Delivering for Durham

Cllr Tim McGuinness provides insights into Durham County Council’s data-driven approach to traffic and parking management

Parking sits at the intersection of network management, place making, public confidence, and day-to-day service delivery. As the portfolio holder for rural, farming and transport at Durham County Council parking forms a key part of that role. This is a brief overview based on some of my experiences as a portfolio holder so far, about some of the lessons learnt, and where we in County Durham are headed as a result.

Lesson 1: Consistency and trust…

Suffice to say, as an elected member I did not truly realise the extent to which the public would resist parking charges and costs related to parking. Parking charges and enforcement will always attract public scrutiny. And that is unlikely to change. What we can change is how clearly and consistent we are in communicating our processes:

• why enforcement takes place
• how decisions are made
• and how income is used.

In Durham, we publish clear information on enforcement activity and the use of surplus income, demonstrating that civil parking enforcement is operated as a self-funding public service, not a revenue raising exercise.

Our self-financing approach, when paired with national best practices – including guidance promoted through Parking and Traffic Regulations Outside London (PATROL) and the use of technology – makes that consistency and transparency easier. 
But this only matters if transparency is treated as a principle, not an afterthought. All of this ensures consistency. Through this we can start to build trust.

Lesson 2, In data, we trust…

It’s also worth remembering that, as is true for all local authorities, finances are tight. This makes Durham’s self-financing goal even more poignant and challenging. 

How then can we ensure that our budget is used where it is most needed and to the greatest benefit to the tax payer? We must follow the data. We simply do not have the luxury of being able to do anything else. 

And in many ways, as a politician, it is as much my job to defend officers and the budget as it is to ensure service improvements and value for money for our residents. In fact, these two things are wholly dependent upon each other.

Thankfully, technology is providing increasingly affordable solutions and is already playing a growing role in parking management. But in Durham we are very deliberate about how and why it is used. We already operate in a largely digital environment:

• pay-by-phone and cashless payments are well established
• back office processing and case management is fully digitised
• enforcement activity is supported by mobile and vehicle-based systems rather than paper-based processes.

However, our starting position is clear: technology is an enabler of policy, not a substitute for it. In other words, we are data-led, not ticket-led. One of the most critical changes we are making is moving away from measuring success purely in terms of activity – numbers of penalty charge notices or patrol hours – and towards data-led outcomes. Technology allows us to:

• understand patterns of non-compliance
• identify locations where parking behaviour creates congestion, obstruction, or safety issues
• align enforcement deployment with wider network management priorities. 

A data-led approach supports a more proportionate and defensible enforcement model, focussed on resolving problems rather than maximising outputs.

Technology and governance

Across the sector, there is increasing interest in: vehicle-based enforcement systems; automated evidence captures; and more sophisticated back office platforms.

Durham’s approach is pragmatic rather than technology-led. We recognise the benefits these tools can bring in improving: accuracy; consistency; officer safety; and evidential robustness.

But we are equally clear that technology must operate within: strong governance arrangements; clear decision making frameworks; and full compliance with statutory guidance and data protection requirements. The challenge is not whether technology exists, but rather it is how it is deployed, explained, and controlled. 

It is worth mentioning that this ability to be pragmatic is heavily reliant on the experience and knowledge that has been built up within our team, without this it would be a much more difficult proposition. I value the expertise and advice of the officers around me. It is my job to blend their knowledge and experience with the needs of the county and its residents.

Lesson 3: Right first time…

Good policy is good policy. To make everything we want to happen work, we need to ensure that we create policy that addresses parking and parking problems in the first instance wherever possible. I am referring here to the basics. Ensure when we build new developments, that enough bays are built to accommodate cars. Ensure verges are hardened or protected as standard. And to ensure budget gets allocated, so where there are problems, we can go back and engineer a long-term solution. 

It is all too easy to write planning rules and alternative travel schemes and lose sight of the simple fact: if people cannot find a sensible convenient car parking space, they will still park their car somewhere. We need to ensure that we are not simply managing parking and parking enforcement, but that we are informing developments and improvement schemes so that the need to enforce will be minimised, allowing us to focus our efforts where it really matters. 

Durham's digital future

What does the future of parking policy in Durham look like? And what is driving change? In the first instance, clear and consistent parking and enforcement policies. Then ensuring policies are linked to network management outcomes, and wider council planning considerations. It must be driven by the data and the local context.

Technology used needs to be fair, accurate, efficient and, most importantly, affordable. There must be a continued emphasis on consistency and transparency, to ensure we build public confidence. In short, the future is not about being tougher, nor simply about being more automated, it is about being clearer…

• clearer about purpose
• clearer about outcomes
• clearer about how parking management supports the network and communities we serve.

Parking will always generate strong views. That is the nature of the beast. But Durham’s experience shows that when parking management is: purpose driven; proportionate; well governed; and openly explained it becomes easier to deliver, easier to defend, and easier for the public to understand. And when that happens, parking enforcement stops being the problem, and becomes part of the solution.

Cllr Tim McGuinness is the Reform Party’s cabinet member for rural, farming and transport at Durham County Council.

Cllr McGuinness was the keynote speaker at the North East Parking Show, held in Durham on 3 March. The event organised by Landor LINKS, which would like to thank Durham County Council for hosting the event and Marston Holdings for being the day’s main sponsor.