We’re delighted to announce a very exciting start to our ground-breaking new podcast, Brake the Mould – for all things parking! Our first ever show is a lively and informative conversation with Director of the RAC Foundation, Steve Gooding, and our regular presenters, Ryan and Alastair. In this launch episode, we talk about raising industry standards, motorist education and other issues relevant to parking. Join us! On Steve Gooding: After a long and illustrious career at the Department of Transport, where Steve was Director General of Roads, Traffic and Local Group, he joined the RAC Foundation in 2015. The RAC Foundation is a transport policy and research organisation that explores the economic, mobility, safety and environmental issues relating to roads and their users. He’s the main man!
We received a number of requests from you in relation to our recent podcast with Steve Gooding of the RAC Foundation and decided to release the full interview in written form. The podcast tackles some of the industry’s most pressing issues and takes a look at the importance of, as Steve so eloquently put it, viewing the parking industry’s service “through the windscreen” of the customer.
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Read The Full Podcast interview Here
Welcome to The Break The Mould Parking Podcast with Ryan Jackson and Alastair Finlayson and in each episode will be discussing the very latest in Parking News and industry insights as well as cutting edge business and thought leadership topics.
This is the Break The Mould podcast show and today we have a very special guest indeed. Our guest today, he holds a major voice in the parking and transporting centre. He’s previously held the role of director general of Roads Traffic, a local group at the Department for Transport. And in 2015, he took the position as the new director of the RAC Foundation. So today we would like to welcome to the show Mr. Steve Gooding, who’s is the director of the RAC Foundation.
Ryan
Welcome to the show, Steve.
Steve
Okay. Thanks for inviting me.
Ryan
No problem at all. So, Steve, for those that may not be aware of what the RAC Foundation represents, could you just give us a bit more information on that, please?
Steve
Absolutely. The RAC Foundation, just to start with what it isn’t, we’re not the breakdown, boys. We don’t have any orange vans. If your car breaks down, dont ring me. I won’t be any help at all.
Ryan
So I can delete your number in that sense.
Steve
Delete that number. And we’re not the members club with a very fancy clubhouse on Pall Mall. But we were set up by the Members Club back over 20 years ago, now set up as an independent think tank.
So we’re a charity. We had a big donation from the club to set us going. And basically our mission is to generate and disseminate research relating to motoring in all its many aspects. Okay.
Ryan
And so we’ve your main priority or one of the main priorities being the protection of motorists. So do you feel enough is being done to educate motorists on parking or parking related issues?
Steve
Well, let’s start with what the mission is beyond just commissioning research. The purpose of the foundation is really to remind everyone that alongside some of the downsides of motoring: emissions, safety and all those things that we don’t like. There are benefits to be had. So we need to have a balance. And that was the original concept of setting the foundation up back in the early 1990s. I think over the years we’ve looked at particular areas. I’ve been there just over four years and one of the areas the foundation has looked at, which I don’t think anyone else has, which I think comes to your question is the issue of parking.
It’s rather not thought about as part of the trip, strangely, really, because you would think it was an integral part of how we get about and how we live our daily lives. But one thing I think is really quite strange. I think the layman I think quite strange is that parking is not a policy issue for the Department for Transport. It’s actually looked after by the Ministry of Housing, which is is a bit strange.
Ryan
It’s pretty crazy no?
Steve
So I think you’re right. I think the question implies, are we aware enough about parking? Do we think about it enough? Perhaps another way of coming at it is I don’t really think about parking any more than I think about income tax. I just have to get on and do it. So do I want to learn about it? I want to understand more. Actually, there’s plenty of other things that I’d like to spend my time on and if I wasn’t doing this job, I suspect I’d know a whole lot less about the parking world.
Ryan
And so from a motorist, viewpoint is one of the things that we’ve discussed as an organisation is the fact that parking is something that’s probably looked over at the first point of whereby motorists receiving that driver education.
Do you think more should be done in the first instance at a point where they’re learning to drive, to educate them on the rules around parking?
Steve
I think you’re making a very good point there. It’s this is going to surprise you and your listeners, but it’s quite a while since I learnt to drive. I don’t believe that’s the high. I dont remember my driving lessons terribly clearly now, although clearly I was a natural and very well. But if one thinks about it, we should really be teaching people not so much just how to master the technique of managing a vehicle, but helping them do everything they need to do in order to get where they want to be.
So if we were teaching someone how to use the railway, we teach them how to buy tickets and teach them how to get in and out the station, how to get on and off the train. If we’re teaching people to drive it, I think it’s a good idea that we would include in that some advice from the instructor, not just on how to parallel park on the street, but what the issues might be that you need to know about when you’re going into other spaces.
Alastair
And there’s someone is a new driver. I only passed four and half, five years ago, so I did the test quite recently and I’m sure it would resonate with a lot of new, younger drivers. Obviously, the highway code is where a lot of parking rules are laid out in terms of the yellow lines, double yellow lines, etc, but how you pass the theory test these days off from my experience, anyone, I’m sure there are a lot of people that would resonate with this as you just download an app onto your smartphone and you just memorise the questions and the answers you’re not actually learn in the highway code.
And then when it comes to your driving lessons, we spent all of ten minutes practice in the park and that was only because the driving instructor wanted to get a coffee at the local Burger King. And when it comes to the manoeuvres, you’ve got the parallel park. You know something that people shy away from. You know, whenever you speak to anyone, you say what what manoeuvre did you get in your test? You say the parallel park. There’s always that stunned silence of, oh, that didn’t go too well. So parking is something that people do tend to shy away from. And should there be a parking test as well as a driving test? Because, you know, you do see a lot of horrendous parking.
Steve
Well, I think when we think about the driving test specifically and what we’re testing for the competence that we’re testing for. I think it’s right that the driver and vehicle standards agency focuses on the areas that are most risky. So whilst I agree that there’s certainly a case for your driving instructor spending perhaps more than 10 minutes. And frankly, if it’s 10 minutes while they’re out the car getting coffee, you’re not going to learn much. Spending just a bit of time explaining that the highway code goes so far but the highway code, astonishingly, is all about the highway. I don’t think it says a great deal, if anything at all about off street parking or private parking or what restrictions might apply or how places might be managed. So I think he’s right. In recent years after you passed your tests. Congratulations for that. After you passed your test. The test has been changed to make less of the slow speed technical manoeuvring and have more time spent at higher speeds, which is more dangerous on busier roads out in traffic.
So I think from the test perspective, it’s good to go that way. But I think if you look at the overall picture, then perhaps a bit more advice which might come from the driving instructor. It could come from organisations like yourselves or from the motoring organisations, so that when you pick up something like the highway code or you pick up one of the motoring magazines, when you’re starting to think about owning a car, that you might find something in there that’s a bit more informative.
Alastair
That is quite an interesting point that you made in relation to the test focusing on things that are most dangerous. And I think this is where sort of parking does suffer and being overlooked because bad parking is dangerous. If a car was parked in such a bad way, an ambulance or a fire engine couldn’t get through. While it’s not directly dangerous to the person or anyone near that. But the instance which has happened further on where the ambulance fire engine police got needs to get to is causing danger there because it’s delaying the emergency services getting from A to B. So it is something that I think does need a little bit more focus.
Steve
Well, it’s certainly the case that part of learning to drive should include advice, a warning, if anything, that obstructing the carriageway is not a good idea for a whole bunch of reasons, including those that you mentioned. I don’t think anyone’s driving instructor should skip lightly past the idea that you you don’t stop on double yellow lines, you don’t stop on single lines, you don’t stop when you’ve got into a box junction you and you go in when you can get clear. There’s a whole bunch of things that are about the use of the carriageway. I was more thinking beyond that, beyond it to the point. For example, I’d walk past to public car parks on my way to your office today, and there are issues about how you’d use those if you’ve never used a pay and display machine. It might be quite unfamiliar. And the fact that different car parks have different mechanisms for taking tariffs as well, different tariffs. And whilst some of the aspects are common between the private parking world and the world of local authority controlled parking, they aren’t necessarily the same and they might be different and you might not realise it.
So I do think perhaps we need to encourage people to educate themselves. But thinking about it, thinking about my son’s learning to drive recently, I’m not sure where I’d send them other than, of course, taking them out myself and saying this is what you need to look out for. This is what you need to understand.
Ryan
So we kind of leads me on to the next question, when you touched upon the local authority parking, do you feel that potentially the private sector, as I know, it is definitely our position, has taken a lot of the backlash and may be used as a scapegoat for for generally parking and negative parking experiences. It is our viewpoint that the industry itself has advanced quite considerably over the past few years and the standards that are now set by the accrediting bodies ensure a quality of services delivered. And I think beyond that of public parking. So a great example, is this the road which we’re located on. So in relation to signage, I think there’s probably one or two signs, maybe every 30 metres or so, and we know that would never be allowed from neither BPA or the IPC. So do you think in some respect the local authority parking has now got to play catch up to ensure that it is adhering to the same level of standards as that of the private sector?
Steve
I think I’d have to start with sort of rolling back maybe maybe 10 years. Because I think at that point my predecessors, the RSC Foundation, were probably getting as many individual complaints and hassles from people complaining about local authority parking control as they were about private parking control. To be honest, these days we rarely get anything. So something in the world of local authority parking management is going right in terms of individuals feeling they’ve been hard done by individuals having a complaint.
I think that there is still a lot of interest in local authority parking, not least it’s quite a money spinner for some local authorities. And we’ve seen the amount of income generated by parking, including penalty charges going up and all the time that local authority budgets are under stress. And we all know that local authority spending is squeezed by the need to cover social care and the like. The suspicion that they may be seeing parking and parking penalties as a nice way of earning a bit of revenue to do other things.
Which of course in law they’re required to spend any surplus on transport and in law they’re not allowed to set the charges with a view to generating a surplus. It has to be for traffic purposes. So I think they’re not exactly out of the woods, but they’ve come a long way. What we observe in the private parking world is not uniform. So let me just be clear about that. There are many companies that get on and manage their business very well. And the vast majority of people, I suspect, who park on private land today will do so perfectly happily. What we’ve observed in the foundation. And again, this began long before I joined was the number of vehicle keeper releases from the DVLA going through the roof. And what I said many times and I’ve said it to the trade associations too, I said it to the ministry. I think this is management information. It’s telling us something. Now, whether it’s telling us that there’s a sharp practice malpractice, whether it’s telling us that it’s just poor practice. I dont know because I can’t go and inspect every car. But what I can tell you is that based on the latest figures from the DVLA, we are on track to have something in the region of eight and a half million vehicle keeper releases and that strikes us as a lot and it strikes us that something in the mix is probably going wrong, whether that’s the trade associations not being quite as stringent as you say or whether it’s something else. Well, we need to find out
Alastair
Is that a change in something gone wrong or is that just the change in technology and how enforcement takes place? You know, given that we’re seeing an increase in NPR, which obviously the public sector can’t do, but the private sector can?
Steve
There’s a bit of both going on here. So let’s go back to the Protection of Freedoms Act and the desire of the new government in 2010 to come in and as they put it, to see an end to cowboy wheel clamping. I don’t know if you’re both, I would say probably far too young to remember this, but I recall, that…
Ryan
Thank you for the compliment Steve, I wish that was the case.
Steve
Wheel clamping was a headline issue in newspapers. The tabloid newspapers were very excited about it. So wheel clamping had to go. At the point where wheel claiming went. It is not surprising that we saw more vehicle keeper requests because after all, if you can’t disable the vehicle, the vehicle driver is going to go away. And if you need to get in touch with them for some reason, that’s a way of doing it. So I can see that it will go up and I can see that with camera technology, as you say, you can use camera technology for managing private parking. That, again, if you need to contact the keeper of a vehicle because there’s some reason you need to contact them. Whether that’s for parking charge, notice and all other reasons. The only way of doing that, probably unless you’ve been able to stick a notice under the windscreen wiper, is to do that through a keeper request. But if we think about the technology for a moment, one of the things that concerns me, I guess, is the preponderance of pay and display over, say, other forms of parking. Old fashioned things off street car parks like barrier parking or using a mobile phone to pay for the time you spent rather than having to guess how much time you’re going to spend. And I think that’s one of the problems people face. It’s probably why the government decided it was very keen for local authorities to have a mandatory grace period after the end of parking stay. So I think the technology might be one of the reasons we’re seeing more keeper requests. But I do wonder, looking ahead, whether that technology is becoming cheaper and easier to use in a more intelligent way and in a way that would be more customer focused, even though it might not be as clear cut as the existing system.
Ryan
So do you ever see a time whereby operators themselves will move away from a enforcement model?
Steve
Well, I would like to think so. I mean, I think in a way the very question illustrates the issue that ideally we’d be seeing the provision of parking and we’re talking here about parking where you are actually inviting me to come onto the land and park there. I’m not not here talking about people who are taking a liberty and driving onto private land when they shouldn’t. But if I’ve been invited on to your car park, I’d like to be treated as a customer, an example, much less to be encountered these days.
But in the dark days, a couple of. Years ago, I observed that if I went to my local supermarket, I went in part by car going to the supermarket. If I dropped a bottle of mayonnaise and it shattered on the floor, they’d rush over a note, say, I’m sorry. Let me clear that up. And then if I ever stayed in the car park, they’d send me a threatening letter. And it just seemed slightly counterproductive.The supermarket wanted me to be there. They almost certainly assuming I didn’t drop loads of bottles. They want me to come back because they want me to spend my money there. So they should be welcoming me and they should be making the whole experience a lot easier. Now, I have to say, have awarded my gold star of the previous decade to Sainsbury’s because Sainsbury’s remodeled their carparks to include a big enough space between the cars so you can open the car door, which I think is a big step forward.
But also, as I drive into Sainsbury’s, there’s a very clear sign that I go past. That shows me this is your vehicle registration and you need to be gone by this time. So there can be no doubt in my mind I can see that the light flashes up. It’s as clear as day.
Ryan
So do you think retailers have to be the ones to take a bigger responsibility for the car parks.
Steve
I think that any whether it’s a retailer or the business to which the car park is attached should be paying very close attention to what’s being done in their name because frankly, because of the job I do, I do know who operates the car park. But most people would think, well, it’s Sainsbury’s or it’s Tesco’s or its whoever or it’s the shopping centre. And they don’t think of it as being a separate company.
And if they’re not treated as they would like to be as valued customers, then that’s a damage to the brand. And I think it took some of the retailers a while to realise that.
Ryan
And I think some of them haven’t still realised that in some respect. They talk much about values and talk about brand values, but they don’t necessarily honour it. And I think it’s just a problem within business generally whereby the focus is upon revenue generation, it’s about bottom line profit.
Steve
It’s very understandable that in the modern world and it’s always been the case if you’re in business and if you’re not making a profit, then you’re not going to be in business for very long. So it’s perfectly legitimate, I think, for companies to have a very sharp eye on the bottom line. However, if your business requires people to come to you, then you need to think every business needs to think about the total experience. It’s a bit like if a theatre has a car park, forget, you know, retail for a moment.
If you go to a show, the last thing you want to find when you come out of the show is that you’ve attracted a parking charge notice. It really would take the shine off the event.
Ryan
Yes, it would most definitely.
Steve
And I think that if you were running a theatre, you would need to think, how long are people going to need to be here for the particular show in question? Is it easy for then to if I’m going to charge for parking, for example, is it easy to do that?
One of the areas I think that really does need a rethink. I know the government, our new government has said something about this is hospitals. I haven’t ever said that. I think every hospital car park should be free. Frankly, I think some hospitals have such limited car parking that you just do need a way of managing it. You do need a way of trying to encourage people, come do whatever you have to do and go. And indeed, for goodness sake, don’t use a town or city centre hospital carpark and not go to the hospital. But because it’s in a convenient place. But by the same token, I had to take a family member to hospital yesterday. I pulled into the park. I walked to the nearest pay and display machine, which was out of order. I walked to the next nearest one, which was out of order.
Ryan
Hopefully it wasn’t one that we managed, you mentioned.
Steve
No, no, no. I’m not going to tell you the hospital? I’m not going to tell the operator, but I finally got to the third machine, which was the far side of the car park. I happily had my credit card because although it would have accepted coins, it wasn’t going to accept coins today. And when I got to that machine, there was a lady waiting . A lady was there in front of me who only had coins.
And she begged me to help and I did. I paid for her and she gave me the coins. Every step of that journey was a bit more stressful for a journey that was already stressful enough because I’ve got my family member in the car and they’re thinking, we’ve got to get into the hospital for my appointment. And then again, this might astonish you. The NHS was running a bit late, a wonderful organisation, but they were running a bit late.
And so instead of sitting, paying close attention to what we were hearing and not worrying, I was forever looking at my watch because I thought any second, now I’m going to have to run back outside quite a long way and feed the machine again and pay for another ticket, because I thought we’d be done within a certain amount of time and we weren’t. And all of that just makes the hospital visit even more stressful. And most of us find hospital visits stressful enough already.
Ryan
And so what’s your view on pay on exit technology? Do you feel that it resolves that issue?
Steve
Hugely. I don’t think any technology is necessarily a silver bullet that solves everything. But I think if I compare that experience I’ve told you about with another recent experience. Of actually going to a show in the evening. We didn’t have to think about it. We didn’t have to look at our watches. We didn’t have to rush back to the vehicle because we knew we’d get back to the vehicle. and we’d pay what it needed to be. It just takes a bit of the hassle away.
Ryan
And so do you feel that pay an exit is something that should be looked into throughout all NHS trust sites?
Steve
Yes, I would say that. I would say also. I mean, it’s quite understandable if you’re running a hospital. Perhaps it’s slightly more understandable that you’re not thinking about parking in the way. I’ve just said that a retailer should because the retailer wants you to come and knows you could go somewhere else.
The hospital’s got more people turning out than it knows what to do with. So it’s a different issue nevertheless because of the issues facing the people who are turning up. I think that making the parking experience as easy for them and indeed access by other modes of transport too. Let’s not forget that. But for those of us who do need to use their car to get to the hospital, I think pay on exit is by far the preferable solution.
Ryan
Yes, true.
And so do you think the public and private sector could learn from each other?
Steve
Yes. I think one of the things that I suspect will be coming to the private sector shortly is the single independent appeals body. I think the mechanism by which I could appeal against the penalty charge notice is clear, straightforward and wholly independent of the individual local authorities.
Ryan
And so do you think with the private sector, the fact that there is two independent appeal bodies, do you think that causes some confusion to motorists?
Steve
I think that well, I’ll probably take you back to what I said earlier on. I suspect most motorists have absolutely no idea that there are accredited trade associations at all.
Ryan
You are probably right.
Steve
I suspect they have no idea for most of the carparks they go into that they’re independently managed by subcontractors rather than by the business that they’re stopping at. So what they really want is ideally they don’t want to receive a parking charge notice at all. But if they do get one, they want to know how easily they can challenge it and whether they’re sending it to someone who has no incentive to fight against them.
Now, I’m not saying that either of the appeal services that run, that the adjudicators feel that. But if I think in particular perhaps about the penalty appeals service that the the IPC runs, it is rather behind closed doors. We don’t really know who’s hearing the appeals. We don’t really know what basis they’re making their mind up. And I think that having a single separate body appointed by government has one job and one job only, and that’s to come to the right decisions and not get any particular benefit either way, it will be a good way to go. I suspect there are other things perhaps about the use of technology that go the other way, where the public sector could learn from some of the better private practice. I would say even though all of the signs relating to parking signs, road markings that relate parking on the highway are all tightly prescribed in the Signs manual, which the Transport Department publishes. So even down to the font and the size of the letters, it’s all set out, but they aren’t always brilliantly displayed. It’s not always completely obvious to see. Sometimes the line markings aren’t as good as they should be. Whereas I can think of instances where private car parks very, very clear. A sign says, for example, in the car park for the building where we’re sitting now, there’s a great big sign right at the front of the gateway that says this is private land. So don’t confuse us with the public car park next door. This is private land. And if you’re not entitled to be here, don’t be here.
So there can be no doubt about it. What I think we really need is for the obligations for the contract, as we think of it, between the landowner, the landowners agent and the member of the public to be as clear as possible.
Ryan
And you mentioned that in relation to that IPC, an independent appeals body, and about being behind closed doors. Do you feel there has to be greater transparency in relation to audits and would there be benefits to the public if that was made public information?
Steve
I think that transparency is one of the key ways of building trust.
Ryan
I agree.
Steve
So I think that the transparency process is something that we put on a pedestal and most other aspects of our our legal system. And transparency is a good thing. So I would like to understand who is making the decision. I’d like to understand the criteria they’ve applied. And if that is extreme, this might be going a bit far for some tastes. But if a case is taken to court or cases taken to a judicial review, the judge will write up. Here is my decision and here’s why. And I think it would help people to understand, not just I’ve heard your appeal and I am approving or not agreeing to your appeal. Here’s why.
Ryan
I think you know, we’ve very much been an advocate for greater transparency, especially when it comes to compliance and the audits that are administered by the accrediting bodies. And we’ve always felt that competition in the long run will breed excellence and raise people’s games. So do you think that the industries will benefit from some form of a league table demonstrating how well or how successful operators have been in regards to their annual audits by the accrediting bodies?
Steve
I think it’s an interesting idea and I can see how that would potentially help after we publish the parking income of every local authority and we don’t publish it as a league table, but undoubtedly that’s how people view it. And who’s raking in the most cash? Who’s collecting less? What I’d say is what we need to do is get to a clearer basic standard. So at the moment, there are two codes of practice. The foundation has long said, why don’t we just have one?
Why don’t we have one that covers all eventualities and that basic standard should be something which is met. So I think when we’re talking about auditing companies and having perhaps a league table, I’d be more interested in how much better than the basic level is an operator achieving rather than: Are they complying or not? Because if they’re not complying, I don’t think we should be releasing the DVLA data. And I think that’s that’s really government’s only stick here. It can make it easier or harder to get hold of the vehicle keeper data.
I think that we also need to remember that again, this may sound like a completely daft thing to say, but parking facilities are where they are geographically specific. Whereas I can choose from where I live to go one direction to Sainsbury’s, in another direction to Tesco or to another retailer. If I want to go to a particular place, I’m going to choose the car park that’s convenient for that particular place. And it’s potluck for me, the consumer who’s actually managing that carpark. So competition at that level is more difficult.
If the landowners. And again, I’m particularly thinking here about landowners who want me to come to their facility, if they regard parking as part of the overall experience of of being one of their customers, they might then be interested in a league table of which are the best companies to employ, to look after their car parks and to be part of the shop window to their customers.
Ryan
I totally agree.
And so from a motorist’s viewpoint. What are the main issues that motorist raise with you?
Steve
The main issues, the ones that come through time and again, are people not understanding, not really having seen what rules that apply to them. So signs not being terribly visible, terribly clear, written in language that they readily understand. If I think for a moment the difference between the signs in a fairly standard private car park and out on the street, out on the street is pretty clear cut. There’s a yellow line here and there’s a plaque up on a pole that says these are the hours when you can’t park here.
If I think of the sign that’s up in the car park at the end of the street, it’s quite a lot of words. And if you’re in a hurry, I think the people who are parking there are probably nipping into the shops or something. They don’t want to be standing there for five minutes or ten minutes reading all of these rules.
Ryan
Sort of Overkill
Steve
There’s an issue there. I think there are some other issues that tend to be the. I’m not saying that they happen all the time, but instances where people have driven into a car park, not found somewhere and driven out again.
The ANPRs pick them up coming in, perhaps not pick them up, going out. And so the operator thinks they’ve been in there and they haven’t. And I think when you’re in a system that is heavily automated as the ANPR systems are, you sometimes you can just feel like a tiny cog in the machine that rather than perhaps in days of old. There was a person there, somebody you could speak to. You’ve done something. A camera has clicked and a letter has issued. And lastly, I guess and the letter that’s issued looks surprisingly like it’s been issued as a legal threat. So it’s not saying valued customer. I think you might have made a mistake here. Please, can I check if you did overstay? This is the amount of money you owe me. But good news, I’m not going to charge the full amount and we can part friends. It’s rather more designed to look like a penalty charge. And it’s designed to get people to react in a particular way, which is, oh, dear, I have no choice. I’d better pay up.
Ryan
And so do you feel that the industry itself has benefited from the incorporation of the IPC?
Steve
I find it hard to say having two trade associations is a benefit. I mean, lots of professions have more than one professional body I’m a member of two professional institutions the C.I.H.T. and the CI.L.T. So they cover subtly different things. But a lot of what they do is similar. So I have no particular problem with there being more than one trade association.
I’m not sure that having more than one of itself has done a great deal to improve the sector or improve the ability of parking operators to perform.
Alastair
And so what do you think can be done more to educate the general public on parking matters, obviously with the BPA, the IPC, then you’ve got the public sectors, you’ve got sort of almost free strands all about parking. And how does “Joe Public” find out the difference between a penalty charge and a parking charge, because they are two different, albeit similar things. And I’ve got friends that haven’t got a clue and I’ve only learned because I’m in the industry. But if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have a clue what the difference was. And you see on social media “ignore a parking charge. You can just throw it in the bin it’s an invoice.” But as we’ve found out, that’s very not true when people get CCJs.
Steve
Yes. I think that advising anyone, if they if they receive an invoice or a penalty charge, notice to throw it away. In my experience, problems rarely go away just because you don’t think about them. They generally need you to think about them and do something. So I would always advise people to do something. But if I go back to the protection of freedoms and the regulations made at the time, I have to ask why on earth did we call parking charge notices that name why do we call them PCN?
Was it to make people think this is so similar to a penalty charge notice with which you are familiar that it’s a good idea to use the same acronym? Or if I was a nasty suspicious mind, which obviously I’m not. I might think it was an attempt to make them the exact opposite to look like they were a penalty charge notice and to make you think, oh, this is a penalty charge that’s been issued by the government I’d better pay up and not ask questions.
But I come back to your question about educating. I think we should think a bit less about educating people. There’s a sense there that we need to get people to learn stuff. But actually, what we need is to make using the system as intuitive as it can possibly be so that people understand what’s expected of them. And that way many more of them are going to comply. It’s the same in practically every aspect of motoring. If people can see why the speed limit is what it is for a particular stretch of road, if it feels about right, chances are they’re going to stick to it. If, on the other hand, it feels like a very low limit on a very wide road. It shouldn’t surprise us that some of them think, well, I’ll go at the speed that I think is safe, not the speed that has been set. So the whole business needs to think of the consumer experience, as I say, very often viewed through the windscreen. If you were using this service as a customer, would it be clear to you?
Would it be clear how long you can stay here? If there’s a free period for someone going to a shop? Would it be clear how much you have to pay? If it’s a pay and display car park, are the rules on where you should put your car absolutely clear? Are the markings clear? And like I say, in many, many designed purpose design, car parks, all of that is fine. I recognise that even at 8 million, that’s a fraction of the number of times in a year that people actually park a car.
The trouble is, with everything relating to motoring, we’ve got 38 million people with driving licences. We’ve got over 30 million cars, a fraction of that number. It’s still a big number and still should cause us to pause and think. How on earth can it be that over 8 million times a year people need to get the keeper details out of the DVLA? It just makes me think something here is going wrong. And could we make that number smaller?
Could we make the experience better by doing better on the very basics, which are about signs that are easy to see, really easy to understand, that don’t look like all of the small print to the bottom of a contract. That would be where I’d start.
Ryan
And so do you think that the consumer or the motorist is actually ready for the technical changes that have occurred, for example, going cashless? A number of local authorities have moved to a totally cashless systems. Now, do you think that the motorist or yet the world is ready as a whole? Are we ready for it?
Steve
I think it’s a worry. And I think it’s a worry for the story I was telling earlier that the lady in front of me at the machine was standing there staring at the machine, holding her pound coins in her hand. And she really didn’t know what to do. That would be a very good example, actually. She didn’t know what to do. And there was no indication of what on earth she could do. So in that instance, out of five machines, two or three weren’t working properly, two weren’t working at all. And the one she was trying to use wasn’t accepting coins. If that’s going to happen, then surely there should have been something there saying if you haven’t got a card, here’s what you do, because there are some people who still don’t have credit cards, who still have bank cards and you still don’t have smartphones.
Now, I accept that. My 92 year old mum had a mobile phone and a laptop and used e-mail. But we still need to make it possible for those folks who haven’t moved into that world. And if we’re going into a cashless approach, there needs to be an avenue for them which could be issuing them with a separate card of some sort. I’m thinking if you think, for example, the oyster card, you don’t have to have a Oyster card to travel on the tube. You can just put your credit card or your bank card on the reader. But some of us choose to have the specific card for that purpose. So maybe a local authority going into a cashless approach needs to have some sort of dedicated card that the people who haven’t got that facility can use.
Ryan
Because, you know, from our experience, we have clients that that push us that they want to move to a totally cashless system, but yet we just don’t feel that the general public are yet ready for it. In a utopian world. Yeah. Amazing. It serves a purpose and it just make things so much more efficient. But I think the reality of things yet we’re not yet there.
Steve
I spent most of my working life in central London and in government departments. And I guess practically everyone around me will be very used. Certainly these days, very used to paying even for their sandwich at lunch with a contactless card. And that’s what they’re used to doing. And it’s so easy to become detached in that world from another world. That’s not that far away. We’re in a lot of households. The money for travel. The money for parking. It’s in a jam jar and it’s cash. And that’s how the people operate. Not everyone operates in the smartphone / Credit card enabled world. I think we need to have a mind to the fact that these people we don’t want to deny them access to our town centres, for heaven’s sake. We need to make it possible for them to do that.
Now, whether there are better technological answers to that, I’m not sure.
Ryan
I think that’s kind of the problem with technology as a whole is that where it’s changing people’s behavior
Steve
So I would say two things about that. One is, I absolutely agree with you that it takes a long time for everybody to change. So you will hear people say loosely that everyone’s got a smartphone. Well, no, just most people have got a smartphone. Most people got a credit card, but not everyone. But I one day just thinking laterally about it as you raise the issue, whether something akin to the way that hotels operate these days, where they will ask you to pay a deposit using your card when you book into the room in case you want to use the minibar on some of the other services. And then as you check out, they’ll take out of that deposit such money that is spent and return the rest. So maybe we could still have a pay on exit, but you pay a deposit or you register that you’ve come in and that way you register with your card. If it’s a cashless system and then you register when you are leaving and it’s at that point that the calculation is made in the sum is deducted
Alastair
And there is a system in the market which does exactly that. And obviously, if you forget to check out. So to speak, it just takes the whole deposit because it assumes you stay for the maximum duration. But then again, going back to what Ryan said earlier, with people being so used to paying on arrival, going to pay on exit, people are forgetting. It is another step in the journey where people forget. So, for example, in a hotel scenario, that’s fantastic because you have to go to reception to collect your room key and to return it. But in a car park, you might not necessarily be, depending on the layout of course, but you know, going to the machine might not always be on your natural route back to your vehicle. I actually recognise that it’s a great idea but at the same time…
Ryan
It’s a minefield really.
Alastair
Exactly, it can be a minefield.
Steve
I think I would certainly acknowledge and certainly say to anyone, when we’re talking about the business of managing private parking, we need to get clear in our minds right from the outset that we’re talking about many different forms of business. We’re talking about different buildings. There’s a world of difference between a multi-storey car park built for that purpose, which has all of the relevant machinery. And you have to go through a gateway to get in and you have to go through a gateway to get out. And that’s quite different from a relatively scrappy piece of wasteland that somebody is using as a car park for the time being, because they haven’t got planning permission to build on it yet or something like that. But that’s the sort of spectrum that we’re talking about. And different approaches will be right for those different places. But in any instance where we’re getting people to change from ingrained behavior from a world that they’re very used to. Well, it’s incumbent on us to help them understand that something has got to feel different.
Otherwise I’m as likely to make a mistake as everyone else.
Alastair
And that’s really the key is clear instructions. If you get to the bottom of it: If you think think about the key to a successful park experience, whether it be a customer in Sainsbury’s, like you said earlier, or of a pay and exit or the sort of. check-In check-out system; it all boils down toclear signage and clear instructions. So like you said, with Sainsbury’s, your number plate came up on the screen, it said, when you have to leave. Nothing is left to the imagination.
And I feel that’s where both private and public sector could learn a lot from in terms of the clear instructions, how to use the machine. How did the car park operate? You pay when you arrive. You pay when you leave. Have you got the option to pay when you get home on line? I think instructions and clear signage is key.
Ryan
And I think we have to look beyond signage because just a general person, we’re talking about behaviours when they enter the car park, generally, they don’t necessarily look at the signage. And I myself have been a victim and I use the word loosely but have been a “victim” of receiving a parking charge as a result of pay an exit just because I totally forget to pay as I’m leaving. So, you know, if anything, I shouldn’t be forgetting.
Steve
This is a very brave admission.
Ryan
No, I own it. And this is the thing. So I think we need to be looking now outside of what we’re already doing and be very innovative in nature, looking at other features we could put potentially introduce into the car park or if we are utilising technology to really help or to ensure that motorists aren’t being penalised incorrectly. And it’s something we have definitely been looking into. We have to have that progressive outlook and be more open minded and not necessarily look at what we’ve always done and look outside and sometimes look to new industries. What are other industries doing? Are there aspects of their features or their technology that we can look to introduce to make ours better?
Steve
I absolutely agree. I think that we have to recognise that the world has moved on, that technology has produced a wider range of options. As I was saying, for example, the system in a supermarket that automatically reads the number plate and plays it back to you. Some of these come at a cost. Clearly, nothing in life is free. And if you’re trying to run a business and bear down on costs, I can see why people don’t want to overregulate and don’t want to invest in technology that racks up the cost to them.
Happily, the cost of technology does tend to fall quite rapidly once you get to a mass market. I think everyone needs to bear in mind that at the end of the day we are human and we are inclined to make mistakes. I walked past a supermarket on my way to your office here. There are large signs up in the car park, reminding people to take their shopping bag into the shop. And I suspect that’s because, like me, a lot of people put their shopping bags in the car and then they get into the shop and they start shopping and then they realise they’ve got to buy another bag because they’ve left their bags out in the car.
Alastair
That certainly resonates with me.
Steve
You know, you could look at that and you could say, well, surely it works in the supermarkets favour because that way you’ve got to buy another bag. But no, because what they understand is they’d far rather, that I didn’t leave with a sour taste in my mouth of having to buy another bag but I actually bought the things I wanted. And with a bit of luck in the supermarkets way, a couple of other things as well. Not something that I didn’t really want cos I had already.
And I think that same mindset needs to apply here that you want people to park and leave. And at best think they had a good experience and at minimum many years ago I worked with the guys at London Underground. And the ambition of the managing director of London Underground was that a trip on the tube should be as exciting as a trip in a lift. You should just press a button like a lift. The lift comes, you get on, you get off your floor. You don’t think about it. It just happens. And it all happens when you’re expecting it to. And it all happens safely and smoothly. And that’s what he was going for. And I suspect trying to make parking a pleasurable experience is always going to be a challenge. We’ll take you right back to your earlier comments about the joys of trying to parallel park in the street. At least we could reduce it to the level where it isn’t unpleasant. It just happens. It’s a routine part of making the trip and you don’t really have to think about it. That’s what I think we should aim for.
Alastair
And do you think obviously we’ve spoken about retail and do you feel that retailers could be doing more to assist the parking operators?
You mentioned that technology isn’t cheap. And then we’ll go back to the example of the ANPR with the number plate on the screen. That’s going to be quite an expensive system. And so obviously, for the retailer it is in their interest to protect their brand, to protect their reputation and to have you return because you left having a pleasant parking experience and shopping experience.
So do you feel that there should be a little bit of emphasis on the retailers to think about that in a more granular level? Because these technologies aren’t aren’t cheap and they often expect the park operators to pay for everything. And then that leaves the parking operator with nowhere to go other than to recoup their costs through parking charge.
Ryan
And start adopting a much stricter policy.
Alastair
And then it comes down to a cycle of. Penalising genuine customers to recoup the costs when you’re delivering a better experience for them, and that’s what the operators goal should be.
Steve
I think that really this all comes back to what I call the landowners responsibility, that if I were a landowner and I wanted you to visit my shop, my theater, my facility, it’s incumbent on me to think about the experience from your perspective. And if I want you to come back again, I need to make that experience as good as it can be. And I think historically, many landowners regarded managing the car park as a mechanical exercise that they didn’t need to think about.
And in some places, I think that’s probably true. If a car park isn’t a particularly heavily used one, not necessarily in the centre of town, not that much call for a lot of attention where I would say it’s quite different. The circumstance I was describing at my own local supermarkets, they have the blessing and the curse of being really rather close to the railway station. So it be quite tempting for some people to think, well, I won’t go into the station car park, I’ll park in the supermarket and no one will notice. And that’s going to get in the way of people coming to the supermarket to buy goods. So I can see they need to think about the location. They need to think about the sort of people who are coming to their facility. And they need to think, how can we make this work for them.
Ryan
Steve, thank you very much for coming onto the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Steve
Thank you for inviting me. And I wish you every success.
Alastair
And that’s it for the very first episode of Break The Mould Parking Podcast. We hope you enjoyed listening just as much as we enjoyed recording. If you did follow the channel write a review, tell a friend, tell a colleague past the pod.
