Parking Team of the Year: Hackney Council

British Parking Awards 2023

Hackney Council’s Parking Enforcement Team is going above and beyond in trialling new ways of working that would benefit the staff and the community. This was recognised in the fact that the London borough was the recipient of three trophies at the British Parking Awards 2023.

Hackney’s pioneering approach to School Streets was recognised with a Parking Rosette for a programme of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and School Streets that shows what needs to be replicated nationwide to tackle the climate crisis and get more people walking and cycling.

Hackney’s consultation and engagement campaign for its Parking Enforcement Plan (PEP) won the Communication Award. While many boroughs see only a few hundred responses to strategic documents, Hackney’s approach saw over 8,000 people give their views, which led to a number of substantial changes in the finalised proposals.

And the council’s Parking Enforcement Team was named Team of the Year. The Parking Enforcement Team is a brand new team within Hackney Council’s Parking Services. It was established in April 2022 following the service being brought back in-house from an external provider that had won the contract back in 1999. The insourcing has followed the council’s political ambition to bring all outsourced services back in-house where possible.

Following the large and complex insourcing process, the over 100 staff workforce have undergone a complete restructure, with changes implemented to improve the performance, work-life balance and customer service to road users.

The Parking Enforcement Team is responsible for all aspects of the council’s parking response, this includes on-street and off-street parking enforcement, CCTV enforcement of moving traffic, parking and bus lane restrictions, enforcement of abandoned and untaxed vehicles along with enforcement support team which provides the back office support for the front facing teams.

Michael Wiktorko, service area manager for parking enforcement at London Borough of Hackney, says: “Front line parking enforcement is one of the most challenging working environments in the country. The industry has a very difficult task in recruiting and retaining staff due to the difficulties faced in the role. That is why Hackney Parking Enforcement Team is trialling new ways of working that would benefit the staff and the community.”

Re-branding civil enforcement officers

Hackney Council has rebranded the civil enforcement officer (CEO) role to become the ‘Road & Traffic Enforcement Officer’. The role continues to carry out the statutory duty of a CEO under the Traffic Management Act 2004, but the officers are now the “eyes and ears” of the council, ensuring that problems such as vandalism, fly-tipping, graffiti, uncollected waste, anti-social behaviour and other problems are reported promptly to the relevant team in the borough to speed up the council’s response.

“This approach significantly improves the response time of the relevant team as the council no longer only relies on residents and businesses to report such issues,” says Wiktorko. “To reflect the new approach, the Road & Traffic Enforcement Officer role has undergone a major uniform overhaul. The new uniform provides better comfort for officers by being more durable, easier to wash and more suitable for working in different weather conditions, as there are different uniforms for each season.”

Over the years Hackney Council had been seeing an increase in verbal and physical abuse of its front line enforcement officers. This problem increased during the challenging times of COVID-19 lockdowns. In 2020 Hackney carried out an engagement with all its staff to find out about their experiences. The most shocking finding was that the majority of officers felt that it was part of their job and that such attacks are normal and something they just need to accept. Some attacks received media attention and police investigation, but some went unnoticed. “We saw officers being attacked and ending up in hospital,” says Wiktorko.

Following a number of informal engagement sessions with the public as part of the council’s Parking Enforcement Plan engagement sessions it became clear that there was well established stereotype that civil enforcement officers have targets to issue penalty charge notices (PCNs), and are only there to issue parking tickets and do not want to help drivers or residents.

The new uniforms and duties of Road & Traffic Enforcement Officers were implemented from mid-2022 to fight that stereotype and set a new standard for customer service.

“We have developed new internal procedures to ensure that staff do not tolerate such behaviour under any circumstances as this is NOT normal and MUST NOT be accepted,” says Wiktorko. “We have introduced a series of engagement sessions and a ‘no tolerance’ approach to abuse of our front line staff. Each report was taken seriously and escalated through every possible avenue, for example, we have reported cases of residents from social housing attacking and abusing our staff to be issued a final warning of eviction from council properties which prompted some residents to write a letter of apology to the enforcement officer.

“We commenced enforcement of Regulation 10 penalty charge notices, also known as Vehicle Drove Away (VDAs) to discourage the attacks and abuse in the hope of avoiding getting a PCN. Finally, we have also started to include the supporting material from video badges to the cases that were going to independent adjudication with some outstanding results.”

Tackling nuisance vehicles

Hackney has created a new Nuisance Vehicle Team to tackle abandoned, cloned, stolen, untaxed and other types of nuisance vehicles. The team conducts targeted patrols to areas most in need, which has not been done in decades, relying on information from the community, working closely with residents and councillors, aided by a newly introduced abandoned vehicle policy

Inspections and investigations are being carried out within five working days, with any abandoned vehicle appearing to be worth less than £1,000 being issued with a destruction notice.

Wiktorko says: “This robust approach has seen hotspot location complaints decrease, air polluting vehicles removed and destroyed and a real improvement in the quality of life promised to our residents. This approach has been welcomed by residents and the local media. With over a 100 abandoned vehicles and 300 untaxed vehicles removed in the last 12 months, Hackney Council has shown a real determination to declutter its streets and free up parking spaces for its residents.”

Before introducing enforcement using CCTV in certain Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) the patrol officers are deployed to raise the awareness and inform the drivers about the upcoming restrictions being enforced by CCTV to avoid drivers becoming aware of the enforcement by getting a PCN. Wiktorko says: “Enforcement officers were deployed to hotspot locations where a large number of vehicles were seen idling where prohibited. Instead of taking a strict enforcement approach by issuance of a PCN – officers started handing out leaflets to inform drivers. This has been received very positively by the drivers.”

Local knowledge, community support

Hackney has been expanding the use of controlled parking zones (CPZs) over the past decade, moving from 64% coverage in 2011/12 to 100% in 2022/23.

Hackney Council has been split into three districts with regards to parking enforcement. The officers are deployed in their district all the time and are not rotated between different locations at random or rotational basis. This ensures that they build local knowledge, provide community support and act as the face of the Hackney Council by providing further information about parking restrictions, permits, processes and consultations.

This allows the council to train the officers with more bespoke information specific to their district as opposed to training on all issues and changes in the council. It enables the officers to know the locations that are normally compliant and locations where there is a higher chance of driver’s being aggressive. “Where the locations are more problematic then the officers are paired up or deployed in a full team of six. This knowledge has further contributed to the reduction in abuse received by officers as they are no longer deployed alone,” says Wiktorko.

The Road & Traffic Enforcement Officers are also undergoing extensive training in Action Counters Terrorism. This enables them to assist in detecting hostile reconnaissance, helping solve serious crime and preventing terrorist attacks.

Changes that work

The uniform change, provision of support, better training and taking strong action against those deciding to attack or abuse frontline staff are actions helping improve staff morale and retention. The new look Road & Traffic Enforcement Officers also benefit from a new 4-day working week that supports the work-life balance. “It offers five consecutive days off every three weeks to provide the much deserved break from the challenging job in all weather conditions. This improves the service delivery by providing better coverage of the on-street parking restrictions in the borough,” explains Wiktorko.

“In July 2022 we carried out the very first staff survey and only saw an engagement rate of 53%. With only half of the staff feeling motivated in their job. In a short period of time, at the end of the year, we carried out another survey asking the same questions and have seen a significant increase, with the engagement rate going up to 70% and significantly improved morale, as now over 75% of staff felt motivated in their job.

“The last survey showed very positive results with a few areas where continued improvement was needed. At the heart of the changes we have made are three simple service promises that we ensure all staff work towards (as opposed to complicated wording or words that have great meaning according to the dictionary, but are difficult to understand or relate to in a day-to-day work): provide fair outcomes for customers; get things done ‘right first time’; and simplify and continually improve our processes.”