14 April (Part 1) - Hall Place and Danson Park under attack by Bexley council?
It looks like it.
Councils across the country have been considering the use of Automatic Number
Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras which can time you in and out of a car park and
levy penalty charges on those who overstay their allotted time by a few seconds.
Supermarkets use the system apparently prepared to see their reputations trashed
by those caught and eager to pass on their stories.
The Under Secretary of State at the Department of Transport, Robert Goodwill, wrote to all
councils last September to warn them in a
strongly worded letter that to go down the ANPR route using private
companies in council owned car parks would not in his
opinion be legal. Saturday’s blog summarised the position.
To be sure that no council was under the illusion they could ignore the Under Secretary,
his department followed up with another letter four months later.
As usual, click the extract to see it all (33KB PDF).
Bexley council went ahead anyway, they placed
an
advertisement on the London Tenders website.
It provided a link to the following document.
My guess is that the reference to two busy open spaces means that Hall Place and
Danson Park are to be subjected to ANPR whether it is legal or not. Maybe the
council has plans to hand over ownership of those two parks to a cowboy parking
company. Giving them away would perversely make their proposals legal.
Life under Bexley’s Conservative council gets worse by the day.