Outsourced parking wardens to start in Trim next Wednesday

Meath County Council has confirmed that new outsourced parking wardens will take over the monitoring of paid parking in Trim from next Wednesday.

Councillors were briefed at their meeting today that from next Wednesday,  parking wardens will not be directly employed by the council and that two new staff from a private company will take up duty.

The Council was keen to stress that parking is not being privatised and will still be managed by the local authority. The by-laws will remain the same and the existing service is not being changed but the two staff will be from a private company.

It was confirmed that the contract has been awarded on a six month basis and senior executive officer  Dara McGowan said there would be no targets to be met. "This is isn’t a target based contract. It is a time based contract. Whether one or 100 tickets are issued, they get the same. There is no incentive to look for as much non compliance as possible. It is about Improving parking and the traffic flow in town,"  he said.

Mr McGowan said the change was not about making a profit but about increasing compliance and turnover of spaces. He said it has been a success in Navan where compliance had gone from 35 per cent to 90 per cent and the turnover of spaces went from three per day to nine per day.

Councillors expressed their frustrations at not being told sooner about what was happening. "it is very late in the day for us to have any credibility with our constituents when something is agreed in the council on Friday and is coming in on Wednesday,"  said Cllr Caroline Lynch, adding that it made them look like "eejits" that they didn't know what was going on.

"From our point of view, it makes us look completely surplus to requirements if a big decision is made. Even though we can't stop it from happening and its about staffing, the information could have come much sooner," she said.

Cllr French said he would have appreciated the information months ago.

Responding, Mr Gowan said they were dealing with staff and unions and didn't want to go public until it was decided. He said the decision had only been made last week and this was their first meeting since then.