Taxi Driver Online

Taxi boss speaks out over ‘over-zealous’ parking warden

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/n ... ng-warden/


Image: Lancashire Telegraph

A TAXI boss has spoken out over an ‘over-zealous’ parking warden who he says is targeting his drivers.

Darwen-based Response Taxis manager Nadeem Nisar said his business had been affected by ‘tactics’ used by the warden.

However, Blackburn with Darwen Council said it would not stand for any ‘hostility’ towards its civil enforcement officers and said matters had been reported to the police.

The council also said it had no agreement with any taxi firm to use the Atlas Road car park, which the firm uses, for free.

Mr Nisar said: “We have been based on the car park opposite the train station for over 20 years. A few years ago the car park outside our office became a pay and display car park.

“We were never bothered by anyone regarding parking, as our drivers use the washroom facilities here and we have a lot of pick-ups from base jobs.

“Over the last few weeks there is a new female traffic warden who is victimising our drivers and issues parking tickets while our drivers are picking up customers outside base.”

Mr Nisar claims: “She parks around a corner and waits for us and issues a parking ticket.

“We have had eight tickets, and seven of those were rescinded as we appealed.”

Several traveller caravans are in the car park too.

Mr Nisar said: “We strongly feel a little bit of common sense should prevail especially when our office is on this car park that we should not get booked for picking up customers.

“We transit vulnerable customers and key workers in these troubling times.

“Already during lockdown things have been difficult for small businesses like ours and to have to deal with this extra stress causing huge issues for our drivers.”

A council spokesperson said: “We are aware of incidents at this site involving hostility towards our civil enforcement officers, which has been reported to the police. Atlas Road is a council-owned car park and anyone who chooses to park on this site does so on the understanding that they must pay and display.

"The council has no agreement with any taxi firm to use the facility for free. If someone is parked for longer than five minutes without paying and displaying then they are doing so against the regulations and can be ticketed according to the law.”

Mr Nisar refuted any allegations of hostility from any of his staff.

Two sides to every story, obviously, but on the one hand he's saying they're just using the car park for pick-ups, yet says drivers also using 'washroom facilities', so I'd guess they're actually routinely parked for more than five minutes.

And I doubt if the council would involve the police unless there was a genuine level of hostility from his staff, but then again seven of the eight tickets have been rescinded?


Bad move to mention that the new warden is female - as if that makes a difference, and it just creates a stick for people to beat you with.

But if he did want to make it clear that it's a woman, he could have left out the word 'female', and the word 'she' in the second paragraph would have done the job for him. In fact I suspect some would take issue even with the word 'she', but he might just have gotten away with it

By the way, that's a driver in the photo with Mr Nisar, not the traffic warden

you can tell she looks like she's eaten one too many kebabs

I assume from the lack of social distancing they are a couple

I suspect there may be an element of an old fashioned attitude to women in this which is typical of certain ethnicities. perhaps a few badly chosen words used on an early encounter with the warden

_________________
lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Wish Lincoln had a few wardens who actually did their job like this lady...

_________________
Former taxi driver

They are under orders to not appear to Target any particular area including taxi ranks ours are the same as yours and they rotate them regularly so as soon as you get to know one they've disappeared and another one has taken their place

_________________
lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Not sure why I bothered now, but I took these screengrabs yesterday to illustrate the problem

First impression is that it's actually quite leafy in the area, and not as suggested by the photo at top of thread. But you can just see the twigs of the trees at the edge of the earlier photo, and there won't be leaves on the trees at the moment.

Anyway, cab office on the right, and you can see immediately that there's not much space, so you can just imagine the parking issues. I assumed that's the disputed car park on the left, but in fact it's a private car park, so presumably the cabs won't be using that at all.




This from up the road a wee bit shows the office, the private car park, and the council car park opposite. Also obvious from this photo that there's a ton of double yellows in immediate vicinity.




This shows most of the council car park. If this is anything like the norm then the firm's cars certainly wouldn't be doing anyone out of a parking space, but if the council want to make it a pay and display car park then I suppose them's the rules

Initially I read the article as saying that the firm was using the council car park on the other side of the road for base pick-ups, but obviously that doesn't really make sense in practical terms, since punters would have to cross the road from the office, then walk through the bushes and fence, or have to walk a good bit to go into one of the designated entrances to the car park.

So they'll be picking up nearer to the office, very probably on the double yellows a lot of the time. Of course, that's not necessarily illegal, but maybe that's what the warden was issuing the tickets for, and why seven out of eight of them have been rescinded.

So the office cars using the council car park so they can use the office's 'washroom facilities' etc is obviously a separate issue, and obviously officialdom has been turning a blind eye to this, but not any more, it would seem.

Of course, you could question why the firm have been allowed to use the car park area effectively for free parking for some time, but officialdom has now changed its mind (but turning a blind eye to Travellers pitched up there), but there seems little doubt that in strict legal terms the council is within its rights here.

What I think confused me initially is when the office proprietor said: “We strongly feel a little bit of common sense should prevail especially when our office is on this car park that we should not get booked for picking up customers."

But the office isn't *on* the car park as far as I can see, and I very much doubt the cars are using the car park for 'picking up customers', as the sentence above seems to suggest. Suspect he's just trying to confuse the two issues to deflect from the firm's use of the car park for free long-term parking.

Fascinating thread this, though