More about security and parking from around the UK.
PC Andy Smith and PC Wade Dooley second place in the Tilley award, run by the Home Office Crime Prevention Unit, for the success of Operation Atlas, a two-year crime reduction project which ran in Blackpool from October 1998 to December 2000. The operation involved both covert, plain clothes work and high visibility of uniformed officers in car parks. Car crime fell during the operation by up to 26 per cent.
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President of the British Parking Association is Winchester City Council Chief Engineer David Marklew. He heads the Engineering Department that is in charge of parking and CCTV. He reports to Steve Bee, Director of Development Services. Winchester Council operates 30 off-street car parks in Winchester and in towns and villages in the district, and enforces on-street parking regulations (yellow lines). Winchester City Council was one of the first local authorities in the country to introduce decriminalised parking, in 1996, when it became responsible for both on and off-street parking enforcement throughout the whole of the City Council area. The city collects more than £400,000 a year in parking fines. In 2000, new CCTV control room was completed, which links not only to the City Council’s own cameras, but which also receives pictures from cameras in the Brooks Centre, in the city’s car parks, and from cameras at Winchester railway station.
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What the Home Office CCTV initiative prospectus for bidders says about car parks: ‘The government fully supports the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Secured Car Parks Scheme, which has a proven track record of reducing car crime significantly. (Car Parks with secured status have shown remarkable reductions in crime with examples of 50 to 96 per cent). Details on how to obtain further information about the Scheme are given at Annex C. The contact point will be able to put you in touch with a regional development manager to help you to develop applications for Secured Car Park (SCP) status. CCTV can play an important part in achieving SCP status by ensuring a high degree of surveillance of all areas of the car park. However, there are other measures of equal importance e.g. good levels of lighting, controlled access for cars and pedestrians, staff patrols and good management practices.’
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Ted Roberts, head of security at the University of Manchester, is also responsible for car parking, as part of the Office of the Director of Residential and Commercial Services. After 28 years in the RAF, he joined the University of Oxford in 1991 and left for Manchester in early 2000; the present head of security at Oxford, Forrest Baker, took his place. Ted reports that car parking in many-spired Oxford is completely different to Manchester. Parking in Oxford is limited, whereas the Manchester campus beside the A34 south of the city centre has one multi-storey and four large open-plan surface car parks, plus smaller parking spaces. Barrier access is by a swipe card (separate from a university identity card). Users must pay for a permit (whether full-time, temporary or daily). Car parking supply and demand is never constant – while there are hopes for a Metro line, new builds on campus eat up parking spaces. Speaking strictly of security, Ted stresses the need for a co-ordinated approach: good management (here he praises his manager in charge of car park operations, ex-Army man Ian Hilton); lighting; CCTV; security patrols and car park attendants. Fortunately, the university is not part of the city’s much-publicised drug-fuelled gang and gun crime, though the campus is quite near to Moss Side.
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Security can be a selling point in car parking, a look at Derby suggests. Parksafe car park in Bold Lane, a 440-space multi-storey, owned by Derby City Council and run by Ken Wigley of Belper-based Parksafe was featured in our December 1999 issue. Mr Wigley told Professional Security that a second Parksafe in Lancaster opens on October 15. He actually has a farming background. His inventiveness – plus the theft of his car from an airport car park and a lack of interest when he reported the crime – led to Parksafe opening in 1998. No ‘park at your own risk’ signs at Parksafe; Mr Wigley promises to make good any loss from theft and break-in – and he has not had to yet. It has automatic entry and exit gates, individual bay sensors, secure pedestrian entry points, CCTV and panic buttons every 15 metres on the parking decks and in the stair wells. Before a car can enter the car park the driver must take a barcoded ticket from a ‘spitter’ to open the vehicle entry gates. Once inside, the gates close behind you. Every parking bay has a unique number. Drivers must note their bay number which must then be punched into the key pad of the bay activator, on the nearest landing, to activate the bay sensor. On return to the car park the ticket must be ‘swiped’ through a barcode reader by the pedestrian door whereupon it is momentarily unlocked. When the parking fee is paid, via a Secom International pay-on-foot system, the sensor is de-activated and the vehicle may then be driven away. At the exit the ticket is placed in an exit reader which opens the exit gates for you to leave. Use has risen. Previously, the car park was little used at night, for fear of crime; now, restaurant and pub-goers are prepared to pay a premium for security. Ken Wigley adds: ‘There have been many benefits that we had not predicted, for example, cleaning costs have fallen dramatically. As well as eradicating crime it has also stopped vandalism.’ He withdrew from the Secured Car Parks scheme because it does not place any liability on operators to make good losses. ‘I think that motorists are being conned because there is no redress if a vehicle is stolen or broken into whilst in a Secured Car Park.’ At Christmas, motorists who packed Parksafe had first, thanks to the one-way system, to go past other car parks offering free parking. <br>
Not only does security enter the equation where motorists choose to park in a city – if shoppers suffer car crime (or fear it) in one city, they may shop in the next city, or a securer-feeling edge-of-city complex. Derby’s private and municipal car park operators alike are in competition for business. For instance the Cockpit Island multi-storey, owned by property group MEPC, has SOS help buttons, dome cameras monitored from an office on-site, and fixed cameras in vandal-resistant Conway housings covering the lift doors.<br>
Derby City Council’s 96-camera system includes 48 fixed cameras covering the council’s two multi-storey car parks, at the Assembly Rooms and Chapel Street. Pan and tilt cameras in domes cover the council’s surface car parks. All cameras are monitored 24-7 in a control room installed by Quadrant Video Systems. The SITO-trained CCTV operators are from Broadland Guarding. How does CCTV of car parks fit into the overall city centre surveillance’ The council car parks are in a rough circle, inside the ring road. The council encourages people to enter the city by bus or rail; hence a ‘corridor’ of dome cameras protecting roads and walkways from the railway station to the shopping centres. For many years cameras covering the council car parks were monitored on a ‘best endeavour’ basis at the car park supervisor’s office at the bus station. When staff went home, monitoring finished, though recording was constant. Today there are two operators for 16 hours a day and one in the other eight night hours. One operator keeps roughly to the car parks while the other keeps roughly to the streets, though in an incident one will help the other. Police can view tapes in a corner of the control room, which has a telephone link to the police command suite that deals with 999 calls. The council is in the process of putting a video link into the new police station (the old police station was over the road from the Assembly Rooms multi-storey). Sharing of information is indeed important. The effective ShopWatch radio system involves more than 80 stores. City centre police carry a ShopWatch radio too. For the England versus Mexico football friendly at Pride Park Stadium in Derby in May, 25 radios were loaned to publicans and managers. Again, useful intelligence was passed between police, the control room (on the day of the game, police officers were in the council control room) and users on the ground. Police were able to use their resources accordingly, and the event passed without serious trouble. The council is launching this PubWatch scheme shortly with 50 radios.
The city has gained £1.1m in a Home Office CCTV Initiative round two bid, for another 62 cameras, covering around the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary (DRI), the Arboretum Park, and housing areas. Images will be transmitted by fibre-optic cable to the control room, which has space ready to take the extension. A link will go to the DRI, so that the hospital and council CCTV operators can pass images to each other and the police. In February, the council is introducing on-street parking charges, which will mean more parking staff – and more eyes and ears on the street. CCTV already watches car parking attendants who may be vulnerable when handing out tickets and cash-collecting.
