Parking offences at Sand Street car park (FOI)

​Request

This for the attention of the department which oversee the parking fines incurred in Sand Street car park.

A

Please provide a year by year account of parking related offences and the total fines gleaned / incurred within the Sand Street car park since the new payment system was introduced.

B

Please provide an account of the parking related fines for the two years preceding the new system to include the spectrum of offences and amount of fines accrued.

C

Please confirm that under the old system you could not leave without payment as an arm type barrier and a stop light prevented this until payment was made? If different please specify in full.

D

Please provide the average amount of any unpaid or partial payment incurred by persons leaving (new system) without paying or not paying in full and the respective fines in total (eg payment of 87 Pence insufficient payment, or unpaid and a subsequent fine of £60).

E

Please provide corporate proportionality regarding the amount of unpaid dues and the respective £40 or £60 fines. If down to the law, who decided this amount when writing the law.

F

What measures are there, by the payment machine, to electronically remind or physically prevent a vehicle leaving the car park if they inadvertently forget or do not notice their Uni Card had insufficient funds to cover the payment? This to include the payment machine providing any type of warning to the person, and again when exiting the car park as a secondary means of reminding the person (eg barrier, stop light or a sign to say go to the Office to address a problem).

Response

A

This information is set out in the table below. Please note however that Excess Charge Notices issued under offence code 201 include a number of different scenarios; these are as follows:

• using a disabled badge without a Disabled ParkSmart Card

• using paycards

• not checking a payment has been completed correctly

• paying for an incorrect registration number

• driving out without remembering to make a payment

Excess Charge Notices issued in Sand Street Car Park since 2012:

The following table sets out the number of Excess Charge Notices issued under code 201, up to and including 5 August 2018, but also shows how many of those were subsequently cancelled.

The Excess Charge Notices that have been cancelled are related to instances where a payment has been made for an incorrect registration number which has been subsequently identified, and also for first time disabled badge holders who did not understand the system requirements. A small number have been cancelled due to other unspecified reasons.

You will see that there were a high number of cancellations in 2013, which is just after the system went live. This is because the department introduced a policy of education during the early stages of the system going live, rather than upholding the Excess Charge; it was considered more important to explain the system to users and build public confidence with using it for a reasonable period of time.

The following Excess Charge income was collected from Sand Street Car Park penalties for the same period:

B

Excess Charge Notices issued in Sand Street between 2010 and 2012

The income data for the period preceding the introduction of the Sand Street system is not available as it was not recorded for individual car parks.

C

The previous system operated was a Paycard based one and there were no barriers and / or stop lights in place to prevent a vehicle leaving until payment had been confirmed. This is still current in all other chargeable car parks operated by Growth, Housing and Environment. Prior to Paycards the car parks operated a pay and display system with payment terminals throughout the car parks and again there was no barrier system or similar to prevent vehicles being removed without the due fee being paid.

D

This information is not recorded.

E

The amount of an Excess Charge issued for any applicable offence is £60 at the time of issue. A discounted amount can be accepted if payment is received at the address specified on the notice itself within the period determined by the type of Excess Charge Notice which includes a payment made using the online fine payment facility offered. For Sand Street offences related to the ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) system where the Excess Charge Notice is issued by post this is six working days and for all other types of Excess Charge Notices issued it is three working days.

The current level of payment and the discount period allowed attributed to an Excess Charge for all the specified offences was set by the President of the Public Services Committee in 2001 and this has not been changed since then. At that time parking charges were 39 pence per unit compared to the current 82 pence.

F

There are no measures to electronically prevent someone leaving the car park with their vehicle if they have not paid in full or have only part paid the fee due. There are a number of signs situated at all pedestrian entrances within the car park itself where the terms and conditions for the use of Sand Street Car Park are displayed as well as large signs facing vehicles moving on the lower floors which remind drivers of the need to pay on return.

The terminals themselves display a message clearly indicating whether the fee due has been paid when customers are making payment. The terminals also advise customers if there are insufficient funds available on their Uni Cards to pay the fee. This information is clearly indicated on static signage situated by the terminals themselves.