Parking Ticket Data

Dear Sir or Madam,

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 I would like to request
some information relating to the enforcement of parking
restrictions, specifically penalty charge notices.

1. I would like to request the raw data set of parking tickets
issued in the name of the council within the last five year period
(22 July 2004 till now) broken down by:
date, time, location, narrative of infraction, current status of
case, next status of case, transaction details (ie. date, time and
method of payments made), officer ID

2. I would also like to request any information regarding
‘reward’/bonus schemes/contracts in place for your parking
enforcement officers. This is envisaged to cover the details of any
systems, including (where bonuses are paid) the amount per officer
per year, for the last five years.

Regarding part 1. ideally I would like the location unit to be
'street' but if this is not practical then under your section 16
duty to advise and assist I would expect you to contact me to
discuss how you record this geospatial data so that I may narrow my
request in a way that works for both of us.

As a supplementary, under section 16, I would also ask that you
provide some detail about the recording processes of this parking
information. E.g. What software is used? What data fields are
recorded? What other data sets it links to, etc.

If this information is held by an outside contractor then it is
your responsibility under the FOIA to obtain that information.

If it is held by another public body then please can you inform me
of this and if possible transfer the request to that public body.
My preferred format to receive this information is by electronic
means. For both parts I would like the response to be in the form
of a raw text file, tab delimited, with text qualifiers where
required.

If you need any clarification of this request or if it is too broad
in any way please feel free to email me. If some parts of this
request
are more difficult to answer than others please release the
answerable material as it is available rather than hold up the
entire request for the contested data.

If FOI requests of a similar nature have already been asked could
you please include your responses to those requests. I would be
grateful if you could confirm in writing that you have received
this request, and I look forward to hearing from you within the
20-working day statutory time period.

Yours faithfully,

Neil Houston

Mervyn,

Firstly, thanks for the response.

On the first point, only since the council took over is fine,
(therefore Nov 2004).

Regarding the report from Spur, thanks for confirming what
information you are able to provide, by using the 'front end
reporting' features of the system you use to record PCN details.

I would just like to clarify - is it possible that the IT/database
administrator can produce the selected field extract from the
database backend (In my experience, databases often sit on MySQL/MS
SQL/Oracle backends - and the IT/database Administrator of the
system can often extract out information that the systems
'reporting' options don't allow).

If the size of the data extract is too large for it to be
compressed (zipped) and emailed, then I am happy to provide you
with FTP details (the IT contact could transfer the files), or to
receive the data on a CD/DVD. I understand that to produce some
reports in a 'paper' format is not the best for either of us.

Sizewise, the physical number of records will be no issue for me; I
cannot narrow down the request anymore than it already is. (That
being a limited number of fields, by PCN issued, for the 5 year
period).

Obviously if some of the information is not held in the database
(perhaps regarding the payment status etc,) then I would not want
to trouble you by having someone to review the actual case records
(as I understand this would be above and beyond the £450/2.5 day
limit)

Thanks,
Neil