Gary Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 The latest masterplan from Warrington Borough Council to regenerate our town centre! http://www.warrington-worldwide.co.uk/articles/18755/1/On-street-charging-as-council-awards-new-parking-contract-/Page1.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 Oops we posted new topics at the same time.. I just delete mine.My question was...So does this mean we will all have to pay wherever we park in Warrington Town centre now even if we are just parking near the library to do something as simple as taking some books back. I cant remember how long you get there ie 30 mins or an hour but it's very handy. No way will I pay to park there or anywhere else like that in the future though unless it's something like 20p ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 GARY.. can you delete the link to my deleted topic from the front news page box. For some reason it's left it there, ta Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inky pete Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 If parking across the borough is running at an overall loss, what is the problem REALLY with increasing the charges for those elements of it which create the loss???? Which we all know means the various residents on street parking schemes and free council car parks in the north of the borough. Or is it just more politically expedient to our lords and masters to foist the shortfall onto those of us from areas which have no usable bus service, have little alternative but to take the car into town when we need to, and don't generally vote Labour anyway? Best of luck Warrington traders, it's off to Northwich or Widnes in future for me then! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfie Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 I'm confused with the term 'parking running at a loss'. If you start off with 'free' parking and then charge for parking, how can you run at a loss? It would be interesting if someone from the council could explain why Warrington runs at a loss compared to Widnes where you can park wherever you want for as long as you want for free, which of course would mean that they would never run at a loss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 Re your comment Inky why do you think residents on street parking schemes should be expected to pay even more? I agree with the schemes in principal but not the fact that people have to pay a fee to park outside their own homes, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 I'm confused with the term 'parking running at a loss'. If you start off with 'free' parking and then charge for parking, how can you run at a loss? It would be interesting if someone from the council could explain why Warrington runs at a loss compared to Widnes where you can park wherever you want for as long as you want for free, which of course would mean that they would never run at a loss. Oooh now that's got my little brain cells hurting. I see what you mean but maybe it's not as simple as that as Widnes (Halton Council) must still have to maintain their car parks etc which costs money or are they all privately owned by the shopping area owners so they foot the bills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grey_man Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 I'm confused with the term 'parking running at a loss'. If you start off with 'free' parking and then charge for parking, how can you run at a loss? It would be interesting if someone from the council could explain why Warrington runs at a loss compared to Widnes where you can park wherever you want for as long as you want for free, which of course would mean that they would never run at a loss. My take on it based on the council's parking strategy is that they have conflated the costs of all parking functions including on-street resident parking permits, the council's own staff car parks and the various forms of retail and town centre parking, then set themselves the target of making it all break even. The problem is obviously that there are a lot of fixed costs involved but they can only look at certain ways of generating extra income for political and practical reasons. The underlying mistake they've made is bundling it all up, in my opinion. This is why they get themselves in knots. For example, one of the objectives of the strategy is to support local businesses. So when they decided they needed to milk The Forge car park in Stockton Heath, their biggest cash cow, but were told by local traders without exception the changes would harm their business, they simply ignored them. Ignoring inconvenient facts is a hallmark of anything to do with Linda Dirir. Incidentally, isn't £80,000 a laughably small amount of money for the council to worry about with regard to something as important as encouraging people to shop in the town centre? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfie Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 are they all privately owned by the shopping area owners so they foot the bills. No, they are owned by Halton Council. The only car parks I am aware of in Halton that charge are Runcorn railway station (free parking at Widnes station) and Halton Hospital. For comparison here are some links. http://www.ukcarparks.info/owner/warrington-borough-council#sthash.cSlnKbVO.xt2GQeP4.dpbs http://www.ukcarparks.info/owner/halton-borough-council#sthash.cSlnKbVO.O23L0BHN.dpbs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 No, they are owned by Halton Council. The only car parks I am aware of in Halton that charge are Runcorn railway station (free parking at Widnes station) and Halton Hospital. For comparison here are some links. http://www.ukcarparks.info/owner/warrington-borough-council#sthash.cSlnKbVO.xt2GQeP4.dpbs http://www.ukcarparks.info/owner/halton-borough-council#sthash.cSlnKbVO.O23L0BHN.dpbs Blimey, I wonder if WBC have every asked Halton Council how they manage all their pots of money as Halton still do weekly black bin collections too. I suppose they could have much bigger debts that WBC because of it all though, does anyone know what theirs are ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazj Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 If they are also to carry out bus lane enforcement, are they going to start making buses use them? The one outside the Peace Ranch is never ever used by buses as it puts the bus in the wrong lane at the traffic lights. As soon as the bus pulls away from the bus stop it swings out of the bus lane and into the "normal" traffic lane. Queues regularly back up past the school even when cars use the bus lane in a morning and on the odd occasion that traffic plod have decided to ticket cars for using it, the queue stretched right back past Gullivers world! Maybe Cllr Dirrirrrrr should also look at sorting issues like this first before condemning the motorists to yet more fines Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfie Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 Blimey, I wonder if WBC have every asked Halton Council how they manage all their pots of money as Halton still do weekly black bin collections too. I suppose they could have much bigger debts that WBC because of it all though, does anyone know what theirs are ? Apparently every council has to budget its spending, as such there should be no debts, but it's interesting how much each council has lost since 2010 in Government cuts. For Warrington it amounts to £84 per head, whereas for Halton it works out at over £200 per head and yet they still seem to provide a better service and balance their books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazj Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 Maybe Councillor Parish would like to comment on Haltons performance against that of Warrington Councils? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 It's all very interesting so far... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evil Sid Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 when i have to go into town in the car i tend to use the market carpark. £1.00 for three hours parking is reasonable for me, although most of the time i rarely exceed one hour let alone three. any other time, weather permitting, i go on the bike and usually manage to find somewher to park it safely without having to pay a parking fee at all. goimg to town omn the bus is the ultimate last resort for me as it would cost me about £3.50 from where i live. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inky pete Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 Re your comment Inky why do you think residents on street parking schemes should be expected to pay even more? I agree with the schemes in principal but not the fact that people have to pay a fee to park outside their own homes, They aren't paying to park outside their homes - they're paying for the exclusive right to park on that portion of the public highway. And the level of the charges (something like £1 per week) is nowhere near enough to cover the running costs of the schemes. In short, if these schemes were just plain abolished then the financial deficit in parking provision across the borough would instantly become a surplus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 I get it now Inky but if parking schemes were abolished to reduce the deficit then where would the residents park as presumably in certain areas of town etc they have asked for them because of the problems of everyone else parking near their homes for hours on end every day.How much do they cost to run and why ?A permit badge wont cost much, to add approved cars to a database wouldn't cost anything and road markings/signs will be a one off cost. I'm guessing the main cost is for the little blue men to walk around and enforce them then but aren't they already employed and being paid anyway so if they are walking around somewhere nearby how does that cost more, and if they aren't walking they can just hop on their little mopeds as they don't cost much to run fuel wise either and they already have them. Residents could even ring them up if a car was parked illegally so that they didn't have a wasted journey which may interfere with their ciggie and pop breaks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inky pete Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 but if parking schemes were abolished to reduce the deficit then where would the residents park as presumably in certain areas of town etc they have asked for them because of the problems of everyone else parking near their homes for hours on end every day. That's the thing about the public highway - it's supposed to be for the use of ALL of the public. If you take a drive around many of the streets with these residents parking schemes during the daytime you'll see very few cars parked in them because naturally most residents will have taken their cars to work - but you'd still get a ticket if you had the temerity to park up there while no-one else is using all that space. How much do they cost to run and why ? A permit badge wont cost much, to add approved cars to a database wouldn't cost anything and road markings/signs will be a one off cost. I'm guessing the main cost is for the little blue men to walk around and enforce them then but aren't they already employed and being paid anyway so if they are walking around somewhere nearby how does that cost more, and if they aren't walking they can just hop on their little mopeds as they don't cost much to run fuel wise either and they already have them. Residents could even ring them up if a car was parked illegally so that they didn't have a wasted journey which may interfere with their ciggie and pop breaks I agree, they shouldn't be expensive to administer and as you point out they could be very cheap to enforce if a reporting based system were to be used rather than having permanent patrols of little blue men. But the council's own figures released at the time they put up the parking charges in Stockton Heath and Lymm showed that these schemes were costing hugely more to run than they were bringing in from permit fees. You'd probably find that for every half dozen or so little blue men there'd have to be a team leader, a manager, an administrator, an HR person, a full time union rep, a Health and Safety officer, a training person, and at least a handful of people with the words "compliance", "strategic" or "operational" in their job titles. Then there'd be the department responsible for issuing the permits, their team leader, manager, adminisrator, HR bod, union rep, H+S womble, training person, and their own handful of compliance, strategic and operational hangers-on. Then, of course, what you've now got here is a multidisciplinary, cross-functional department which is well on the way to being a directorate and so requires any number of senior managers, executives and a coterie of people with "vision", "multiplatform", "end-user experience" and "value-stream optimisation" in their job titles. Costs a lot of money handing out a few parking permits. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evil Sid Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 but the council already have a hr department that would cover the parking permit people, ditto for the elf and safety,training and all the rest. so really the only extra cost is the blue meanies that have to wander around handing out the parking tickets and the cost of the sewing machines they ride about on and the fuel for said machines. probably the bigest cost is the lawyers that have to go to court when one of the fines is contested, as we all know a "good morning" from a lawyer costs about £100 by the time he has checked up what is meant by good and whether it is actually between midnight and noon even then it would be hedged about with various terms to avoid any possibility of a mis-trial due to prior precedence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 Good post Inky !Evils, re: the council having it's own HR department to cover it aren't the blue coat people employed by a contracted private company who oversee the parking enforcement. Maybe I have that wrong but I'm pretty sure they are.The council has it's own solicitor who I presume is already on the payroll and gets a set rate of pay so does he/she not do the court appeal stuff or is he/she too busy... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evil Sid Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 ah so the council pays fixed amount to a company to have parking enforced. Tickets issued by them are paid into the council coffers and the difference between what they get in and what they pay out means they are losing money. by that criteria the council are doing a good job on the parking. If there are fewer tickets being given out either the company contracted to it is not giving enough out and their contract needs to be looked at OR people are starting to obey the rules as regards parking resulting in less tickets needing to be given out. If the latter then I can understand that they need to introduce new areas to put under parking enforcement to pay for the parking enforcement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfie Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 Or the contractors are getting paid too much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdrianR Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 I charge £192 per hour + VAT so £100 to say hello is cheap!! As numerous have said. to erase the deficit they will have to charge / fine more which will drive people away to places where they dont. I rarely stay in Warrington longer than a few hours as wont pay the parking. Trafford centre i'll spend a good few hours there and then eat later without worrying about parking costs. Theres the loss to Warrington. Some one turn the lights off will ya when your last to leave.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahl Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 Good old Dirir as progressive as ever full of new ideas and totally dedicated to keeping her income even though she is totally useless. No forward looking ideas just the same old liebor rot charge everyone to cover up the inept management of warrington parking fiascos that occur every year.h 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dizzy Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 Why's it all her fault Wahl as surely she isn't the sole person to come up with these ideas and approve them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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