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Public Affairs & Research Team report - February 2016 The purpose of this report is to provide a status update on the activities of the Public Affairs & Research Team. Data and information is gathered from a variety of sources and is accurate on the date collated. For a more up-to-date view of any specific element of this report please speak to a member of the team or email Dave Smith

Executive Summary

85% of members consider work by the Public Affairs Team to be a key membership benefit

Futures project continues with Parking 20:20 following group meeting

Parking Summit date confirmed and working group meets

Parking predictions revealed in Monday Musing

Email subscription management form now included on all BPA and AOS ezines

Sector Knowledge Project Group formed

Media monitoring and activity The Vocus/Cision media monitoring service delivers tailored news alerts from a broad range of sources, and a comprehensive insight into all parking related media activity, together with analytics and reports of current trends and audience reach. All news clips are downloaded daily for future reference. An accurate and up to date list of media contacts is part of the service and is essential to ensuring the BPA receives optimum coverage for its media output. The service provides over up to 200 alerts daily which directly mention BPA, our members, parking specific topics and other relevant areas of interest. Opportunities for proactive media engagement are sought regularly and we also monitor three Twitter accounts, a variety of Blogs and Forums and LinkedIn for further engagement opportunities.

Online and print mentions In total there were 18 BPA mentions, 15 newspaper and 3 broadcast. There were 373 articles about parking in February, 440 less than January. The most written about topic was parking charges, followed by penalties and free parking.

Media Where/who Subject

National

Scottish Daily Mail Print Menace of the parking pirates

Scottish Daily Mail (twice) Print How to fight the car park cowboys

Daily Telegraph Print Contactless vending machines ‘a death knell for cash’

The Herald Print More car owners facing court action over parking charges

Press & Journal Print Debt collectors poised to swoop over parking charges

The Courier Print Car park operators refuse to apologise over Blue Badge row

The Post Print Nine car parks win awards

Burton Mail Online Burton shopping car park in safety award

West Bridgford Wire Online Nottingham’s park and ride sites win safety award

Midweek Mercury Online Council car parks given safety award

BBC York Radio Technology and payments in parking

Education Business Feature Taking a look at the future of parking

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Media Charts – BPA mentions

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Parking in the media The majority of BPA mentions were in Scotland. Smart Parking has been in the spotlight for some time as motorists had difficulties with the machines at Kinnoull car park and February’s Blue Badge row features Smart Parking again. The pensioner admits that he did not display his Blue Badge but goes on to complain that Asda’s parking policy is discriminatory. Elsewhere in Scotland, the focus is on debt collection following a press release issued by Citizens Advice Scotland. Park Mark has had a good month with 5 mentions in February. This has significantly raised its online profile – see social media below.

Press releases 1 February - BPA partner with JMW Solicitors LLP to launch legal advice service for members

PR & publicity

We continue to publicise our lobbying strategy for private parking which details proposals to establish a single standard setting body (SSB) with an independent scrutiny board which will deliver a single code of practice and a single independent appeals service for consumers. A double sided document entitled Better Regulation of the Private Parking Sector has been supported with communication to members, stakeholders and the media. Letters have also been sent to each of the Transport Ministers for the UK and its devolved nations, enclosing the strategy. Other publicity includes a social media campaign with posts on LinkedIn and Twitter and blog posts and the strategy is included in current Master Plans. We have also developed a strategy for private parking in Scotland and this has been promoted on behalf of Parking Scotland to all MSPs and more widely online including Twitter.

Political and media monitoring Political monitoring by Vuelio and media monitoring by Cision are both working well, allowing staff to receive specific and relevant information. This also reduces the time required for filtering emails from the media in-box. Notable actions from political monitoring this month:

Kirsten Oswald launched an Early Day Motion on Citizens Advice networks and assistance with private parking charges in Scotland. Which also covers the role of DVLA in providing keeper details and the increase in details being requested. A letter will be sent from Patrick to Ms Oswald and all of the MPs that sign thereafter

PR and Public Affairs Brainstorms 2015/16 saw a series of brainstorms held with PR Office and Insight focusing on key issues at a strategic level that will assist in offering guidance and advice for future PR and PA activity. A third and final session in the form of a workshop took place in December to further explore the Communications Strategy and develop key messages and tactics for the 2016-17 Action Plan. In approving the Action Plan at its meeting on 20 January, the Public Affairs Board recommended the Operational Services Board to consider at least matching the financial contribution for AOS PR activity in 2015/16 for 2016/17. However it was keen to stress that as an extension to the Action Plan, an activity plan should be created and agreed to clearly show how money would be spent to achieve value for money.

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Social Media – BPA Twitter There are 1,957 followers to the main @BritishParking account, an increase of 75 this month. On average the account receives in excess of 2,500 views per month. Notable new followers this month include Oneworld, a Smart Solutions teams working on Smart parking, Smart buildings, homes & neighbourhoods; TAPCO, traffic & parking control manufacturer; Skyline Parking UK a manufacturer of automated parking systems. Recent tweets

Our top tweet earned 787 impressions and 35 engagements:

The finalists for the #BritishParkingAwards have been announced - take a look the nominations on

http://www.britishparkingawards.co.uk/2016/finalists.php …

Another top tweet earned 1,171 impressions and 17 engagements:

Lawline is live! BPA has partnered with @jmwsolicitors to provide a legal advice service for members

http://bit.ly/1PmK1Xh

Overall our activity has decreased slightly this month compared with January, this is in part due to having no large events (like the Members’ Dinner). We have however had many conversations and interactions with the public asking questions through this medium and increasingly we are seeing Twitter being used a customer service tool.

We are currently categorising our followers to better tailor our messages on Twitter.

Facebook The BPA’s Facebook page has received 208 likes. The page receives a steady stream of visits, this month obtaining on average 4 views a day. The average reach of our posts has been 95 per week this month and on average 6 profiles engaged with our posts and profiles. We have received a few comments on our posts, although less than last month. As shown on the graph below the majority of referrals to the Facebook page come from our website. Our best posts:

Receiving a reach of 93: It's #ValentinesDay and it's no secret that we love parkinghttp://ow.ly/XFUOf

Receiving a reach of 75: #FridayFact Parkopedia estimate there are 17,000 - 20,000 nonresidential car parks in

Great Britain, providing 3 - 4 million spaces

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LinkedIn The BPA’s LinkedIn page is an underutilised resource. It has recently been updated and we have recently been posting about the British Parking Awards on the page. “British Parking Association The finalists for the #BritishParkingAwards have been announced - take a look the nominations on https://lnkd.in/d67CTAp” This post received:

600 impressions

20 clicks

6 interactions

4.33% engagement The BPA Parking Discussion Group has 967 members, 18 new members this month. We post the blog every Monday and have recently been posting interesting news items. There have been 11 other posts by members of the group this month. Professional Associations Research Network (PARN) Following completion of a survey and interview with the Professional Associations Research Network (PARN) on the subject of social media, Dave spoke at their conferences in November delivering a presentation entitled ‘Navigating the Seven Cs of Social Media for Professional Associations’. You can view the slides here.

Blog The BPA website blog has proved successful in generating page views and links to the site with on average 100 views

per post. We have enabled comments on our blogs following the website update, after receiving many comments at

first they have significantly slowed down with their being none on the recent posts.

Recent posts include:

Monday Musing: Parking Predictions for 2016, in which we asked some parking and transport professionals for their parking predictions for 2016 and beyond.

Monday Musing: Sharing is Caring, this blog explored the recent report on ‘Devolution as a Policy Laboratory’ by the Institute for Government which found that there is a significant lack of public consultation and engagement at all stages in the devolution process. We explored the importance of sharing in parking.

Monday Musing: Where does all the money go?, which explored local authority income from parking

Monday Musing: Parking in Northern Ireland, in which we explained the current situation with the management of parking in Northern Ireland

We would like to further promote guest blogging and hope to attract more members to submit blogs. This was encouraged in the blog Monday Musing: Can technology enhance the user experience? and the summing up of 2015 blog Monday Musing: round-up of the year.

Published articles

Highways Magazine - Research points to smarter way forwards for mobility and the future of parking (Dave)

CCR – Public Sector - The Long and Winding Road to Parking Laws (Patrick)

Health Business - Welcome to the healthcare parking revolution (Nick)

Enforcement News - Single Standards Body can deliver real parking reform (Patrick)

Government Business - Are we falling down in maintaining Britain’s car parks? (Kelvin)

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Education Business – Looking into the future of parking (Dave)

Future articles have been secured with Transport and Logistics Magazine, Highways Magazine, Enforcement News

and Facilities Management UK for March and April.

Parking News

The February edition can be found here. This is the first issue edited by Rob Coston who replaced outgoing Editor

Chris Gilson. This issue includes a cashless payment update, regular articles by Kelvin, Dave and Katy and an

infographic which summaries the results of the recent membership engagement survey. One interesting and

enjoyable stat for the team was the fact that ‘85% of members considered work by the Public Affairs and Research

Team to be a key membership benefit.’ Great to hear, now we just need to convince the other 15%!

PR & publicity campaigns - Know Your Parking Rights (KYPR) The campaign aims to help motorists by providing a comprehensive and trusted resource so they can better understand parking restrictions as well as clear advice about what do to do if receiving a parking ticket, signs to look out for and other useful facts about the appeals processes available, helping them to save time and money. The website can be found at www.knowyourparkingrights.org. The KYPR site now ranks highly in Google and awareness is rising. Over 28K people have visited the site since its launch in November 2014 and over 70K pages have been viewed. The site has recently been updated to reflect the Beavis Court ruling and changes in legislation with the addition of some FAQs. Members are encouraged to publicise the website using the logo. Of the top 10 referring sites, 4 are local authority members and 5 private parking operator members. Over 13K referrals have been via the BPA website with Smart Paring and ParkingEye the next biggest referrers. Feedback on content is also encouraged and should be sent to media@britishparking.co.uk

PR and publicity for the Safer Parking Scheme and Park Mark Twitter There are 925 followers on @Safer_Parking, this is an increase of 49 this month, a huge increase on previous months. There were 25 new followers in one day, which is our average monthly figure. On average the profile has received 725 visits and 20 mentions, an increase on last month.

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Recent and notable tweets Top tweet which received 595 impressions and 6 engagements:

#DidYouKnow @Gatwick_Airport has an Approved Operator scheme for #MeetAndGreet #parking read

about it here http://bit.ly/1UXyxd6

Another top tweet received 566 impressions and 11 engagements:

Search for safer, cleaner, brighter car parks with #ParkMark http://www.parkmark.co.uk #TravelTuesday

Facebook The Safer Parking Scheme-Park Mark Facebook page has received 66 likes. On average the profile this month has received:

2 visits per day

25 weekly reach on our posts

2 engaged profiles taking action on our page and posts

Our best posts this month: Receiving a reach of 26: What is #ParkMark? Cleaner, brighter, safer car parks. Find them here: www.parkmark.co.uk

Receiving a reach of 20: #halftermideas 35 tourist attractions have safer parking with the #ParkMarkaward. Search http://parkmark.co.uk

Park Mark website New visitors to the website in February were up on January by 261 despite it being a shorter month – total 2,260. New visitor numbers of over 100 in a day occurred on a record five times in February.

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There were 44 views of the video during February (34 in January), the majority of views (36) via the Park Mark website. Referrals to the site were up on January at 1,022, there were 948 organic searches, 553 people went directly to the site but only 21 visits via social media.

Focus Groups The following stakeholder meetings have been arranged by the Public Affairs Team to examine specific member issues involving key stakeholders.

DVLA Focus Group took place 4th November 2015 – exploring subsuming into LASIG as with TEC

CCTV Focus Group took place on October 14th. No further meetings planned

Coins and Notes Group took place on 23rd October. Possibility of convening a Payments Group in 2016.

TEC Focus Group took place 30th October. TEC attended LASIG on July 15th and the plan is to include a regular agenda item for TEC to update members in the future

Best Practice in Civil Parking Enforcement Group – took place on 17th December, Gloucestershire CC. Meeting to discuss transparency in reporting being arranged. A one off meeting to explore issues around parking collection data and transparency took place on January 14th at Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. PAB were updated and an Action Plan will be presented at the next PAB in April

Future of Parking and Intelligent Mobility Group – the group met on February 12th at Westminster City Council. See detailed section in Projects

Consultations We are responding to the following consultations:

Department for Transport: Revising statutory guidance

Civil Aviation Authority: Surface Access to Airports We have responded to the following consultations:

Healthcare Travel costs Scheme (Wales)

Department of Health Transport management and car parking - Identifying best practise in NHS car parks

Welsh Transport Plan 2015

DfT Rail penalty fares changes to appeals process

DCLG Discussion paper on Parking reform: tackling unfair practices

HM Treasury: Budget July 2015

Scottish Government: Primary Authority Partnerships Relating to Devolved Regulatory Responsibilities of Local Authorities

MoJ twelve month review of Taking Control of Goods Act

Protecting Community Assets in Wales

NI Assembly: Justice No2 Bill - Future Amendments

APPG for Reform, Decentralisation and Devolution in the UK: Better Devolution for the Whole UK

Transport Committee: Road Traffic Law Enforcement

Department of Transport: Revised Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD) 2016

BRDO: Primary Authority Extension

Department for Transport’s consultation on Motoring Services Strategy Consultation

HM Treasury: Budget 2016

APPG for Smart Cities: Government Digital Strategy

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Department for Transport: Simplifying the Civil Enforcement of Parking Contraventions (Guidelines on Levels of Charges) (England) Order 2007

Welsh Government: Blue Badge Scheme in Wales

BRDO: Supporting regulators to innovate

Stakeholder engagement - Notable meetings 5/2 – Phillip Dunkley, DCLG – (PT/KR) 9/2 – LGA, Enforcement Working Group (PT) 9/2 - Bob Youakim, Passport (PT) 11/2 – DfT (PT) Regular meetings are planned and diarised with the following Government Departments and or Agencies: ICO, DCLG, DfT BIS, DVLA, National Trading Standards Board (NTSB): to develop protocols for consistency in Trading Standards interaction with AOS. Other groups and Forums attended ion a regular basis

Payments UK – follow up to Coin Forum but to cover wider Payments Industry interest.

CAB and All-Party Parliamentary Group on Debt & Personal Finance

Better Regulation Delivery Office – Business Reference Panel

Blue Badge Improvement Service – Executive Management Group

Bank of England Polymer Banknotes Industry Forum

Royal Mint Industry Readiness Working Group

Smart Cities APPG

ITS-UK – Transport Technology Forum – involving DfT, BIS, Catapults, Innovate UK

Party Conferences The BPA once again took part in the autumn 2015 political party conferences during September and October, as part of the Transport Hub organised by the Freight Transport Association (FTA). The theme was ‘How can technology make it easier for us to park our vehicles?’ Transport Hub members decided not to attend the SNP conference this year but feedback suggests this would be good event to attend in some capacity by sending representatives in 2016. A wash-up meeting hosted by the FTA and attended by all members took place on January 14th. Since then, FTA have decided not to continue with the Transport Hub and the BPA have also confirmed their withdrawal. We are now exploring other options and possibilities to engage with party conferences in a meaningful way.

Parking Forum The Forum met last on 3rd November at the House of Commons with a theme of parking availability and accessibility and a focus on Healthcare parking. Daniel Zeichner MP was in attendance as well as Kate Maisey, Car Park Operations Manager with Tesco. Tesco have 2000 car parks and a follow up meeting has taken place to explore Park Mark awards for Tesco car parks. A number of NHS Trusts alas attended part of the Forum as well as the launch of PiPA, which took also took place at the House of Commons, hosted by Nic Dakin MP. The next Forum will meet on March 30th at Imperial College London. The May meeting is replaced by the Parking Summit. The Forum will then resume in August. Parking Summit

Following the announcement of the judgment in the Beavis vs Parking Eye case by the Supreme Court in November and to coincide with the expected announcement by Government regarding legislative changes affecting parking on

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private land, the BPA is leading in organising a Parking Summit to be held on 11 May and attended by DCLG Minister Marcus Jones, bringing together all interested parties including Mr Beavis, motorists, operators and landowners for a constructive and positive discussion. The purpose of the Summit will be to achieve a better understanding by all parties of how even the present arrangements, which few fully understand, can be improved in the interests of everyone. A formal invitation confirming the date has now been sent to those on the final list asking for confirmation of invitee’s willingness to attend. Representatives from the media will also be invited to attend and a publicity campaign will be designed to promote the Summit, communicate outcomes and follow-up activity. A working group including invited members of CoR has been created to oversee the management of the Summit including developing the agenda. The group first met on 19 February at London Councils to discuss the agenda and schedule for the day. The Public Affairs and Research Team have explored the provision of a live stream of the event for members of the BPA and AOS to view on the day and after the event, however due to budget this is not feasible. There will be an audio record to capture the proceedings of the day’s event. Detailed notes will also be produced.

Master Plans The annual process for reviewing, consulting, designing and refining each new Master Plan has become a major undertaking. PAB has discussed the issue of who should launch the Plans, and following referral to CoR, consensus is that Plans should be issued every 5 years (in England and Northern Ireland) to coincide with mid-term political terms with a lobbying strategy issued during election periods. It was felt that his would allow for a better, longer consultation with members. Separate ‘blueprints’ would be developed for Scotland and Wales as they have different political cycles. In addition, there would be an annual topic/theme which could be carried over into the following year if required. The name ‘blueprint’ has been settled on as manifesto had political connotations. Therefore, a new Blueprint for Parking will next be issued in 2017 (mid political term) and then a lobbying strategy in 2019 in readiness for the next election.

Member engagement

Email Communications An email subscription management form is now included on all BPA and AOS ezines as well as on regional and SIG emails. There are still a few loose ends to tie up regarding transferral of data from one method to the other and following the completion of this, the subscription form will be advertised in the BPA ezine so members are more aware of this. BPA E-newsletter The open and click through rates for the main BPA e-newsletter for the month of February are as follows:

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Month-on-month (January to February), the open rate fell by 8.07 per cent and the click-through rate rose by 15.56 per cent. Comparing average so far for 2016 to the whole of 2015, the newsletter is currently 13.9 per cent up overall in terms of opens and 24.5 per cent up in terms of clicks.

Website From Google Analytics, the top 10 referring websites to britishparking.co.uk are:

Moneysavingexpert.com –1,741 sessions

Ameetandgreet.com – 428

Parkingcowboys.co.uk – 287

Popla.co.uk - 218

Theaa.com – 209

Itv.com - 198

Twitter.com - 130

Bbc.co.uk - 459

Moneysavingexpert.com (forums) - 125

Theipc.info – 122

Thisismoney.co.uk - 122

Users, Page Views, Bounce Rate The increase in traffic evident in January has only dropped off slightly in February. Moreover the 301 redirect work accounted for an extra 614 page views.

Users Page Views Bounce Rate

2015

January 19193 37776 78.96

February 20951 38487 79.41

March 21323 40204 78.95

April 19528 38023 79.97

May 18194 32098 80.48

June 18315 60478 63.12

July 13989 39489 63.42

August 16296 43774 64.18

September 15915 45670 61.83

October 14868 44845 60.37

November 14662 43881 61.80

December 12863 36213 62.31

2016 January 17157 48890 64.09

February 16014 47028 61.69

The below graph from SEMRush shows the BPA website ranks very well for parking-related keywords compared to others in the profession:

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To put a nominal monetary value on this, if the BPA were to launch a website from scratch and wished to use Paid Search to rank similarly for this amount of keywords this would cost approximately £4,650.

Projects

Future of Parking and Intelligent Mobility Justus Loebler completed the research project and delivered a Technical Report and a list of key motivations. He presented his work at the recent Futures Group meeting on 12th February which was well attended by over 40 members The report and motivations will be further developed to communicate the research findings to members and to the wider parking community via a publicly available report due to be published at the end of March. An article in Parking News also covers the research and next steps. Justus will be returning to present at our Parking Forum on 30 March, at CoR in April, Parking and Property in May and at the EPA Board meeting in June. At the Futures meeting, recommendations for future work/research were discussed and it was recommend that a democratically elected Focus Group was established to take this work forwards. Both activities will be managed via a new online network using Yammer as the platform, Parking 20:20 The BPA are now Associate members of the Smart Cities APPG. Teresa Farndon, Chair of the Futures Group attended their meeting on November 18th. The next meeting takes place on at the House of Commons on 9 March, 5:15-7pm. Dave attended the ITS-UK Technology Transport Forum on 3rd December. This a new initiative set up to foster a culture where network operators and technology providers collaborate at a senior level to the mutual benefit of the UK economy. The group has secured funding from DfT and representatives include DfT, BIS, Catapults, Innovate UK. The next meeting will take place in April.

Sector Knowledge Project A review of current knowledge and technical information is currently being undertaken. The Project Group have discussed how the website knowledge area can be updated and presented clearly. Parking Practice notes are being reviewed and written by a series of industry experts, some have already been updated. The most recent meeting was in December, in which the group discussed the potential cost and design of the ‘parking wiki’ that has been explored by the Public Affairs and Research Coordinator in various forms; both as a separate site and as a new section on the BPA website. This parking wiki will store, use and update Parking Practice notes and Information notes by members and staff at the BPA. The meeting also explored what new information might be of use to members and how it should be created. The Public Affairs Board approved the project, and a business case has been developed which has also been approved by IMB and the BPA Board. The business case calls for funding to complete an update of the Library module and a refresh/update of the current information on our website to provide an easily accessible vital

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knowledge centre for members. This will provide the ability to serve better content and keep everything within the current website. Following the PAB meeting, volunteers from CoR have been sought for a Project group to help oversee the Knowledge work and are currently piloting a Parking WIKI on Wikispaces.com. This will help develop the Technology Glossary in association with the IPI and other possible knowledge sharing projects.

Research and knowledge Future of parking and intelligent mobility survey 60 people completed the survey including 22 local authorities, 18 commercial companies and 6 stakeholder organisations plus others (consultants etc). The results show that most respondents feel positively about future mobility concepts and their organisations are generally engaged with the subject and keen to participate. While 65% feel that future intelligent mobility will change or influence their organisation, many more (80%) believe it will change or influence the parking profession. An impressive 71% are seeing their organisation involved in developing or encouraging future intelligent mobility. Pleasingly, and as a ringing endorsement of the BPA’s activity in this area, 98% of respondents believe the BPA has a role to play in exploring the future, including intelligent mobility. The full set of responses can be seen here including additional comments.

Researching the Research The final summary of the research is complete and a press release and blog was written to publicise the research. We emailed out to our contacts at universities to publicise the research, encourage further research and introduce particular areas, selected from the gap analysis in the research, that the BPA is interested in funding research on. Statistics Katy compiled a list of current parking and traffic management related statistics for DCLG

John Heasman Bursary The Public Affairs and Research Board have approved bursary funding for the four applications for the 2015/16 Bursary:

Rich McAlpin for his MSc in Management and leadership with the University of South Wales. He has proposed a piece on “Innovation in Car Park Management Solutions”.

Dave Anderson for his BA in Industrial Design & Technology at Loughborough University. He has proposed a piece on vehicle crime and safer parking

Adria Ramirez Papell, for a freelance research project he has proposed to reduce the knowledge gap around the collaboration possibilities between technologies and parking management

Peter Wood, PhD candidate, Department of Geography at The Open University. The proposed research is to investigate the forms of demand for cycle parking, in the context of cycling’s growth in the UK.

We have received two applications for the Prize Fund which are currently being Peer reviewed:

Matthew Barron a Postgraduate of Cardiff University, for his piece on Park and Ride

Vasileios Tsigkakos an undergraduate from Newcastle University, for his piece on Parking Requirements for Suburban Retail Units

Ernest Davies Award 2015

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We received nine submissions for the Ernest Davies Award 2015. The winners & runner’s up are:

1st Louiza Hamidi with ‘A love poem to the British Parking Association’

2nd Christina Onesirosan with ‘In Sickness and in Health’

3rd Guochao Alex Peng with ‘UK cities including London not as 'smart' as global counterparts’

Rod Williamson has been highly commended by the judges for his ‘Much Ado about Parking’

Contact with Universities

We have identified around 56 universities in the UK that have a transport studies connection via the Universities’ Studies Transport Group website and other resources have been in regular contact with them over the course of the year. We have also been in discussion with Dr Lee Woods from the University of Portsmouth about the possibility of setting parking as a dissertation title for MSc students from the School of Civil Engineering and Surveying. We will pursue this further in 2015. We are in conversation with Dr Parkhurst at the University of the West of England about the possibility of setting parking as a dissertation title using themes from the Researching the Research Project for the Centre for Transport and Society. We are in conversation with Loughborough University about the possibility of setting a summer research project for students interested in pursuing further Transport research interests.