Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The Negligible Cost to Utility Companies of Suspending Parking
Parking has been suspended outside four houses on Hewitt Road both yesterday and today.
Yesterday, no one turned up.
This morning, no one turned up.
At 2.00PM this afternoon two workers turned up. They're working for Virgin Media to fix an issue for a particular customer 100 yards further down the road. As I write. it's just before 2:30 and they're filling in the hole and completing the job.
I'm very happy that the utility companies undertake the work necessary to keep us ticking over. But as a result of the incident on my road, I just started wondering what the motivation is for utility companies to book parking suspensions efficiently.
I have to say that I haven't been inconvenienced at all. This isn't a big issue: it's a nigggle. But, suspending parking does create inconvenience for some people, particularly in roads where parking is at a premium. I saw that at least two people got a ticket.
So I checked up what the costs are for utility companies. Haringey Council have a page with all the information necessary to make a reasonable estimate.
Using that data, it seems like a one day suspension for the work on Hewitt Road would have cost £232.55: the two-day suspension looks like it cost £361.80. That's £129.25 extra.
I'm sure all those extra one hundred pounds add up for a utility company, but on a case-by-case basis, it's not much of a penalty for the company to pay. So it's pretty easy for them to just double up on what they need to allow them for flexibility. I wonder how much cost-efficiency they demand of the people who make the suspension bookings.
Two days' parking suspension for a half hour job. I get they need some flexibility. But do they need this much.
This one might just be a niggle. But, we're all aware of works that do block or partially block roads when often little or nothing is going on.
Getting this sort of thing right could just sweep away some of those niggle sort frsutrations ad make things more pleasant.
Tags for Forum Posts: roadworks, utility companies
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Amit on
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Put another way, apart from the administration costs to the council, they don't incur any costs, so why should the fee be that high? (Given that the costs incurred are effectively paid by all service users). Isn't this just another back door tax?
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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No, I think making the exercise not cost-free is appropriate. Utilities are already careless with our convenience. Imagine how much more careless they'd be if there were no cost implications at all.
If you're concerned about bearing the cost of these charges, baed on my experience there appears to be a way of halving the costs by grater efficiency in booking. Perhaps you should raise this with your utility companies.
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Good points. In addition the charges to local residents who have their vehicles moved are unfair. No-one wants their car picked up and carried down the road so why do there need to be fines on those who for whatever reason miss the notice? I got one of these a couple of years ago. There were two parking suspension notices - one hidden from view under vegetation four houses away in one direction and the other four houses down the road and which didn’t spark my interest (I cycle everywhere so just wasn’t looking anywhere near it for the four days - including a weekend when I was away - while it was up). £50 for my pains and no flexibility shown on appeal. Left me pretty p’d off.
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I sympathise.
This area seems to be a minefield. One document I came across is about an appeal about non-compliant signs in Camden (Campbell Camden.doc). It shows the complexity of the issue, but may not be that helpful since I think the relevant regulations were amended in 2016, six years after this case was heard.
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The appeals system is stacked against you. The fine doubles to £100 if you lose so you have to believe you have a strong case which as a regular Joe is very hard to judge. Plus all the effort. Its just not worth it.
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That's a good question, Spiderman. When I looked yesterday, I saw quote a bit of variation:
- Islington - £207.50 for the first day and £31.65 for each subsequent parking space per day.
- Barnet - £40.00 per space per day
- Camden - £57.00 per space per day
- Hackney - £75.00 administration fee plus £25 per space, per day
- Walthamstow - £75.00 administration fee plus £35 per space, per day
It's probably even more complicated than the above suggests since I note from the Westminster Council website that it gives discounts on its rates to something called the London Joint Utilities Group. (Googling that led me to streetworks.org.uk).
This level of variation is perhaps explained by the way the legislation is framed. The Government guidance on this has the following:
The income from fees must not exceed the total allowable costs prescribed in the permit regulations. This balance can be achieved over several years. Allowable costs are limited to: the proportion of direct costs and overheads attributable to operating the scheme for undertakers, which are over and above the cost of the authority’s co-ordination duty under NRSWA. This may include the costs related to permits which may not always lead to a permit being granted. Overheads can include: non-salary staff-related costs such as pensions and benefits, proportionate allocation of accommodation, central services and IT costs, as well as general administration and management for monitoring the permit system, KPIs and invoicing.
The effort required to work out what this means in practice, exceeds my level of interest. But for those who feel inclined - the full document - statutory-guide-for-permit-schemes.pdf
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Before writing this piece yesterday, I tweeted about it to Haringey Council. This morning they have come back via Twitter with the following:
Virgin Media paid for a permit to suspend parking for works due to take place between 4 to 6 Dec. However this has highlighted an issue. We are now requesting 2 days not 3 to complete works when parking suspensions are in place due to inconvenience to residents
It's positive that they appear to be on to it. But I'm a little unclear as to whether they stepped down the original request from two days to three.
Either way, given that the work took only thirty minutes, Surely there's a case for not having a blanket two-day policy for all Virgin works. In this case a half-day would have sufficed.
A quick scan through a central government evaluation of, what they refer to as the street works permit scheme reveals the conclusion that:
a reduction in average durations for most types of works undertaken under permit schemes, compared to noticing
So, it seems that it does work, but my observation is that it could work better. Copy of evaluation attached (I've only skimmed it in parts).
Attachment: permit-schemes-evaluation-report.pdf
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Maybe, with this new fangled parking system, companies could advise Haringey when they're done, and the restriction can be removed with immediate effect.
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It's not straightforward to find out what sort of revenue we're talking about here. The only thing I could find is an annual parking report from Westminster Council. If I'm reading it right, (page 21 on this document), they got £20m from suspension income in 2017/18.
One has to wonder how keen councils are to reduce the number of days utilities request parking suspensions. There must at least be a tension here. Comparable figures for different councils would be illustrative.
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