It comes after residents claim some wardens are turning a blind eye to certain wrongly-parked vehicles, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter

The perception that Newham Council parking wardens are “corrupt” is “baseless”, a highways boss has said.

Councillors in Newham have said residents often tell them they believe wardens are turning a blind eye to certain wrongly-parked vehicles. But a senior council officer said body-worn camera footage proves this is largely false.

Speaking to a transport scrutiny commission meeting last Wednesday (24th) Labour councillor Rachel Tripp said she often hears from residents “who perceve that there’s some sort of corruption going on with enforcement officers and vehicles”.

She said: “Very, very rarely have I actually got information back that that is happening.

“But something that residents really believe is that certain vehicles persistently are not ticketed because of what they believe are certain arrangements, whereas other vehicles persistently are.”

Councillor Sarah Ruiz, the council’s cabinet member for highways, said she often hears the same complaints.

She said: “I’m forever being told, ‘oh, it’s corrupt. There’s a garage up here, they’re ignored all the time’.

“I think it’s really difficult to prove that and I think it’s a perception but it’s actually quite a real perception.”

Michael Benn, the council’s director of highways, parking and transportation, said that footage from wardens’ body-worn cameras disproves most allegations.

He said: “What it proves again and again is that the majority of corruption allegations are baseless.”

Benn said the cameras are one method the council uses to guard against potential corruption, as they keep a record of all of the warden’s interactions with the public.

He said other measures include rotating wardens’ beats “to minimise the risk of any relationships being built up between businesses”.

He said: “If there are specific allegations we will always investigate that with the officer concerned.

“Most of the time it tends to be a perception rather than a specific allegation.”

Benn also suggested that one reason for the perception of corruption is that some businesses are finding “creative” ways to dodge tickets, such as removing number plates or hiding vehicle registration numbers.

He said: “We have actually got, frankly, a lot of garages who work extremely hard to make it impossible to enforce.

“We’re dealing with some creative individuals, and we need to come up with some creative solutions ourselves.”

Benn said one approach could be to treat vehicles with missing or hidden numbers and registrations as abandoned.

Councillor John Morris, deputy cabinet member for highways, suggested another reason could beause wardens have to concentrate on parking rule-breaking “hotspots”.

He said: “Parking is very much like whack-a-mole. Once you start enforcing a specific area you see a decrease in parking contraventions, but because there’s only set capacity we tend to focus on specific areas.

“That often means that hotspots will get enforced for a certain amount of time and then you have to move that capacity to another hotspot.”

Cllr Ruiz added that in some areas, parking wardens had been attacked. She said in one incident police had to be sent to a street in Custom House.

She said: “We’ve had to bring police in to the end of Freemasons Road. Freemasons Road is hardly a hotspot – well it is now – but when we’ve sent enforcement down they have been attacked.”

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