Pressures on Council Parking Attendants
below is a very good report done by Dr William J. Knottenbelt Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London

"...In my many discussions with them, I have come to understand that Council Parking Attendants are caught in a sandwich between, on the one hand, revenue-driven pressure from the Council to issue tickets and, on the other hand, angry members of the public who believe parking enforcement should be fair and carried out in accordance with common sense. Many Parking Attendants I have spoken to actually agree wholeheartedly with the latter point of view but feel that they are powerless to do anything about it.

As I understand, the problem starts right at the top. The Council views parking enforcement as a good source of revenue (forget anything they tell you about keeping traffic flowing etc. - that may be a side effect of ruthless enforcement but it's certainly not the primary motivation). To collect this revenue, they contract their on-street parking services enforcement out to a private company (NCP in the case of Westminster, Apcoa in the case of Kensington and Chelsea). I have not (yet) seen the actual contracts involved but I would not be surprised to learn that there are financial rewards for the contractors based on the number of tickets issued etc. After all, the contractors are private companies in it for the money, while the Councils want to collect as much revenue as possible, so such an arrangement would be mutually beneficial.

This pressure to generate revenue filters down onto the street. In Kensington and Chelsea, supervisors push PAs to issue a minimum of 10 tickets in a shift. In Westminster the situation is far worse, with PAs pushed to issue 15-20 tickets per shift; there are also financial rewards for exceeding targets. Failure to meet a target results in a "discussion" with a supervisor and possible disciplinary action.

Parking attendants are not encouraged to use their discretion and are closely monitored to ensure they issue the maximum number of tickets possible. Besides having to make a note in their logbooks as to where they are every three minutes, supervisors (who themselves have probably been given operating targets to achieve) patrol the streets; if they see illegally parked vehicles that have not been issued with Penalty Charge Notices, this could result in disciplinary action against PAs who were in the area at the time.

Before their shifts, PAs are briefly by their supervisors on the top targets of the day (e.g. scaffolders' vehicles) and are also told which company vehicles they should and should not target. Bizarrely, for example, in Kensington and Chelsea, BT vans are prime targets, whereas NTL vans are not to be ticketed. I've heard this from at least three different K&C parking attendants. I'd be very interested to learn how such an arrangement comes about - I bet it's not anywhere in the Road Traffic Act 1991 but I bet it involves a lot of money!!! Interestingly, compliance officers in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea parking service claim to know nothing about this, blindly insisting "We deal with all parking contraventions in the same manner, regardless of vehicle operator." Well, perhaps they would like to, but they clearly don't. (17 April 2005 UPDATE: I'm pleased to report APCOA has now been instructed to "review" their policy towards NTL vehicles.)

It is not surprising then that these pressures result in PAs occasionally issuing illegal tickets, and in misleading uninformed members of the public about their rights in order to achieve their targets.

His report can be backed up by documentary done on bbc (Whistleblower)  where PA are pressured into meeting and exceeding targets. There are also cases where PAs are even sacked for not issuing enough parking tickets.