1.0 Civil Enforcement Officers are the patrolling officers responsible for issuing Penalty Charge Notices to vehicles considered to be parked in contravention of the parking regulations. In Nottinghamshire county area (the full county area with the exception of Nottingham City) they are supplied by NCP Services under contract to Nottinghamshire County Council and are deployed by the appropriate District/Borough Council to enforce parking restrictions both on-street and off-street in council-owned car parks. They wear an appropriate uniform containing the badge of the District or Borough Council responsible for their management. The hours of operation and the beats are flexible to address parking management issues that vary between town and district centres.
1.1 The beats of the Civil Enforcement Officers are established by the District/Borough Parking Managers taking full consideration of traffic management and road safety concerns.
1.2 Requests from the public for targeted enforcement will be addressed where appropriate. Priority will be given to requests received from the County Council (as Highway Authority) and the Police. These authorities may from time to time request to fund coordinated enforcement to address particular traffic management or road safety issues.
Discretion
2.0 The Civil Enforcement Officers issue Penalty Charge Notices to vehicles where they consider a parking contravention has occurred. To prevent Civil Enforcement Officers being open to criticism of inconsistency, favouritism or bribery, it is not appropriate for them to be able to exercise discretion in the majority of cases. Motorists who are able to move their vehicles before a Penalty Charge Notice is affixed should not assume that a Charge will not be issued. The Traffic Management Act (2004), allows for the issue of Penalty Charge Notices by post if a Civil Enforcement Officer is unable to affix the Notice to the vehicle before it leaves.
2.1 Discretion is required for incidences of loading or unloading. Typically 20 minutes maximum is allowed for legitimate loading or unloading on-street. This activity will be observed and a Penalty Charge Notice issued if there is evidence that the loading or unloading has been completed. There may, be incidents where longer than 20 minutes is required because of the nature of the delivery and this may be to the Civil Enforcement Officers discretion taking into consideration road safety for all users.
Observation
(i) Prior to a Penalty Charge Notice being issued, a Civil Enforcement Officer may allow a period of 5 minutes to elapse between first observing the vehicle and the issue of the Penalty Charge Notice. This is to satisfy the Officer that loading or unloading is not taking place. With certain contraventions, however, this observation time is not appropriate. Furthermore, the Councils reserve the right to reduce or remove the observation time to address local problems. An example would be where drivers persistently contravene parking restrictions to access a cashpoint, for example. The list of all current parking contraventions (Version 6.5) together with the appropriate code and observation times is shown in Figure 1.
