Spotlight on Parking 2025: Adapting to a changing world

Alpha Parking conference shines a light on policy trends and shared best practice

Adapting to a changing world was the theme of Spotlight on Parking 2025. Organised by Alpha Parking, the conference provides a space in which they can discuss devising innovative policies and implementing new ways of working. 

The 10th annual event was held at the Royal Society in London on 7 October. This impressive venue provided the backdrop for a day of lively debate.

Caroline Hamilton, chief adjudicator of the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, led a discussion that encompassed improving air quality, supporting active travel, designing accessible developments, ensuring the wellbeing of front line staff, protecting the integrity of the Blue Badge scheme and tackling persistent evaders.

Advocating for the parking sector

Laura Padden, director, PATROL
Parking and Traffic Regulations Outside London (PATROL) is the statutory joint committee of over 300 local authorities and charging authorities that manage and enforce parking and other traffic restrictions in England (outside London) and Wales.

PATROL has developed a multi-faceted perspective of current and emerging enforcement issues based on listening to its membership and insights gained from both councils and motorists using the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. Current areas of activity include:

• Pavement parking outside London.
• Penalty charge notice (PCN) amount and proposals for depoliticising charges.
• Reducing the financial burden on authorities and making the process more accessible.
• Regional local authority user groups via which PATROL is engaging with local authorities to share updates on the traffic management landscape, share insights from appeals, onboarding and the distribution of new internal tools.
• The Driving Improvement Awards and encouraging effective annual reporting.

Revising tariffs and charges

Brenda Busingye, transport and travel planning team manager, London Borough of Camden
Camden Council wants to reduce the negative impacts of motor vehicles, so it has been revising its parking fees and charges to reflect vehicle carbon emission bands and include air quality surcharges.

The north London borough has also streamlined tariff zones, reduced maximum stay durations and introduced limits on vehicles per permit. The council wants to tackle:

• Air pollution from vehicles: Road transport is a major source of NOx, PM10, PM2.5, and CO2 emissions, worsening air quality and climate change.
• Negative impacts on active transport: Traffic dominance restricts walking and cycling, reducing opportunities for healthy, sustainable travel modes.
• Space usage and infrastructure: Excessive kerbside space is occupied by parked cars, limiting sustainable infrastructure development.
• Health effects of car ownership: Higher car ownership correlates with reduced physical activity, negatively affecting public health outcomes.

Collecting and using parking data

Owen Edwards, project manager, TRICS Consortium
TRICS is a system of multi-modal trip generation analysis for developments in the UK and Ireland. Founded in 1989, TRICS is a database of almost 10,000 transport surveys undertaken at individual developments, which is used to generate estimates of transport activity (trip generation).

TRICS users in the transport planning sector apply selection criteria to produce estimates of trip generation for various development scenarios. These figures are then used in the writing – and assessing – of Transport Assessments as part of a new development’s planning process.

TRICS surveys include all transport by type (main travel method by distance), arriving at and departing from a development, hourly over typically a 12-hour period.

The survey counts are accompanied by descriptive information on a development’s location, functions and composition, and on-site and off-site parking availability.

Pursuing the persistent evaders

Alan Wood, founder, NPED Services
The National Persistent Evader Database (NPED) is the UK’s only centralised database of offending vehicle behaviour data from the parking sector. Vehicles are ranked in a scoring matrix allowing the local authorities and enforcement agencies to prioritise the worst offenders in society.

NPED Services has been piloting the database with local authorities and private sector partners, including ANPR providers.

NPED advocates for persistent evaders to be addressed by government and police in a coordinated manner. It is working with politicians such as Lord Watson, Lord Lucas, Sarah Coombes MP and Josh Barbarinde MP.

This has led to an amendment being tabled on the Vehicle Compliance Management Act (VCMA) that addresses emerging challenges of road use compliance such as ghost and cloned number plates, unregistered or foreign registered vehicles and persistent evaders of toll, congestion and parking offences.

To find out more about the Spotlight on Parking click here

Alpha Parking is an independent parking consultancy providing specialist parking consultancy, surveys, training, Traffic Order and Parkmap.
www.aparking.co.uk