NINE months of on-street parking anarchy are in the offing for Farnham and other Waverley towns, with the borough's traffic wardens facing redundancy from Surrey Police as of tomorrow (Saturday). The sudden departure of the two wardens will leave a virtual free-for-all in short-stay bays and the prospect that enforcement of waiting or loading restrictions will be severely curtailed. A Surrey Police spokesman confirmed the rumoured redundancies this week and explained: "We are no longer required to carry out the responsibility for on-street parking enforcement. "Police officers will only deal with parking offences if life is at risk, or there is a serious danger to property. Day-to-day enforcement will not be conducted by police officers." The extraordinary situation is expected to endure until Waverley Borough Council contractors take on enforcement responsibilities in early 2007. The borough has been left in limbo after Waverley Borough Council and Surrey County Council took more than two years to reach agreement over the borough council taking on the enforcement responsibilities. The county council has been forced by the government to take on the police's former role under Decriminalised Parking Enforcement, but is passing the task to the district and boroughs under "agency" agreements. While the other 10 boroughs and districts had all agreed terms with Surrey - and in some cases have been operating the parking patrols for up to two years - Waverley dug its heels in over manpower. The borough formerly had the services of four wardens and Waverley Council wanted to regain that number. The county council, which will pay for the service and retain the penalty fees, would only offer two. Temporary retention of the parking wardens was agreed last year, amid warnings of the consequences should the deadlock continue. And agreement has finally been reached, albeit too late to prevent the chaos now predicted. A press release issued by the borough council, which made no reference to the problems looming, indicated that "residents in Waverley will soon benefit from safer, less-congested streets". The statement went on to say that the new arrangement would come into force early in 2007 and quoted Bob Moodie, Surrey's area transport director, who said: "We are very pleased to have agreed a timetable for the introduction of this new arrangement. "The first stage of the preparations will involve us seeking approval of the proposal from the government's Department for Transport, which can take several months. "In the meantime, we will be repainting the yellow lines and renewing parking signs across the borough to ensure that restrictions are clearly marked for the motorist and that the parking attendants can enforce them. "Until the Department for Transport has approved the new enforcement arrangements, only the police can issue and enforce on-street parking fines." Waverley's environmental director, Peter Maudsley, said the decision to make the traffic wardens redundant had been taken without consultation with Waverley. "Nor is it our business, they are not our employees," he added. He asserted that the current situation was not of Waverley's making. The council had been keen to take the new responsibility on, but not without the resources to make improvements. "More of the same would be regarded by the residents of Waverley as inadequate," he said. "I was mandated by elected members to conclude a deal which represented appropriate enforcement." The "accommodation" reached covers the number of hours that will be spent on enforcement, rather than the number of people involved. But taking into acount the early mornings, evenings and the six-day week to be covered, the agreement that two wardens will be on duty in the borough throughout was considered a satisfactory settlement. Waverley Council leader Gill Ferguson said Waverley's executive would be discussing the situation that has now arisen and if "serious confusion" arises, would attempt to put pressure on the police and the county council for an earlier resolution. She was nevertheless pleased that Waverley had held out for the agreement it achieved. "It was a question of whether we went soft on our negotiations. We were quite correct in standing by what we needed in the longer term and it was the important thing to do, but Surrey was in the position to go slow." Richard Gates, the leader of the Conservatives on Waverley Council, remained unconvinced that the matter could not have been resolved some months ago, but said he had not been informed of the details of the agreement. Regarding the traffic warden redundancies, he commented: "If that is the case, I'm horrified. There will be even less attention to the law than at the moment." Sadly, for those now made redundant, it seems that elsewhere in Surrey, some have been able to transfer their services. The Surrey Police spokesman indicated that in the Guildford, for instance, the changeover was seamless, and a warden simply swapped his police uniform one day for the council's uniform the next. She added that the warden system in place had not been able to fulfill the demands of the enforcement required. "We are looking for an enhanced service managed between Waverley and Surrey County Council and that obviously needs to be activated - everyone else has done it," she added.
