FTA slams Government for parking policy failure

Date: Tuesday, June 25, 2013

The Freight Transport Association has told the House of Commons Transport Select Committee that the high levels of parking fines handed out to delivery vehicles in London demonstrate a policy failure rather than successful enforcement.
 James Hookham, the FTA’s policy boss, stressed that the Traffic Management Act, which governs local authority parking policy, needs an overhaul as it fails to distinguish between parking provision, which is mainly concerned with private cars, and deliveries to commercial and residential premises, which are an essential economic activity.
Hookham said: “The very high levels of fines that continue to be incurred by operators attempting to deliver to premises, particularly in central London, show a failure by local authorities to adequately plan and provide for kerbside deliveries.
“No operator sets out to deliberately contravene the restrictions on parking, but the lack of adequate provision means that delivery vehicles have little choice but to stop on restricted routes to gain access to adjacent premises, and become easy pickings for enforcement officers.  The law needs to be clarified to distinguish between ‘parking’ and ‘delivery and servicing activity’.”
The FTA is calling for the Government to undertake a fundamental review of the TMA, which has now been in place for five years.
Hookham claimed the legislation underpinning parking enforcement gave precedence to congestion management over access to the kerbside.
He added that a better balance needed to be struck to establish good provision for commercial vehicle deliveries in order to support local businesses.

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