The number of parking attendant posts in Shropshire could be cut by half and those left told to be more lenient. But this would also see fines income slashed.
It may not cover the £300,000 expense of an enforcement service, officials have warned.
The proposed changes follow a review into ParkRight which found just 28.4 per cent of people involved in consultation were satisfied with the current service. More than double that, 60 per cent, were dissatisfied.
A report to members of the Joint Parking Advisory Group, which meets on Thursday, proposes a new approach that could be adopted by Shropshire Council.
It says this would mean a need to reduce staffing numbers from 28 to 14 and as such there will be a need for redeployment or redundancy, with costs met by the county council in the current financial year, although only 23 of the posts are filled.
The report says: “Officers have been asked to review the system to make it more customer-focused, friendly and proportionate to Shropshire’s needs.”
It adds: “It will not be possible to design a service which is customer-focused and friendly and also cost neutral. Both consultation and experience to date suggests that the level of enforcement of some offences has been too high and that the system needs to be more flexible.
“All parking offences wou- ld continue to be enforced but priority for the level of detection and enforcement would be given to the more serious offences. As the service would be refocused and more targeted at achieving the objectives it is considered possible to reduce the number of parking attendants to 14 countywide.”
20 Comments
Will the operating guidelines for ParkRight published?
Just so we know what this council & company intend to do on Shropshire people’s behalf.
Bye bye Parkright…hopefully the £30 you vindictively stole off me when I parked outside my house in an inoccuous uncongesting street has come back to haunt you.
what’s the point of that then, that was exactly what we had before when the police did enforcement and couldnt be bothered to do the job properly, it will be a regressive action for the congestion, the pedestian, the white van man doing deliveries and the whole retail environment
Although I feel sorry for anyone who may lose their job, I hope the authorities will learn by their mistakes.
By all means adjust the ways that they operate. But sensible parking enforcement IS needed. And there are worse agencies that could be providing it.
save parkrite they do a good job, why should i subsidise illegal parkers!???!
When I read “Axe threat to park right wardens” I thought that a warden had been threatened by an angry motorist with an axe - oh well, life is full of dissappointments.
You cannot axe the Parkright wardens.
No.
Do not allow this to happen.
Lets all demostrate in Telford town park at 11am on Sunday.
I shall dress up as a monkey any penguins are welcome to join us along as they do not hand out leaflets.
Jeepers is right, sensible parking enforcement IS needed, but park right break to many of their own rules. They can’t keep doing this.
They really do need a shake up. I’ve never heard anything possitive about Parkright.
I am more concerned about the “there will be a need for redeployment or redundancy, with costs met by the county council in the current financial year”
Get them out now and keep these costs to a minimum… ditherign only increases costs.
With our council tax barely covering the final salary pensions schemes as it is, we cannot afford more white elephants on the gravy train…
Fire them now, if we change our mind then they can be rehired… thats what life is like in the real world, not in the fairy tale fantasy of the council worker.
parkright do a great job,i live in resident area where we pay for permits.before parkright no one checked and people with out parked all day,now we can park in our road again.parkright keep up good work from gratful resident.
Anne i have family who live in the parkright area and they can’t buy permits, there is plenty of parking by their house and people have always parked all day, but now there is no optoin for them or family to park anywhere near their home. We can’t visit, the nearest carpark is a few miles away. It wasn’t like this when they bought their home, but it was a free parking area when you bought yours i take it?
ParkRight are totally unprofessional, I agree that appropriate parking control is needed but not by this bunch of devious clowns.
That’s great if you can buy a permit, but if you can’t it’s a nightmare! But Anne you miss the point, PR don’t do their job very well and people (if you like it or not) are scared off by them. I went to Telford shopping last week and when we got back to the carpark i found out the machine didn’t take 5pence coins, but instead of a fine i was given a new ticket and allowed to leave even though i couldn’t pay the full £3.00. I will be going back, but shrewsbury parking costs more and there is no option to pay the extra if you are late back to your car. You just get a fine. And before you all starting saying wear a watch, keep track of the time…shopping and visiting the town centre should be fun, not a race against the clock.
this rediculous idea will cost the tories the election, how dare they ask us to pay more taxes to fund those who flout the law
the costs of park rite should be met in full by the law breaking illegal parkers
The problem is they need to meet costs, so they put tickets on anyone and everyone they can. It’s pushing people out of the town centre and into the retail parks where you can park for free. The charges are too high, the bus services in to the centre are rubbish and it’s those that run shops that will suffer. PR attendants should be using a bit of common sense and following the rules and if they can’t then they should go.
Putting up my taxes to fund less enforcement because they have had grumbles from a few shop keepers
Kiss the election good bye nutting et al
What sort of REAL research and planning went into the production of the ParkRight pantomime?
But then again what do you expect from a ‘lost at sea’ local autority?
but what you fail to understand boo, is that this proactive approach to enforcement actually makes enough cash to make the who operation cost neutral, however cutting back on enforcement means we will need to pay higher council tax or legit parkers pay higher rates, because less attendants means less revenue, do the maths, we will be worse off so that people can park on double yellow lines, where is the justice there?