First, I thank you for the invitation. Mr Mawson extends his apologies for not attending.
The police service has varying priorities. The events of recent weeks show the breadth of priorities that we have to address for the public.
In anticipation of the meeting, I tried to get a flavour of the enforcement activity that is taking place around the country, particularly in areas where parking is not yet decriminalised. I spoke to area commanders around the country to get a sense of how things are working. On recording practices, a couple of call types come in: those requesting assistance to the public and those relating to road traffic events. Five hundred calls of each type come in every week, so it was impossible to break the figures down to see how many reports of parking offences we receive per week. We tend to manage the issue by seeking local views on what is important in various forums, such as community council meetings and scrutiny meetings, and then working out what activity to undertake.
One of the areas that could break down the figures for disabled parking infringements was Falkirk, which is the area command that I used to cover. In response to local concerns, our community sergeant carried out a three-month operation on parking in general. I do not get the sense that we receive lots of complaints about disabled parking infringements per se, but we do get recurring queries about parking in general, which we respond to. As a result of the operation in Falkirk, just over 300 parking tickets were issued, 44 of which related to disabled parking infringements.
The information that the Ayrshire division fed back to me was that tourism plays a big part in the complaints that they get about parking, so they tend to focus their activity around that. They told me that, in the year from April 2016 to March 2017, they enforced more than 500 tickets, but they could not break that figure down to give a specific number of disabled parking infringements.
Parking is not yet decriminalised in Moray and is a standing agenda item for its community safety strategy group, in which the police work in partnership with other agencies.
To get some context from areas in which there has been decriminalisation, we spoke to colleagues in Edinburgh and Greenock, who told us that, when they get feedback, they work in partnership with local enforcement officers and try to carry out prevention as well as enforcement. For example, they deliver education through joint lettering to raise awareness.