Secure Parking is the first car park operator to receive accreditation under Parking Australia’s new accreditation scheme aimed at removing illegal parking.
The scheme is a move by the parking industry to raise accountability of operators and provide protection to both retailers and motorists.
Secure Parking is the first company to have been accredited to conduct enforcement services on private land to stem the losses caused by car park abusers after diversifying into enforcement of private car parks – where retailers and businesses lose around $15 billion a year through the abuse of illegal parking.
Under the scheme, enforcement agencies must abide by a code of ethics, provide signage clearly stating the terms and conditions of parking and provide an appeal process for motorists to challenge any infringement.
Secure operates at over 200 private car parks across Australia including fast food restaurants, regional and suburban shopping centres, hardware stores, major supermarkets and pay and display car parks.
“We have operated according to our own extremely stringent code of ethics since we began private car park operations so we had to make only minor adjustments to our service model to fulfil the requirements of Parking Australia’s accredited operator scheme,” said Garth Mathews, joint CEO, Secure Parking.
“We were the first and only operator to voluntarily adopt a Code of Practice and that has been recognised with accreditation from Parking Australia.”
“Retailers are losing millions of dollars in trade because genuine customers can’t find a car space while illegal parkers have a free ride.”
A recent survey of retailers by Parking Australia said 90 per cent of retailers who provide private parking experience motorists using their facilities for purposes other than doing business with 83 per cent suffering a financial impact. Around a third estimate they are losing 11 to 20 per cent in revenue because of carpark squatters. Over a quarter of businesses said they were at risk of going out of business as a result.
“The worst abuse occurs in areas where there’s a lack of on-street and off-street residential parking and around transport hubs and airports where motorists treat the private car park like a free commuter park,” said Mathews.
“Cars are often parked all day, sometimes for longer than a month.”
Over a quarter of the retailers surveyed reported motorists who had left their cars illegally parked every day of the week.
“When you consider that every car parking space at a busy shopping centre has the potential to generate $1000 a day in revenue that represents a huge sum foregone.”
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