28 December - Pit Bull @Tony unleashed. Parking is barking
I see no need to comment on this one from @tonyofsidcup except that it came with an answer to
yesterday’s question on which Labour Councillor threatens a
resident with reporting him to the Police for asking one simple question. I think I
should urgently give Mayor Andy Dourmoush a call to warn him that he might be biting off more than he would want to chew
while attempting to control a Full Council meeting.
One other thing perhaps; making an online bad parking report while out and about with only a smart phone
is simply not worth the effort. I have done it twice and never again.
4. Last Call
As much as Teresa O’Neill and Co. would like to present yours truly as a scandalist who harasses
council staff with frivolous, repeated, distressing queries, this image is not close to reality. Repeated
queries are actually disallowed by the FOI Act - if you ask a question, you cannot ask the same or
essentially the same question again for 6 months. “Frivolous” is a subjective assessment, to use
Cabinet Member Diment’s expression.
(I once complained to Sidcup Ward councillors about a “dangerous” unleashed pit bull walking on
Sidcup High Street - alongside my then-two-year-old - and asked them to
lobby for a dog-control “Public Space Protection Order” similar to Bromley’s. Richard helpfully
advised that “dangerous” was a subjective assessment. Then, a year later, another Sidcup Ward councillor,
Cllr Bacon, denied my request to briefly speak at a committee meeting discussing a proposed PSPO -
targeting dog walkers, but not unleashed beasts roaming the high street. But I digress).
Finally, there is little emotion involved, at least on my part. Once I submit a FOI request, I set a
reminder for 20 business days later. If there is no response by the deadline, I complain to the
Information Commissioner’s Office and let them deal with Bexley. If the response is unsatisfactory, I
explain the “gap” in a request for “internal review”, and set a reminder for 40 business days. If the
final response is unsatisfactory as well, I complain to the ICO. There is never a need to argue with
council staff - certainly not with the helpful FOI manager, who depends on other teams for a timely FOI response. (†)
I think I can recall only one FOI response that annoyed me, and it came from the Parking team,
shared by Bexley and Bromley. The occasion was the 2023 cuts to Bexley’s parking enforcement. I live
near Sidcup High Street and can tell you that pavement parking is a problem here. Until about a year
ago, one could dial 020 8301 6317, select option 3, be connected to an operator, and tell him the
location and the details of the rogue vehicle. This was convenient and quick, unlike the cumbersome
- 10 screens! - online form also provided by Bexley, and it was available at seemingly all hours.
Until one day, there was no operator, and a recorded message told me to go online. At some point, a
new parking-warden phone line emerged, as an extra option of an existing
council number, 020 3045 3000. Well, kind of: since directions on the Bexley web site were not
updated, nobody knew about the new phone line. When that problem was resolved - weeks later - it turned
out that the new phone line was only available during business hours. Evening and weekend service? Only online.
“Why cut a service that must make money for the council?” I wondered. “Surely, the online form is
much less convenient than the phone line, and the volume of parking-warden
call-outs fell, along with FPN revenue? Why would the council anger residents *and* lose money?” I
made a FOI request with four questions:
1. When did the ‘old’ parking-warden phone line (020 8301 6317) cease operation?
2. When did the ‘new’ parking-warden phone line (020 3045 3000, option 4) begin operation?
3. How many employees (or FTE equivalents) were employed on the "old" line, and on the "new" line?
4. What were the hours of operation of the "old" line, and what are they for the "new" line?
What Parking did in their response is play dumb and pretend that my question referred to
020 8301 6317, not 020 8301 6317, Option 3.
020 8301 6317 is still in service - to report faulty
pay-and-display machines and to pay for parking using Ringo - so what “cease operation” are you
talking about? Nothing has changed but the phone number!
“I am talking about the old parking-warden phone line accessed via
020 8301 6317”, I explained in my internal-review request. “Not about other services available through the same number”. The
council’s final response was dismissive and information-free, so I escalated to the Information
Commissioner. Surprisingly, the ICO caseworker considering the case did not pick up on the “020
8301 6317 vs 020 8301 6317, Option 3” distinction, and my complaint was rejected. Once again, the
case went to the first-tier tribunal and will be decided by a judge in 2024.
This was not the only odd FOI response provided by Parking, with regard to the same issue of the
parking-enforcement cut. A query about why the council cut parking enforcement was put forward
to Cllr Diment, the new Cabinet Member for Places, as a “public question” at a council meeting. Cllr
Diment praised the online option, and claimed that FPN revenue did not fall following the change. I
duly made a FOI request, asking for weekly totals of issued FPNs. The Parking department told me
that only annual (!) numbers were available. I let it go. FOI requests are great, but there’s little you
can do when a council officer chooses to deceive, and Bexley’s Parking Manager definitely gave me that impression.
† I can confirm that when requesting that BiB reports on his FOI requests, @tony asks that it
does not imply criticism of the FOI Officer.