Author: Phil

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Parking Services

Parking Services councillors to be mystery shoppers

Parking Services Specialist Scrutiny PanelToday the council has issued a press release giving details of some of the work that will be done in advance of the next meeting of the Parking Services Specialist Scrutiny Panel.

In order to get some insight as to how Parking Services treats its “customers” councillors will be getting their cars towed, riding along with parking attendants and applying for visitors vouchers, to name a few.

It will be interesting to see to what extent local media will pick this story up – they are quick to criticise in this area, often rightly. Hopefully they will be equally interested in the council trying to scrutinise its own service.

The first meeting of this panel was held on 5th July. At this meeting we did not do much more than agree our terms of reference and work programme. We also had an introductory presentation from the service head, Philip Burns. The only member of the public to attend was Eric Leach from West Ealing Neighbours (you can read his report of the meeting here).

The second meeting will focus on customers’ experience of Parking Services. The mystery shopper work will make sure that the councillors leading the workshops have hands on experience. The sessions will also involve council officers and give members of the public the chance to share their experiences. If you are interested in attending then please get in touch with Chris Cheyne at cheynec@ealing.gov.uk or on (020) 8825 6568. A maximum of 100 people will be admitted to the meeting. The meeting will take place a 7pm in the Queen’s Hall on 11th September.

For the third meeting on 15th November we will focus exclusively on the finances of Parking Services and try to address the often raised issue that Parking Services is just there to squeeze money out of drivers. No doubt the agenda for the subsequent meetings will be driven by whatever feedback we get from the public at the earlier meetings.

Anyway if you are interested in this topic here are the dates:

  • Tuesday 11th September 2007
  • Thursday 15th November 2007
  • Thursday 10th January 2008
  • Wednesday 5th March 2008

All the meetings take place at 7pm at the Town Hall.

Please note that at these meetings we will be raising and discussing general problems and principles, not the specifics of any particular penalty charge notice.

Categories
Communications disease

Government advertising heads back to its election peak

In the summer lull I have been catching up on some ongoing projects. One of those is tracking the overall level of government ad spending by watching the Central Office of Information. They published their annual report on 24th July and reported that they spent £338 million on behalf of the government on ads last year. This is a rise of 5% over the previous year.

As you can see from the graph below Labour have managed to produce a peak of ad spending to coincide with elections in 2001 and 2005. Note that John Major’s government did not electioneer on the public purse in 1997. Labour have also managed to habituate a level of government ad spending that is three times that of the Major years.

No doubt if Gordon Brown goes to the country in the spring next year the civil service will magically have predicted this and we will see government advertising peak at over £350 million next year. We’ll see.

COI Spending to 2007

The so-called Chief Executive of this organisation is called Alan Bishop. He is a career advertising man who became a civil servant in 2002. He pays himself £165K a year, £10K up on the previous year. Bishop has really fallen on his feet. He no longer has to take any risks or get out there and sell anything but he still manages to rake in a real entrepreneur’s salary.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

More empty consultation

More electioneering from me. More expense for youIt is just over a year since the Mayor mooted the idea of charging the most polluting vehicles £25 to enter the Congestion Charging Zone.

Since then the idea has been refined to include the notion that such vehicles inside the zone should lose the residents’ concession.

One year on and the Mayor is talking about consultation. This is just another bout of electioneering from the Mayor. He thinks that the green shtick has resonance – he is right, even a pretty libertarian conservative like me thinks that 4WDs are anti-social.

Today he says he wants to consult. He doesn’t really. According to a poll conducted by IPSOS/MORI for the Mayor in July 2006, 64 per cent of Londoners think the most polluting cars should pay a higher congestion charge. So the Mayor knows this will be popular and he has already spent out on the poll. He doesn’t mind though spending another few hundred thousand of our cash to put a leaflet through our doors telling us how green he is. Whatever the result, which is bound to be positive, he will proceed as planned. There are few central London 4WD drivers, apparently only 8% of cars in the zone would be affected, so we are talking about a minority of a minority. This is a fairly safe piece of rich people bashing for the Mayor.

The Mayor’s use of tendentious language such as “gas guzzlers” and “Chelsea tractors” demonstrates, as ever, that he is not the sober public servant but a populist politician who happily spends our money spinning to stay in power.

I will find out how much he is spending. I will report back after the usual 20 days have elapsed.

Categories
Communications disease Ex-Mayor Livingstone

“Free” Oyster cards cost us £11 each

OystercardDo you remember that back in April the Mayor promised to give away 100,000 free Oyster cards to the first 100,000 people to apply, waiving the usual £3 fee that most of the rest of us have already paid?

See his press release. By 1st May the Mayor had reported rapid progress with this campaign, having given 57,000 cards away. See his second press release.

You could charitably argue the Mayor was trying to help the poorest in society deal with the swingeing increases in cash fares that came into force at the start of the year (£2 for buses and £4 for tubes). You might think that this operation had cost £300,000 in 100,000 lost £3 deposits for the cards. You would be wrong.

This exercise was in fact one designed to promote the Mayor in the run up to the elections next year. It was therefore supported by a torrent of advertising.

In doing some research today I came across the cost of the ad campaign to support this exercise – £792,966 (see answer to question raised by LibDem AM Sally Hamwee).

So these “free” Oyster cards cost us £10.93 each not £3! Just so you know.

By the way note that the Mayor can’t help hiding £5K of funding for left wing newspapers The Tribune and the Morning Star in this budget. The idea that these are effective tools for communicating to Londoners is laughable. Still, if you are spending £793K bigging yourself up what is £5K?

Categories
Communications disease Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Mayor’s Tour de France ad spending cost £3 million

What gear are you on mate?Today I finally received a reply from TfL on how much they spent on advertising for the Tour de France. The answer is £3 million. I wrote to TfL, who were driving this for the Mayor, on 21st June to ask how much the total comms campaign was costing but they have sullenly refused to answer up until now in spite of making the following pledge:

We will do our best to send you a full written response within 15 working days. If we cannot give you a full answer in this time, we will send you an acknowledgement and then a full written response will follow.

Now it is all old hat and there is not much to lose in letting us know.

The Sunday Times reported that:

London has paid £1.5m to stage the opening stage of the Tour de France and spent another £4m on planning, transport and security.

So the total for the Tour de France is at least £8.5 million or more than £2 a head for all the 4 million people who reportedly came out to watch. This does not include Kent County Council’s spending which was significant.

I have written to the Mayor to ask him to outline the entire budget. I am sure I will get an answer after 20 working days as usual. It doesn’t matter how easy it is to answer a question the Mayor cynically holds it until 20 days elapsed to stifle public scrutiny of his behaviour.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone Tram

Ding dong the Tram is dead II

My Tram is dead, it cost £35 million for nothing, but this way I might get some votes in MayLast night Ealing council leader Jason Stacey and the Mayor made a joint announcement about the West London Tram (see announcements here and here). It is dead – as we have known for two weeks (see previous posting).

It is clear from the careful words used by Ealing that there is no desire to rub the Mayor’s nose in it but it is certainly a climbdown on his part. Although the decision is notionally dependent on the go-ahead for Crossrail the Tram is still stone dead.

Gordon Brown has spent 10 years as chancellor not deciding to go ahead with Crossrail in spite of it being a total no-brainer. Now he is Prime Minister he can get the kudos for giving it the go-ahead so it is most likely to go ahead this autumn as part of a pre-election bundle of goodies.

Even if Crossrail does not get the go-ahead as expected it will not be killed off, no-one wants to say to Londoners that they have to struggle on with poor public transport infrastructure. Now that the Mayor has backed down it will be impossible to resurrect the Tram whilst Crossrail is still hanging around in the wings.

The story made the front page of the Mayor’s website but the spin his team put on it is pretty funny:

Mayor of London and the leader of Ealing Council agree new solution to traffic congestion as deal on Crossrail approaches

Ealing Council was a little more straigtforward:

Tram plans shelved

Jason Stacey deserves the highest praise for the way he made this an election issue in May 2006 and then worked effectively over the last 15 months to box the Mayor in so that his only choice is to give in gracefully. Now he has won this great battle he can afford to be magnanimous.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Mahfouz selected for Central Ealing & Acton

Bassam MaufouzEaling Times reported yesterday that local film star, Bassam Mahfouz, has been selected to fight against Angie Bray for the Ealing Central and Acton seat. As well as being a prominent Ealing councillor (he is the Labour transport and environment spokesman) he is a parliamentary researcher to Labour MPs Karen Buck and Stephen Pound.

Mahfouz is a bright, young (26) and combative councillor and one of the few that the Labour group can rely to string two words together at council meetings. He courted controversy recently when he tried to get the police involved in a scare-mongering line that the Hanwell community centre was closing.

The Lib Dem candidate is Jon Ball. It is great to see that Angie Bray has a decent opponent to get her teeth into – waffly Ball really wasn’t going to cut it.

As Mahfouz is young it is hard to criticise him for not having much experience outside politics. You can find out more about Mafouz here. It is effectively his personal blog but he had not updated at all in July.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Mayor creeps into Paris

Livingstone in Paris

The Mayor was in Paris this weekend on his latest holiday at our expense. He is pictured above presenting the prize to the winner of the thoroughly drug soaked Tour de France. No mention of it in any press release from the Mayor. Not picked up in British papers who were not tipped off by the Mayor’s numerous press staff. Could it be he is embarrassed? Probably.

The Mayor has got a lot of stick for busily visiting foreign countries over the last couple of years but not visiting many London Boroughs. He has also got lots of stick for flying all over the place whilst exhorting us to be green, see previous posting.

Only three weeks ago the Mayor was making a big splash about the Grand Depart (see here). How different it all looked then before the Tour de France turned into a drug-soaked farce? No wonder the Mayor is keeping a low profile in his summer suit.

As usual the Mayor cynically refuses to discuss the cost of his latest bread and circuses extravaganza for London. The Sunday Times reported that:

London has paid £1.5m to stage the opening stage of the Tour de France and spent another £4m on planning, transport and security.

What gear are you on mate?This does not include another of the Mayor’s large advertising campaigns. I wrote to TfL, who were driving this for the Mayor, on 21st June to ask how much the total comms campaign was costing but they have sullenly refused to answer in spite of making the following pledge:

We will do our best to send you a full written response within 15 working days. If we cannot give you a full answer in this time, we will send you an acknowledgement and then a full written response will follow.

Unless you are asking awkward questions that is.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Ealing Broadway drop off issue goes large

The problems at Ealing Broadway station have been picked up in all three main local news channels over the last couple of days.

On Ealing Today they have a Q & A type piece with some facts from the council along with a copy of the council’s press release of 5th June which warned about impending CCTV enforcement of pedestrian crossings and bus stops.

Yesterday Ealing Times had the story online here. Their headline is “£225,000: a ‘fine’ profit”. It is typical of a journalist, Alex Hayes in this case, to be economically illiterate. For this to be profit you have to assume that everyone pays their fines without complaint and that it costs nothing to do enforcement and payment collection. I think we can assume a large number of complaints after all the publicity of this issue.

The Ealing & Acton Gazette takes up the story for the third time this week. They are rather more measured than they have been. Their silly GONE PARKING MAD! logo has disappeared and they also have a Q & A piece that includes some actual facts from the council.

As a councillor I am a bit conflicted by all this. I want people to vote for me after all so I don’t really want to beat anyone up. Apparently some 5,573 tickets have been issued although the first 1,000 of them were dummies to give people the chance to change their ways. It can’t be very bright to turn this into a mini-industry however righteous the tickets.

This whole area is a mess and the closure of the drop off area by the rail company has caused inconvenience. This is no excuse though for ignoring the law. The law is totally clear about pedestrian crossings and bus stops and I don’t have much sympathy with people who use them for dropping off passengers.

On the Ealing Today forum and elsewhere people have complained about “anonymous spokesmen”. There is a longstanding convention that local government officer’s names are not mentioned in these situations. This is nothing new.

Other people have complained about camera enforcement. This is the only way to tackle this type of offence as it is dangerous and impractical to ask a parking attendant to try to serve a PCN when drivers are already distracted trying to drop people off and speed away again.

The officers do have a shred of a fig leaf to hide behind. On 12th September last year at the Ealing Area Committee an excellent bus driver called Alvarez complained that it was hard to do his job, especially around the station and Haven Green, because the council was not enforcing what are called moving traffic violations. We are now and people don’t like it. At the meeting Alvarez had the support of all councillors and the public. See my posting and decision sheet.

Visit https://theclarklawoffice.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-lansing-pedestrian-laws/ to protect yourself from personal injuries while you walk on the road.

The resolution made by the committee was:

Resolved: (i) That the concerns of local residents and Members of the Committee regarding illegal parking in the borough, be noted;

(ii) That the Executive Director of Customer Services be requested to investigate the current level of enforcement being undertaken by the Council in response to illegal parking in Haven Green, and report back to the next meeting of the Committee.

It seems that officers have taken this as carte blanche to go off and enforce without coming back to the committee to tell us what they proposed.

I have no sympathy for inconsiderate drivers but the officers are there to serve. It seems they have forgotten that in this case.

I wonder what Mr Alvarez thinks of all this?

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Evening Standard picks up 112 £100K earners story

Yesterday the Evening Standard picked up the story I covered on Tuesday about the explosion in highly paid people at TfL, see previous posting. A shortened version of their story is available on-line here.

The Evening Standard’s Ross Lydall has done a good job. He has got to the bottom of the restatement of these figures. In the TfL Annual Report (page 74) it said the figures were restated but did not explain why. Lydall found out the following:

TfL reported in last year’s accounts that 76 employees earned £100,000 or more. But the figures have been “restated” this year to show there were 90 six-figure earners in 2005/06 when employees’ pension contributions are included.

So let’s get this right. Last year’s figures were deceitful because they excluded employees’ pension contributions, NOT employer’s pension contributions. Most people understand their salary as being what they receive before deductions. This was yet another attempt by TfL to tell lies. I don’t know whether this culture of lying comes from the Mayor or TfL but it seems to be a widespread problem.