Parking and Haringey's new IT system

I’m having terrible trouble with Haringey’s new IT system and parking. It seems to be the most incredibly incompetent and malevolent bit of technology ever devised. It does not work! I haven’t been able to find any group campaigning to rectify this. Millions of taxpayer pounds will have been spent on it. Is there not a groundswell of public rage over it? There ought to be! It’s driving me a bit mad! 

it does not recognise me as a resident of Haringey ( been here 36 yrs) because it can’t verify me against the electoral register (been on it 36 years), nor can it check me against Council Tax payments (been paying since the beginning). As proof of residency and vehicle ownership it wants photos of driving licence and DVLA V5C form. I do this and it rejects the photos! There’s a comprehensive list of file categories that it accepts for photos, but anything from my IPhone appears not to qualify. I spent plenty of valuable time on the web trying to find out how to convert my photos, with little result until I discovered this easy fix which I now share with fellow citizens (I don’t know what happens with Android and other tablets):

        1. Take photo of documents with phone

        2. Attach them to an email and send them to yourself

        3. This converts them to JPEG which the System accepts

I have, finally, been able to register for a residents parking permit, but I could not have done it online by myself - I needed the guidance of a human on the other end of the phone (a call for which I had to wait 88 minutes!). Fortunately for me, this particular human had the knowledge and authority to fast track the verification of my application because my permit was expiring that day - Normally there would be a delay of several days before you’d finally be accepted (all this, of course, in spite of the fact that I’ve had a resident permit and purchased many a visitor voucher since parking restrictions were introduced; not to mention that I already have a Haringey account that’s fully recognised and confirmed! )But that is not the end of the story. Oh no! We’ve got the builders in so I needed ‘virtual visitor permits’. Hey ho here we go!:

Not so fast, sonny boy! You may have been ‘qualified’ (their word, not mine) as a resident permit holder but you’re not yet qualified as a buyer of ‘virtual visitor permits’! No siree! Yes, you must now go through the same process you did for the residents permits. And no, they still can’t check you against CouncilTax and Electoral Register; you must upload your photos to prove it all over again! Again, I needed human assistance for this (half hour wait on the phone) but I got registered in the end, Again, I was told there should be a delay of some days before this ‘qualification’ could be accepted but my advisor said she could expedite this immediately and I was able to buy 2 virtual permits to use the following day. When I looked at my ‘Account Summary’ the next day, my ‘status’ as a ‘virtual permit’ buyer was marked as “Rejected”! This prompted another long wait on the phone, the upshot of which is I can now purchase ‘virtual visitor permits’ - but my ‘status’ remains as “Rejected”! What can I say: Go figure! So, back to the actual purchase:

you have two options: a whole day permit for £4  or an hourly permit for £0.83. What about the 2 hour visitor permit, I hear you cry. They don’t exist; dead and gone; deceased. Never mind that Haringey is spattered all over with 2 hour parking restrictions! So, to cover 2 hours you will need to apply for two 1 hour permits. Ok, should be easy enough! Ha ha! First off, you have to go through the address farago again - ie they can never automatically conjure your address from the post code; every time you purchase something you have to put it in manually; somehow it always happens that you end up writing out your postcode 3 times, and then, as a final two finger salute, you have to put in your country! Yes, this is essential information if you want a visitor parking permit! Never mind, of course, that you are applying from your verified Haringey account that has all your verified details in it! But that’s not all! Oh no! I think this is the best bit!:

You can buy several at one time - 9, I think - and they remain in your account until you use them. In your account you can see how many you have and the option to “activate”. You click Activate and up comes a box: enter Reg number of vehicle; then there’s the date. I say ‘the’ date because there is only one option - the date on which you’re physically doing this. You absolutely cannot programme this date nor the time of day you want the permit to start! Furthermore, when you Activate on the day the visitor is due, you can only Activate at the very time the permit should begin. Our restriction is from 10am to Noon, so I have to buy two single ones to start at 10am and 11am. I cannot, for example, when having my first cup of tea at 7.30am think: ‘I better Activate Bill’s visitor permit before I forget’. If you try, that time will come up and you cannot manually change it. However, you do get options of half hourly intervals. So, in this example, if I were to Activate at 7.30am, I would be able to select 9.30 am or 10.30am. So, yes indeed, it looks as though, if I were to Activate at 8am precisely, I would be able to select a 10am start. And, if I could be quick enough, I could then Activate the 11am permit at the same time - I don’t think it would be possible to do it that quickly though. What would happen is you’d end up Activating the 11am permit at 8.02am which would give you the option of starting the second permit at 11.02, thus leaving the vehicle illegally parked for 2 minutes (which, as we all know - and which is constantly confirmed by Sod’s Law - is the very moment the traffic warden comes by and gives you a PCN). So, if you wanted to pre-Activate the 11am permit, you’d have to wait until 9am or 10am or 11am precisely!

What I have done is buy a full day permit (costing more than twice as much as the 2 single hour ones) - and my Master Plan hinges on claiming back a refund because the procedure for the hourly ones is unconscionably arduous and practically impossible. The full day one lasts from 00.00.00 to 23.59.59 on the day of use - no issues at all! Easy peasy! Sensible, even! So why can’t there be a 2 hourly one that automatically selects the 2 hours pertaining to particular Zone you’re in? Who knows!?

This new IT System now in use by Haringey was created by Civica. What it’s like doing business with the borough in all other aspects of local governance I do not know, but this Parking one is cringingly incompetent and must be sorted.

Bruce John (Lamond)