Hobart City Council defends parking system as officers voice concerns about its reliability

Hobart City Council has denied its parking management system is unreliable or inaccurate, pushing back against claims innocent drivers are being booked.

Hobart City Council has defended its integrated parking system after concerns were raised about its reliability. Picture: MATT THOMPSON

A number of Hobart parking officers have claimed they are issuing fines to members of the public even when no infringements have been committed – but the council has strongly denied any suggestion that the system is faulty or unreliable.

The Australian Services Union (ASU), which represents local government employees, conducted a survey of Hobart City Council parking information officers (PIOs) from late April to early May, asking questions about their mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.

Conducted in the midst of enterprise bargaining negotiations, the survey, seen by the Mercury, collected responses from about half of the 29 PIOs working at the council.

It found they were experiencing high levels of unreasonable or unsustainable workloads and work-related stress, with 90 per cent of respondents saying the situation was becoming worse over time.

Sam Batchelor Tasmanian co-ordinator Australian Services Union with a parking meter in Salamanca Place. Hobart City Council parking officers say the city's parking management system is not working properly and they are stressed because they're issuing fines to people who have done nothing wrong. The council has strongly defended the accuracy of the system Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

It also found that 80 per cent had reported their workload and stress concerns to management “with no resulting improvements”. Of those who responded to the survey, 80 per cent said they had witnessed bullying and harassment in the workplace.

One PIO commented that the new integrated parking management system introduced in the city in 2018 had been “failing” for the past five years and spoke of the “stress of going home knowing I have booked innocent people”.

But the council says the reliability of the system exceeds 96 per cent and was being improved upon through a sensor upgrade program.

ASU Tasmanian co-ordinator Sam Batchelor said the council should return to a manual parking system until the integrated system could be audited and shown to be sufficiently accurate.

“Our members certainly are having a personal impact from the fear of issuing [infringements] incorrectly,” she said.

The integrated parking system consists of meters managed by Australian Parking and Revenue Control (APARC), in-road sensors, and EasyPark app integration.

About 9 per cent of all parking infringement notices are subject to requests for withdrawal in Hobart and 5 per cent of all notices end up being formally withdrawn.

The Hobart City Council has staunchly defended its parking management system. Picture: MATT THOMPSON

Hobart City Council city life director Karen Abey said the council was satisfied that the system was reliable, stressing that “no system is 100 per cent accurate” and that a 4 per cent error rate was “entirely reasonable”.

She conceded that the recent sensor upgrade project had resulted in “a rise in technical issues”, which may have “contributed to concerns” by some PIOs.

Ms Abey said PIOs were clearly told to not issue infringement notices to members of the public if there was any doubt about their legitimacy.

As for concerns raised by parking information officers regarding mental health, Ms Abey said the council took all safety issues “very seriously”.

“The city has not received any formal incident reports of mental health concerns from its PIOs,” she said. “If any incident of this nature was formally reported, then the city would take swift and appropriate action”.

A formal survey of all PIOs had not been conducted, Ms Abey said, and specific details of staff members possibly experiencing mental health issues had not been provided to the council.