Parking World 2011 showcased latest thinking

Parking World 2012, which took place at Lord’s Cricket Ground, London on 29 November, was a gathering of over 150 parking professionals from across the public and private sector. The event, organised by Parking Review, tackled a wide range of issues including parking’s role in the urban economy, the sharing of services, benchmarking best practice, new technologies, and the future of the car itself.

The day began with Mirsad Bakalovic, head of parking at Croydon Council, providing an enlightening analysis of how parking can help revive the fortunes of high streets, as long as other regeneration, planning and skills development policies are put into practice.

Neil Fenton, customer experience manager at the London Borough of Lambeth, explained how the Partners in Parking award-winning web-based mystery shopping system enables parking managers across ten boroughs to peer review one anothers’ services.

John Lamb, Buckinghamshire’s new ‘director of place’, then delivered a thought-provoking series of ideas about partnership working, asking delegates to really consider what services they need to do themselves and which ones can be shared with neighbouring councils and other organisations.

Partnership working was the common theme during the Enforcement Trends session. Richard Walker, parking partnership manager for the North Essex Parking Partnership, explained how 13 local authorities have committed to bring all their back office services together. The North and South Essex Partnerships work with IT specialist Chipside, whose managing director Paul Moorby reassured delegates that partnering does not have to be scary. A similar message was relayed by a two-handed presentation by Sara Sutton, service delivery manager at Westminster City Council, and Peter McLaughlin, programme manager at Vertex.

Councils can contract out penalty processing, as long as they retain officer oversight, explained Pauline Phillips, car parking client officer at Oldham Council, and Dale Wood, business processing director at NSL Services.

The Technology Trends session, meanwhile, saw Manny Rasores of MR Parking Consultancy explore the latest payment systems, including wave & pay, ANPR and NFC (near field) contactless technology. The world of phone based parking payment was addressed by Peter O’Driscoll, managing director of Parkmobile, while Eugene Tysrklevich, founder of Parkopedia, mapped out how the parking world is now a digital domain.

With cars being central to parking, the use of cars in general, and of car clubs and electric vehicles in particular, was discussed by Chas Ball, chief executive of car club charity Carplus.