Summary: the Council was not at fault for allowing staff from a nearby school to park on Mr B’s street. But it was at fault for failing to inform residents in advance, for failing to properly record its decision, and for failing to properly respond to Mr B’s complaints. It has agreed to take action to remedy the injustice of Mr B and his neighbours.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I refer to as Mr B, complains that the Council has allowed staff from a nearby school to park on his street, even though the school is in a different parking zone.
2. Mr B says this has increased parking demand, and consequently made it more difficult for him to park. He says he is a pensioner, and sometimes has to carry his shopping from a different street because there is no parking near his house. He says this is causing him anxiety and distress.
3. Mr B says the Council should either stop the school staff parking on his street, or should provide residents with compensatory weekend parking concessions.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
5. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
6. We may investigate matters coming to our attention during an investigation, if we consider that a member of the public who has not complained may have suffered an injustice as a result. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26D and 34E, as amended)
7. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered information from Mr B and the Council. Both parties had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

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What I found

Parking for school staff in the Council’s area

9. In a Cabinet meeting in May 2019, the Council agreed to introduce a new ‘school staff parking permit’, which allowed school staff to park in the controlled parking zone (CPZ) around their place of work.
10. The Council’s website now says:

If you are a teacher or staff in a school within a Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ), you can apply for a School Staff and Teachers Permit to park your vehicle in a Resident’s parking bay in that CPZ.

What happened?

11. There is redevelopment work taking place on the housing estate around the school near Mr B’s house, which has substantially reduced parking capacity in the CPZ around the school.
12. In May 2020, because of this reduced parking capacity, the Council decided to let staff members from the school park in a neighbouring CPZ – the one around
    Mr B’s house. The school was issued with paper parking permits which were to expire in May 2021.
13. Although the Council has since explained its decision, there are no associated documents setting out the process the Council followed at the time.

Mr B’s complaints

14. Mr B made five complaints about the school staff parking in the CPZ around his house, and the Council responded to all five: in December 2020 (twice) and May 2021 (three times).
15. The Council gave the following explanations for the parking situation (separated by complaint):

December 2020

• Members of staff use their own school staff parking permits, which were agreed by Cabinet and therefore outside the scope of the complaints procedure.
• School staff use ‘key worker parking permits’, which expire in February 2021. After this a car park will be built for staff, and until then they will have to pay for parking.

May 2021

• School staff parking permits have been given to all schools across the borough, so it would not be fair to withdraw them from this one school – but staff have been reminded to park correctly, and the regularity of enforcement patrols has been increased.
• Members of school staff who live in the borough can park anywhere in the borough, but staff who live outside the borough must park in the CPZ around their school. Permits cannot be withdrawn because they were sanctioned by Cabinet.
• Because of a technical issue arising while a new parking system is introduced, anyone who lives in the borough can park anywhere else in the borough, using visitor permits. This should hopefully be sorted out by the end of June 2021.

Renewal of permits

16. In March 2021 the school asked the Council to renew the permits. This matter was referred to the Council’s ‘Parking and Environmental Design’ (PED) team.
17. An officer from the PED team raised concerns that the CPZ around Mr B’s house did not have the capacity for the school staff to park in it – many residents would still be working at home and there had already been complaints about staff parking there. The Council suggested to the school that staff use a nearby multi-storey car park.
18. In May 2021 the school contacted the Council again and provided photographs taken of three local roads which, it claimed, show parking availability even when all the staff were in school (albeit the photographs showed five available spaces in total across the three roads). The officer receiving the photographs referred them to a Director for a decision.
19. The following day, the Council’s parking enforcement manager emailed information to the Director which was not supportive of the school’s request. He said:
• Residents in the CPZ around Mr B’s house had complained about parking availability.
• The Council’s new online permits system was now in place, which meant it would no longer be possible to manually modify the zone school staff were allowed to park in.
• There was sufficient parking capacity in the CPZ around the school, and a multi-storey car park only 200 metres away.
20. The school, which had been copied into the parking manager’s email, responded by saying there was no parking capacity in the CPZ around the school because of building work, and the multi-storey car park was a 15-minute walk away.
21. The Director considered the above, and decided to extend the eligibility of staff at the school to park in the CPZ around Mr B’s house until a permanent solution was found. This extension is in place until May 2022.
22. The Council says the school is building a car park which should be completed in February 2022 – at which point parking availability should improve for Mr B and his neighbours.

My findings

23. I have found no reason to criticise the Council’s decision to allow school staff to park in the CPZ around Mr B’s house. There is no statutory reason why it could not do so, and its explanation does not appear unreasonable.
24. I have also found no fault with the process the Council followed when extending the school staff permits in May 2021. It considered alternative options, and parking availability, before making the decision. As there was no substantive change to the CPZ around Mr B’s house and no changes to the restrictions placed on existing permit-holders, it does not appear that there was any need for the Council to follow the formal process of amending the Traffic Regulation Order.
25. However, there were certain things the Council did – or failed to do – with which I have found fault.
26. Firstly, although the Council properly considered its 2021 decision to extend the school staff permits, there are no documents to support its original, 2020 decision. Although it has explained and justified the decision since, I cannot say I am satisfied with the process of how the decision was made.
27. Secondly, although there was no statutory consultation or notification required when the Council decided to allow the school staff to park in the CPZ around
    Mr B’s house, it would have been reasonable to expect the Council to tell the existing permit-holders that parking demand would be temporarily increased (and availability reduced), to explain why, and to provide an estimate of how long this would be for. It did not do so.
28. Finally, the Council responded to Mr B’s complaints about this matter five times, and gave a different explanation on each occasion. None of these were the explanation it has since given for why the school staff were parking on Mr B’s street. This means the complaint responses were not informative enough to be satisfactory.

Injustice

29. Mr B experienced an injustice from the Council’s lack of communication prior to deciding school staff could park on his street. This injustice extends to the other permit-holders of the CPZ around his house, all of whom did not know about the likely reduction in parking availability beforehand.
30. However, even if the Council had told everyone about its plans in advance, I see no reason to conclude that the plans would not have gone ahead anyway (given that the Council did not change its decision after Mr B’s complaints). So, although Mr B’s parking difficulties are likely to be partly an unfortunate result of the Council’s decision, I have found no fault with the decision itself and so there is no remedy required.
31. Although the Council is at fault for failing to show the process it followed in 2020, it has since provided a satisfactory explanation, and this caused no personal injustice to Mr B. This appears to be an issue with record-keeping.
32. Mr B did, however, experience a further injustice from the inconsistency in the Council’s complaint responses. None of them adequately explained the situation, which meant he had to go to the time and trouble of making further complaints.

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Agreed actions

33. The Council has agreed to apologise to Mr B for its failure to notify him about the likely reduction in parking availability on his street, and for its failure to properly answer his complaints.
34. The Council has agreed to make a payment of £150 to Mr B to acknowledge that, because of its failure to properly answer his complaints, he had to go to the time and trouble of making further complaints.
35. The Council has agreed to write to all permit-holders in the CPZ around Mr B’s house and inform them of the current school staff parking arrangement, the likely impact on parking availability, and how long it will be before parking returns to normal.
36. The Council has agreed to complete these actions within six weeks of the date of this decision.
37. Within three months of this decision, the Council has agreed to review the system it uses to record decision-making in its parking department, and has agreed to write to us to set out how, in future, it will ensure decisions are properly recorded.

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Final decision

38. The Council was not at fault for allowing staff from a nearby school to park on
    Mr B’s street. But it was at fault for failing to inform residents in advance, for failing to properly record its decision, and for failing to properly respond to Mr B’s complaints. The agreed actions remedy the injustice of Mr B and his neighbours.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman