Every day there is another story about how Councils run parking to generate revenues regardless of either the needs of the community or the legality of what they are doing. I don't see every one of these stories as being without some truth and the number of Councils that are having to change procedures and put in places codes of conduct, customer charters and the like rather points to the need to do better.. Therefore I was pleased to see a story where someone seems to have actually remembered what we enforce parking for.
Last Year the government in Northern Ireland paid the NSL, one of our biggest parking contractors about £8m to enforce parking restrictions and yet collected only £4m in penalties and charges. The NSL fee was queried by an Ulster assembly member who was concerned that it had risen by 20% over the last two years. That's what the contract allows and if the assembly members don't like it perhaps they shouldn't have signed off on it. To me what matters is that since the scheme started in 2006 the illegal parking has dropped by 65% in town centres and 25% on the main routes in Belfast. Isn't that what enforcement is about?
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