Has NCP been a good thing or a bad thing for the Bay?

Councillors launch in-depth review of Bay's traffic warden operation.
This is the head line in the local paper. OK, now I know this is picky but we don't have traffic wardens here in the Bay, we have Parking Attendants. Lets get the details right. We used to have Traffic Wardens who were employed and run by the police, Devon and Cornwall Police. They did bugger all, the wardens not the police. So Torbay Council threw them out and called in NCP and their team of parking attendants to walk round, and sometimes drive round

and stick tickets on cars parked illegally and some times on cars that weren't parked illegally. Lots of the cars that got tickets for parking on yellow lines had been parked on those same yellow lines for years and had never got a ticket. I did say the traffic wardens never did anything but NCP were charging Torbay Council an extremely large, some would even say obscene amount of money to place all these tickets on cars that had never had tickets placed on then before and they really needed to make lots and lots of money in the shape of parking fines for Torbay Council. Otherwise someone might think it wasn't worth bringing in NCP in the first place. So there was a lot of fuss about a lot of tickets. The biggest fuss was on the sea front where there used to be parking restrictions May to September. But this confused so many drivers. I mean they have manage obtain a provisional driving licence which meant filling in a form, to pass a driving test, fill in a form, buy a car, fill in a form , get car insured, fill in a form. But "No parking May to Sept" baffled them. The local paper and those readers who wrote letters to the editor blamed NCP and they got a more bad press than sea weed on the beach. Come to think about it, sea weed on the beach never gets a mention.
When NCP were brought in they got a five year contract which ends in 2010. So in 2010 the council are thinking of giving the contract to someone else who will charge less or run the scheme themselves. Now as I mentioned a day or two back the local on line edition of the paper are having a vote suggesting buses should be banned from Fleet Street. It's not exactly generating much excitement so it might be time to change it to "Should NCP, who have improved the flow of traffic around the Bay out of all recognition, be asked to 'Move on.'

Yes the white van is parked on a bus stop and was being used by NCP at the time.