Frontline Officer Welfare

We welcome the better legal protection which came into force in April 2022 and continue to campaign for there to be respect for people delivering parking services and a reduction in abuse and malicious behaviour toward front-line parking professionals.

Without parking wardens (known legally as Civil Enforcement Officers) in our communities it has been proven* (Aberystwyth and other case studies) that they would descend into chaos, with inconsiderate and dangerous parking behaviour going unchecked.  However, parking enforcement remains a contentious matter, which frequently leads to CEOs suffering verbal and physical abuse in the UK on a daily basis.  A simple internet search for ‘parking attendant attack’ returns a shocking number of local and national news stories reporting violent and unprovoked assaults on people simply doing their job.

Research evidence

Our local government parking managers survey [1] revealed:

• 84% reported verbal abuse once per month or more
• 20% reported physical abuse once per month or more
• 57% reported encountering difficulties in recruiting and/or retaining CEOs
• Verbal abuse was evenly experienced across the UK
• Physical assaults were more common against CEOs in Northern England
• 7/10 assaults are not pursued by the police

We used this evidence to call on government give better protection in law for CEOs that was comparable to assaults on emergency workers.

This research revealed that the extent of the problem reveals it is widespread. For less serious physical and verbal attacks the number is likely to be much higher than our research shows, as we know that some CEOs do not report all incidents on the basis that they believe little or nothing will be done about it.  Even low level verbal abuse is a serious concern when it is happens regularly. in terms of impact on an individual’s mental health and wellbeing.  Verbal abuse is frequently quite personal and hateful in nature, wishing harm to either the CEO or their families.

Experience tells us that physical attacks are often unprovoked and happen very suddenly, in several reported cases the attacker had not been issued with a PCN at the time of the assault.  Given the environment, attacks have involved the use of vehicles being driven at officers with several suffering serious injury.  With many of our local authority members discussing the merits of issuing stab vests to officers we believe that now is the time to do more to protect this group of workers and try to prevent the first death of a CEO in the line of duty.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022
We welcomed the new legislation brought in that gives this better protection.  On 22 April 2022 the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act received Royal Ascent which made an aggravated offence to assault someone who is performing a public duty or providing a service to the public. This applies to a whole range of public-facing workers including civil enforcement officers.  The late amendment in the passage of the Bill is contained in Section 156: those providing a public service etc [2]. The provision places in statute an aggravating factor to be applied by the courts in cases of assault where an offence is committed against such workers. Section 154 amends the Sentencing Act 2020 to insert new section 68A. A new section 68A(1) provides that the aggravating factor applies where the court is considering the seriousness of the assault.

Positive Parking Agenda
We also call for government to support the Positive Parking Agenda which aims to stop the negative narrative around parking management and to positively promote the benefits it brings to communities.  We firmly believe that current narratives about parking, promoted by government and the media, serve to fuel the issue of CEO abuse as they are the accessible part of an operation which is generally presented in a negative light.

 “This attitude and approach to a valuable and much-needed service is at best unhelpful and at worst could be behind the levels of aggression and abuse that parking attendants face every working day. That is shameful and largely goes unnoticed, and I feel very strongly about it”.

Baroness Thornhill

Extract from Hansard 18 January 2019 Volume 795

[1] BPA Parking Managers Survey 2018 (120 respondents) available from consultations@britishparking.co.uk

[2] Home Office Circular 005/2022: Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, see section 156