Council waste taxpayers’ money on parking permits

Rochdale Borough Council is wasting yet more council taxpayers’ money by charging itself for parking permits.

Prompted by a post on the Rochdale Online Forum by Firgrove resident Alison Unwin, in which she recounted a story told by a council worker whereby the council issued parking permits to council van drivers to avoid council vans being given tickets by council employed wardens, whilst working on council owned properties, Rochdale Online asked the council media team if this was true.

The reply was: “Dispensations have been issued to two vehicles being used by RBH (not the council) to carry out renovation work in the area, in accordance with the Civil Parking Enforcement procedure. Our parking team leader is not aware of any instances of the council ever having ‘charged itself’ for parking dispensations.”

The reply was posted on the RO Forum and that prompted a call seeking clarification. We asked the council spokesman: “Can you confirm that the council is the sole shareholder in RBH? And therefore if RBH is charged the council IS effectively charging itself?”

The reply from the council media team was evasive: “As this appears to be a customer enquiry from a specific member of the public, I’d be happy for you to provide my contact details to the person who is asking the question. This will mean that, if they want to contact me directly, I can arrange a response for them through the appropriate channels. As this isn’t a media enquiry, it would save you the job of having to be the middleman between the customer and council in this instance.”

Rochdale Online therefore asked the council spokesman to: “Make it a joint enquiry then please… because Rochdale Online is very interested in your response to the question.”

Three days later, with no reply having been forthcoming, Rochdale Online emailed again asking politely why the reluctance to answer.

Rochdale Online received the following reply: “The information that you have requested is publically available on RBH’s website.”

The information on the RBH website shows that RBH is wholly owned by Rochdale Borough Council.

As RBH is wholly owned by the council the comments in brackets "(not the council)" in the original reply deceive the public into thinking that the council is not charging itself, and indeed the sentence goes on to explicitly claim this to be the case, "Our parking team leader is not aware of any instances of the council ever having ‘charged itself’ for parking dispensations." - when as the council owns RBH it is self evidently charging ‘itself’.

When this was put to the council media team, the Head of Customer Access said: “Although owned by the council, RBH is a separate entity. There was no intention to deceive in the comments made.”

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/forum/topic.asp