420.68	3,086.34	491.98
29/03/2013	16598	Mar	24,902.20	3,274.27
		Totals	256,842.68	30,866.31	2,850.75

which gives a total paid to Verrus/Paypoint via NSL of £290,559.

Amounts paid to park in the year were £2,945,682 so after allowing for a few sales of vouchers by shops we are looking at 10% of all parking income going to Verrus/Paypoint. It seems a lot for simply accepting money that people willingly want to pay. Mr Mustard is a debt collector and doesn't usually earn more than 10% of sums paid by debtors who don't want to pay willingly! Did Barnet Council negotiate fees hard enough? Do they even understand commerce?

The Verrus payments in the year ended March 2011, before parking meters were removed, was £58,221 and so the extra amount has not gone up by £80,000 but by £222,000 which wipes out all of the saving of the cash collection team.

It cost £240,000 to change the signs, remove the meters and repair the pavements afterwards so that means the net saving from this change for a whole year was a mere £80,000.

Now the businesses Mr Mustard has spoken to have suffered a drop in trade of a conservative 30%. We have 20 or so centres of shopping all with 50 to 100 shops. Let us suppose a typical shop has a turnover of £100,000 (again there will be many which were much higher). So the value of trade lost to the High Street by the bonkers policy of not having cash parking meters (and do see my post of yesterday about the prevalence of cash as a medium of payment) is

20 * 75 * £100,000 * 30% = £4,500,000 which is probably a massive under estimate.
Barnet Council exists in order to serve its residents and businesses. It is serving only itself by the policy of cashless parking.

By worrying about the cost of the service and not taking sufficient account of the value of the service the council have saved a small amount of money and badly hampered many businesses.

Much as Mr Mustard would be delighted to see the signatory of this DPR, Cllr Brian Coleman, leave the council and take up a post in the real world, Mr Mustard can't bring himself to write a reference that would help. Brian isn't solely to blame as no officer appears to have stood up and said what a bonkers policy it was and the "leader" of the council, Richard Cornelius didn't step in and stop the obvious madness.

If only traders had been consulted. Oh, they have been in North Finchley, Chipping Barnet, Edgware and East Finchley and all have asked for cash parking meters and the council are deaf to their pleas.

Cllr (Dean) Cohen rules out the return of cash machines

The time has come to listen.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Cash is King (not bling)

Thank you to the British parking Association (not something Mr Mustard types very often) for bringing to his attention a press release from the Payments Council trailing their lovely £750 report. Mr Mustard wonders if bloggers count as journalists so that he can have a free copy (how about it Bugle Dan?). Actually he doesn't need it as what he needs to know is in the press release.

Oh dear Cllr Brian Coleman, your adventurous (another word for foolhardy) decision in mid 2011 to remove cash parking meters was pants (moist gusset variety)(Mr Mustard apologises to anyone who now has an image of BC in his pants)

and Cllr Dean Cohen you need to get Officers to take another look at their/your stubborn refusal to countenance cash parking meters. We need them, there is demand. Bring them back and businesses across Barnet will sing your praises (and remember you in May 14). It is a mark of a great leader that they recognise duff decisions and correct them. We now have meters which will take cash, they have had the slots covered!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bugger Barnet

Mr Mustard is sure that when Brian Coleman had the idea of saving money by removing the cash parking meter facility, so that cash didn't need collecting, he wasn't thinking a la King George V with his supposed Bugger Bognor remark, "Bugger Barnet" but that he was doing the council and the residents a great service. Sadly, as recent history has shown us, he was completely wrong and yesterday afternoon at 1.30 in the Moxon Street car park the number of cars was, bugger all.

it could do with a bit of a sweep as well.

That is also what Dean Cohen seems to be achieving since he took over the parking portfolio about a year ago. Bold decisions are needed and have not been made. If only 7 cars have paid to park and there are 62 spaces (58 for anyone, 3 for blue badge holders and 1 reserved - who is it reserved for is a question that needs to be answered) then you have to ask yourself if maybe a radical new strategy is needed? If cars are not in the car park then fewer shoppers are in the shops and the town of Chipping Barnet is slowly withering.

We want a thriving High Street. Rather than looking at car parks as a cash cow, and this one is pretty dry at present, then maybe we should be looking at making them free for up to 4 hours. That would stop commuters and workers from parking there all day whilst leaving the way clear for people to come and use our shops, restaurants and hairdressers without the worry of getting a parking ticket at the extortionate charge of £110 and would generate a high turnover of people, at least 3 per space per day.

Parking meters that take credit cards, not of course the ones that also take cash that traders told the council were required, would help a little, but they are supposedly coming tomorrow or the next day or the one after that; who can say? certainly not Dean Cohen.

We need less emphasis from the council on making £7,000,000+ a year from parking charges, permits and penalty charge notices in order to subsidise Council Tax and more responsibility being taken on their shoulders for keeping town centres in business.

When it's gone it's gone!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Good news story - not in Barnet though

http://westnorwood.wordpress.com/

This is the kind of story Mr Mustard would like to read in Barnet.  Lambeth Council evidently listen harder to their traders than Barnet do. Hence that could be why West Norwood, which Mr Mustard knows well, is now doing reasonably well despite it not being a main town centre.

From the Standard

 

Shopkeepers were celebrating today after Lambeth council eased parking restrictions around their businesses which they claimed hit trade.

West Norwood High Street shoppers can now park free for an hour rather than just 30 minutes. Antonia Beamish, 41, owner of Beamish & McGlue grocery shop and café, said takings fell 30 per cent under the half-hour rule. “When we first opened in 2005, you were free to park all around this area,” she said. (Dean Cohen take note, this is what Barnet's traders have been saying, a 30% to 40% drop in trade due to removal of meters)

“About two years later, the council made the changes and it made a massive difference. We have been suffocated by these measures.” However, Miss Beamish insisted: “For a thriving high street, we need a two-hour free parking minimum and no restrictions on Saturdays.”

The changes came after Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said he wanted to end the “overzealous culture of parking enforcement” because the “rigid state orthodoxy of persecuting motorists” damages small businesses across the UK.

Parking meter charges of up to £3 an hour remain an issue in West Norwood, said Stav Tsoukkas, 32, who owns the Electric Café: “The tariffs are very high and although there are free bays, they get taken up very quickly.”

Imogen Walker, Lambeth council cabinet member for environment, said: “We have extended the time people can stop for free in parking bays along the High Street. Further free parking in side-street bays was extended to 60 minutes in December, which has made it easier for people who want to stop for a meal. (only if they bolt their food)

“We have been putting a stronger focus on making sure our civil enforcement officers are helpful to motorists, for example by advising them on where they can and can’t park.” (Helpful traffic wardens - gosh)

There is still scope for improvement in Lambeth. In Norwood Rd (that is the name of the road on which Beamish & McGlue are situated) from 1 April 12 to 28 February 13 there were 267 parking tickets issued by a traffic warden on foot and 2801 by stealthy cctv. That will be about £200,000 that the council have raked in from penalty charges.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard