Spy car plan halted following legal hitch
Monday 28th September 2009, 11:30AM BST.
Plans for a camera car to spy on parents parking illegally in the Black Country have been put on ice. Sandwell Council had drawn up plans to buy or lease a £15,000 vehicle.
The car would have been loaded with video cameras and automatic number plate technology. It would have been used to snare motorists mounting pavements or stopping on zig zags and yellow lines on hotspots outside borough schools. It had been hoped that the scheme would come into force some time this month.
But concerns over the operation of a similar system elsewhere in the country have forced officers to postpone rolling it out while they re-think the legal details.
Neighbourhoods chief Councillor Mahboob Hussain said there had been a court case involving another local authority which had not put up the appropriate signs and had been involved in legal action.
“This court case has said that local authorities cannot do this unless they warn people at the side of the road, so we are clearing that up at this present time,” he said.
“The local authority cannot just park a vehicle down there and start taking down people’s numbers.
“This technical court hearing has given us second thoughts.
“We would have to go through putting a notice on the road about cameras operating and there is a process which we need to follow before we can use this vehicle.
“As long as we follow that process I think we should be okay.”
Across Sandwell, council and residents groups have also been funding moveable CCTV cameras.
The £800 surveillance equipment, called Domehawks, can be moved from site to site and are meant to stop anti-social behaviour.
Last month, one was put in Brunswick Park in Wednesbury which residents say is a meeting point for yobs and areas of land in Mafeking Road and Sydenham Road in Smethwick had cameras installed in 2007 following complaints of constant fly-tipping.
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So they wanted to use our council tax money to blow 15 grand on a car with cameras to target parents parking illegally, no wonder then why more and more people are refusing to pay illegal council tax.
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Yeh right, can you really imagine what would happen to this vehicle.. boom
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I am confused !!
Is it cheaper to buy a £15,000 car and pay someone to drive it and operate the system than it is to send a traffic warden to these hot spots?
I doubt it.
The problem is parents will see a traffic warden and not park illegally which in turn will NOT create any revenue for the Council.
Collecting easy money is the name of the game NOT safety.
I do agree parents should be done for parking illegally around schools but regular traffic warden patrols or policing would solve this problem.
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We are paying the council money and they are using it to buy equipment to fine us.
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One simple solution, stop paying council tax, hit them where it hurts. They call it tax but that is just a word the Government use to legally rob us, they have got the masses so conditioned to paying it, people will actually fight to keep on paying it.
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Ask yourself why the temptation to park illegally exists in the first place. Could it be that it is so inconvenient to park legally? IF you can find a space anywhere near where you want to go, you have to make sure you have change on you to be able to pay to park, then you have to find a space, and sometimes you only need to stop for 5 minutes. I wonder if there will ever come a time when people get so fed up with the hassles of owning and driving a car that they throw the keys down the drain. If they did then the councils and the country as a whole, would be far worse off without the motorist, not better off, and those who think the opposite must be on something. Driving is the new Smoking.
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mark:
Ok Mark a good idea. You take the lead and stop paying your council tax and see how many follow you.
Nobody has the bottle to do anything like that in the UK and you are kidding yourself if you think they have.
Spineless British I am afraid to say.
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5) I have asked myself the question, and the answer is simple, WALK, its not rocket science, most of the people on here of a certain age did it (I would guess age 30+), and it never killed us, and for all the “its not safe today” brigade, if you really feel that way, walk with them, simple. When did parents become so lazy. No wonder there are so many fat kids about.
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I can see both sides of the debate. There are a lot of lazy, inconsiderate people who park illegally around schools instead of letting kids off a bit further away. But there again, I wonder if there is an alteria motive behind the use of the cameras..there’s concerns over tax, privacy etc. In my day we used to walk, park well away or the school used to put cones outside..but there again there were fewer cars.
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“As long as we follow that process I think we should be okay.” – Neighbourhoods chief Councillor Mahboob Hussain.
Think being the operative word..sorry, but thinking and Sandwell Council don’t seem to gel too well in my mind. I’m still waiting to find out where all that previous tax money went. Maybe this is a means of paying it off and John..I DO have concerns about what these people do with the information they gather.
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English Exile I have not paid council tax for 2 years, t.v licence, fishing licence, etc, etc. Soon we will need a licence to blink, as long as people keep coughing up, that’s the problem, people have a little moan and pay even though they don’t agree with where the money is going, they pay simply because they think they have to and this is not the case.
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Fox in a Box I love comments like yours, what planet do you live on?
I bet you think all schoolchildren live 10 minutes walk away from the school, if only.
“AND FOR ALL THE “ITS NOT SAFE TODAY” BRIGADE, IF YOU REALLY FEEL THAT WAY, WALK WITH THEM, SIMPLE. WHEN DID PARENTS BECOME SO LAZY” it’s a bit like saying all youngsters are drunken little thugs, have you thought it could be that some parents might have work obligations and its nothing to do with being lazy?????
Our son in law works erratic hours [ law enforcement ] our daughter has to be in work for 7-30 AM, so how do you think they can walk the children to work?
We have to drive from Bearwood to Halesowen, we then take over from our daughter, feed the 10 month old grandson, then at 8-30AM, take our granddaughter to school, and yes when possible we walk her to school, but that’s the easy one, our other daughter lives in Hereford and cant get child care on a Monday, so on a Sunday we have to drive the 70 mile down to Hereford, collect our 4 year old grandson, then on the Monday night drive the 70 mile down to Hereford again, do you still suggest we walk? I am 67 years of age, many of the people taking children to school are the grandparents of the children, not the parents, god I wish life was as simple as you make out.
Regarding this supposed problem of cars parked outside schools causing injury to children, it’s a fallacy, its not cars being parked outside schools that cause the problem, cars parked outside schools slow the traffic right down because they cause congestion, get rid of the cars in the road and the traffic speeds up, the problem arises when children are allowed to walk off the pavement into the road, that’s when children get injured.
Often parents will collect other peoples children, because of various reasons often other parents cant pick up their own children up, 4,5,6 children isn’t unusual, with the best will in the world its very hard to have full control over that many children, so there is nothing to prevent a child walking off the pavement into the path of a car travelling at 30MPH!!!!!!!
If the powers that be like “Neighbourhoods chief Councillor Mahboob Hussain” really want to prevent children being injured there are several solutions, the obvious one is to put barriers along the pavements outside the schools, that physical barrier will stop any child walking into the path of a vehicle.
Another solution is to have controlled crossings outside schools, but of course these measures cost money, fining drivers generates money, so people will say how can we afford to implement these safety measures??? Simple stop paying part time councillors full time Private Pensions!!!!!!!
Jim of Bearwood
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12) jim well said, a very nice point
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