Greenwich Council’s parking enforcement system is unfair because it relies on having just 18 wardens on the borough’s streets at any one time, the town hall’s deputy leader has said.
The council is thinking about outsourcing its service as part of a £33 million package of cuts, with consultants set to be brought in to assess whether or not an outside company could do the job better.
Such a move would be a big departure for Greenwich, which — even when compared with other Labour boroughs — has traditionally resisted contracting out most frontline services.
Budget documents released by the council suggest that staff uncertainty about the future has already hit income from parking charges.
Greenwich is aiming to eventually make £298,000 a year in extra income, whichever option it chooses. It plans to beef up services by following other boroughs, which use cycles and mopeds as part of their enforcement as well as increased use of number-plate recognition cameras.
Lekau said the system needed to change, with the borough cracking down on pavement parking and introducing more controlled parking zones (CPZs).
“Whether we’re expanding or outsourcing, we’ve not made a decision one way or another,” she told Nick Williams, a Labour councillor for Greenwich Peninsula. “What we’ve said is that we’ve got to look at it. At the moment, there have been questions, for example, about the number of pavements where people are pavement parking and the increased number of CPZs we’re getting.
“The number of enforcement officers at any given time – primarily agency workers at that – is probably about 18. We may increase the number of CPZs, but what that’s doing is charging residents or parking and those who are complying are the ones paying for the parking.
“But for those that are not complying, if you’re not marrying that with enforcement, then it seems to me to be a very unfair system.”
The budget document warns councillors that as most other boroughs outsource their enforcement, a review could recommend this and so it would not be worth considering this option without strong political backing.
“Anecdotal comment suggests that presently productivity is depressed as a result of ongoing uncertainty,” the document says, saying that the review would need to be speedy.
Councils must spend the money they make from parking permits and fines on transport-related projects, including the Freedom Pass, which is paid for the by the boroughs rather than City Hall. It plans to lobby the government to allow it to increase penalties on bad parking because it says the income may soon not cover these costs.
Mirsad Bakalovic, the council’s director of communities, environment and central services, said Greenwich’s parking enforcement was “very much basic” compared with other councils.
“They got much higher output and [went to] the market to enforce,” he said. “We looked at our operational setup, which initially had 10 civil enforcement officers, which are permanent, and tried to expand it rapidly with agency staff.
“When we benchmark [against other councils], basically what happens in the private sector, the productivity of those officers is relatively higher for a number of reasons. The sickness levels, outputs and flexibility.”
He said the £298,000 a year target was a “rough figure” and that he would hope to bring in more money in future.
The council also plans to move to cashless parking facilities, with Lekau telling Lauren Dingsdale, a Labour councillor for Eltham Town & Avery Hill, that it was making a loss on machines that took cash.
“We’re paying them to park rather than them paying us,” she said. “The cost of this doesn’t make financial sense.”
For those without digital access, parking permits could be sold in shops in future, Lekau said.
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