Somerset rolls out home-based parking patrol officers

New NSL deployment model transforms enforcement efficiencies

Stephanie Stephens, home deployment CEO in Minehead: “After a thoroughly enjoyable training course, I commenced working for NSL as a remote working civil enforcement officer in May 2017 having yearned for a job similar to my previous occupation as a police officer. Working from home is extremely useful as I can start my patrol duties promptly without the stress or delays of a long drive to and from work. As I live in Minehead, the fact I know so many of the local residents is a great help as they respect my role, which helps to encourage compliance with on and off-street parking rules.”

Stephanie Stephens, home deployment CEO in Minehead: “After a thoroughly enjoyable training course, I commenced working for NSL as a remote working civil enforcement officer in May 2017 having yearned for a job similar to my previous occupation as a police officer. Working from home is extremely useful as I can start my patrol duties promptly without the stress or delays of a long drive to and from work. As I live in Minehead, the fact I know so many of the local residents is a great help as they respect my role, which helps to encourage compliance with on and off-street parking rules.”

Somerset is a quintessentially English county with rolling hills and a wealth of historical and cultural heritage as well as vibrant market towns and a number of popular seaside resorts along a 60-mile coastline. For local residents and around 26 million day and staying visitors every year, accessibility and effective parking management around the main retail areas and public venues and facilities in the county’s main towns is of great importance.However, the fact that this predominantly rural county covers an area of 1,333 square miles posed a problem for Somerset County Council when deploying civil enforcement officers (CEOs).

Somerset appointed NSL in 2012 to undertake all on-street enforcement across the county as well as car parks operated by four district councils. To cover the whole county, NSL divided its CEOs between four operational bases – Yeovil, Street, Bridgwater and the county town of Taunton. While this provides a reasonable spread of resources, outlying towns such Frome, Wells and Minehead still required enforcement provision from the 45 CEOs covering the county. The practicalities of deploying CEOs to these more ‘remote’ towns has always posed significant difficulties. 

A considerable amount of time was lost travelling on congested roads, especially during the busy tourist season. The ability to provide enforcement during early morning and early evening peak periods was compromised due to time spent travelling to distant locations.

The county has thus developed a deployment model with NSL that enables CEOs to start and end their shifts from their homes rather than having to travel long distances to central offices before setting off on their beats. This home-based model represents a departure from conventional forms of deployment and has overcome the operational limitations presented by a finite resource serving widely dispersed centres of population. 

“We needed a more flexible and intelligent solution to minimise inefficiencies and wasted travel time and to cater for seasonal and fluctuating peaks in demand,” says Somerset County Council’s parking services manager Steve Deakin. 

 “The county and NSL’s shared priority was to ensure outlying areas such as Minehead and the West Somerset coast and inland areas such as Shepton Mallet, Frome and Wells received the same high levels of service at all times of the day and throughout the year. The areas around school entrances at the start and end of the school day posed particular challenges in these more ‘remote’ areas. Until now, it had proved to be very difficult – if not impossible – to deliver an effective and consistent enforcement response for such hotspots.” 

Working in partnership, the parking services team at Somerset County Council and the account management team at NSL investigated a range of potential options and developed a new measure for benchmarking CEO performance and deployment. The new performance and deployment measure is based on three key criteria:

• The number of hours worked

• The number of locations visited

• The number of observations made.

Tested and evaluated alongside the existing deployment arrangements over several months, the new benchmark provided invaluable insight and intelligence. 

“Using this information, it was clear that conventional deployment methods represented a major stumbling block,” says Pete Harper, NSL’s client account manager for Somerset. “We looked at the possibility of developing more flexible and improved contracts of employment that could offer potential for introducing a form of home-based deployment. This would increase the scope for recruiting local people with familiarity of their local areas and empower the CEOs with more direct responsibilities. However, there were many challenges to overcome – not least the requirements for additional training, remote management, reallocation of enforcement vehicles and the functionality and reliability of mobile technology.” 

NSL worked with the county’s IT supplier Chipside on a detailed assessment to verify the functionality of handheld terminals and the remote uploading of data. Adjustments were made to the existing IT infrastructure to enable CEOs to plug existing handheld units into their home router so that all photographs and penalty charge data could be transferred to the council’s back office system at the end of each day. 

New contracts of employment were developed and the home deployment model was introduced in March 2017. 

Initially, two full-time CEOs in Minehead and one part-time CEO in Shepton Mallet were recruited as vacancies appeared within the main bases that had previously served these outlying areas. 

Full training was provided for the new recruits while additional ‘World Host’ training was given to the new CEOs in Minehead to allow enhanced customer service in this popular tourism area. The enforcement vehicles previously used by CEOs to travel out to more remote areas were now assigned permanently to the respective locations. 

The new arrangement enabled a more effective response to requests from local police and head teachers to address some serious cases of non-compliance around the entrances of local schools in these areas. Significantly, the increased presence of CEOs enabled closer partnerships to be forged with facility managers, tourist venues and major retailers, as well as the local police force. 

The immediate success of the new approach prompted the creation of further part-time CEO positions in Sedgemoor, and CEOs working out of Bridgwater were assigned home-based deployment two or three days a week in and around their hometown of Burnham-on-Sea. This eliminated 40 minutes of wasted travel time to first report to their main operational base. 

“Aside from the clear efficiency gains, the development and adoption of a home-based employment model for CEOs is delivering much more consistent, flexible and effective enforcement across all areas of the county,” says Cllr John Woodman, cabinet member for highways and transport at Somerset County Council. 

“It is also providing added social value with employment opportunities in outlying areas and is harnessing local knowledge to ensure fair and safe access to town centre services and facilities at all times of the day for both visitors and residents alike. This is an intelligent and responsive solution to a long-standing operational issue, and we’re delighted with the outcomes and feedback.” 

The approach adopted by Somerset County Council and NSL represents a first for the parking sector and has now paved the way for similar initiatives in other areas of the country with widely dispersed centres of population. NSL is now assessing the scope for applying the model for other local authority clients where similar issues have been encountered. Indeed, home-based deployment is already being introduced within the company’s off-street enforcement programme for Epping Forest District Council in Essex.