5-year Parking Policy for Highland drives forward

A 5 year Parking Policy and Guidance for The Highland Council area has been approved by Members of the Council’s Environment, Development and Infrastructure Committee.

The policy, which is required by the local authority to underpin its enforcement of decriminalised parking will cover the period from 2018 – 2023. The policy is published on the Council’s website at www.highland.gov.uk/parking at the following link.

At committee, Councillors were updated on the rollout of decriminalised parking enforcement in the region which began on 3 October 2016. The Council now has enforcement centres in Inverness, Fort William and Portree employing a team of 11 enforcement officers and 1 supervisor who have issued some 16,000 penalty charge notices.

Members were informed that the while the scope of the original introduction of decriminalised parking enforcement was to achieve a cost neutral service within two to three years of implementation, cost neutral status was achieved at the end of the first financial year of 2017/18.

Committee Chair, Cllr Allan Henderson said: “There has been a huge amount of work carried out by the Parking Team to ensure that Traffic Regulation Orders, and all the signs and lines were in place before enforcement could begin and this work is ongoing. Members have welcomed and acknowledged the work done by staff so far and thank them for their efforts.

“We have the assurance that any surplus derived from parking enforcement must be reinvested in the service delivery or transport infrastructure improvements and this is vital as we move forward with our future decriminalised parking enforcement policy and plans for local area parking.”

William Gilfillan, Highland Council’s Director of Community Services added: “Local decisions will be taken at local committees where parking services need to be delivered to meet the outcome of the Parking Redesign that Council agreed earlier this June.”

A further report will come back to the next Environment, Development and Infrastructure Committee on the progress of parking enforcement.