9 September - Profligate Bexley council impoverishes residents to protect their own jobs
The rising tide of opposition to councillor Craske’s greed over the matter of
Controlled Parking Zones (CPZs) and the exorbitant cost of residents’ parking permits
has brought forth comment from blog readers and a few interesting figures gleaned from council
sources. Apparently there are only 3,081 takers for residents’ parking permits in Bexley
and the costs of issuing each one works out at £84 in staff costs and £23 for their
accommodation and other overheads. On top of that ridiculous sum each ticket costs £16 to
print and post. ICT costs, whatever they are, but I assume computers and the like, adds another
(almost) £4 per permit. Then it is said that road marking costs £36,000 a year. Nearly
£12 per permit. It might be interesting to do some arithmetic on that.
If we assume that 3,500 cars have to be accommodated and are allowed a generous
20 feet each then that is just over 13 miles of painted line. If there is more
lining than that it is not really part of the CPZ but part of needing to
cater for normal parking activity, the casual comings and goings of daily life.
Why should residents in CPZs pay for general parking infrastructure when those
who live elsewhere don’t pay directly for any yellow line that may pass their home?
I know the lines close to my home haven’t been repainted in the ten years since
first installation, so if we assume that is the norm, then that’s not much over a mile
of painted line which has to be renewed each year, in fact only 7,000 feet. If that costs
£36,000 to paint, it works out at just over £5 a foot. If the lines are repainted
less frequently the true figure might be eight or even ten pounds per foot. They are joking
aren’t they? Not just about the cost of painting a line but on the fact that every
single permit issued costs £139. The figure may in fact be nearer £150, because
according to the council they spend another £10 per permit on road safety schemes directly
associated with the provision of CPZs. I haven’t a clue what they can be and it seems like
another bit of Bexley figure fiddling to me so I shall exclude it. If I am wrong it makes the
waste even worse.
Some of that is offset by penalty charges but the cost of enforcement is irrelevant. The real
issue is how can a tiny scrap of paper cost that much to issue. You don’t have to
be an accountant and probably don’t need any qualification at all to know that there is
something seriously wrong with that. It is bureaucracy gone totally berserk. Someone should
get in there quick and sort out the inefficiencies that councillor Craske hasn’t
even begun to think about, cocooned as he is from the realities of life by his massive expense account.
A recent report into public sector workers said that on average they spend 68% of their time
farting about doing nothing but even if they were made to work twice as hard the staff costs per
permit issued would only fall to about £50. There must be simply too many of them and too
many fiddles going on with the line painting and printing contracts. Even four pounds a permit
to keep the computer database alive is silly. Bexley council is absolutely bonkers and needs
pulling apart from top to bottom to root out the incompetence, inefficiency and corruption.