Hillingdon are doing a bit of fire fighting. They have made it so that drivers under 18 can now apply for the card (one of our big annoyances) which wasn’t in any of the information issued before this blog started, or in any of the FOI requests (even Cllr. Mills says Over 18 – see below).

With the bad press and building anger against the scheme (we are getting over 100 hits a day now – not bad for a website being up only 1 month), they have put up the ‘consultation’ that kick started this – although the scheme was first discussed in 2006 but this consultation is from 2008. They also mention that the scheme was discussed at the Question Time meetings that are held in Hillingdon.

Firstly, it appears that the consultation was with about 340 people, so thats 0.13% of the residents of Hillingdon. The consultation isn’t particulary enlightening or that suprising, who wouldnt want discounted shopping?!

Well, actually, it shows that 120 of the respondents (thats 35%) agreed with the statement “I don’t like the idea of a Hillingdon Card, as I am concerned about Data Protection issues“. More than one third of the public were concerned about their data protection, how many more didn’t realise they could be tracked around the borough?

Far from quashing any rumours about the scheme, I think the consultation makes an even stronger case that the scheme is flawed and undemocratic.

As for the meetings – there are no transcripts from the meetings so I took the liberty of listening to the mp3s and transcribing them for you myself. I found no questions or answers and no one discussing it, just Cllr. Mills talking about it.

cllr_mills_nov2008.mp3
Cllr Mills @ 10.00
We are introducing next year a Residents Entitlement card called HillingdonFirst and I have an example, most of you probably can’t see from that far, but its like a little credit card. Plastic. HillingdonFirst will give preferential rates on parking, on use of hillingdon leisure facilities, on even discounts in some of our local shops. It will enable residents to be recognised as exactly that, a resident of hillingdon. So when visitors to hillingdon come and use our car parks they will pay a much higher fee, you wont, they will and we think thats important because that is about a practical example of putting residents at the heart of what we wish to do.

douglas_mills.mp3
Cllr Mills @ 10:20
We’re doing something no other London borough has tried before. We’re going to give you one of these, coming soon in June. All of you over 18, I think you all qualify, will be receiving your own hillingdon residents entitlement card, this means that when you use our car parks you will be paying the hillingdon rate as opposed to those people from outside hillingdon who will be paying more, reason? – you pay council tax, they don’t. Why should they get the benefit of lower car parking when they don’t pay for the council tax, you do – you’ll get a discount on our parking. When you use our amenity facilities and our leisure facilities when they come fully on stream and they’re going to be so good people will come from outside hillingdon to use them, you will get them at a lower rate, they will pay more because you have already paid through your hillingdon council tax. This is also aimed at businesses and I am pleased to say across the whole borough over 300 businesses have signed up to this scheme saying that if you go into one of those businesses and show you this, they will give you a discount because you’re a hillingon resident. Now that is unique. Now, the health warning, there’s about 180,000 of you altogether and to get that out to all of you during june, first time without any problems will be a miracle so things won’t necessarily go smoothly, but you will get one eventually and it will be very beneficial to all of us.

One thing that I do agree with is the “Do you think a Hillingdon Card is a good idea?”. Most of the respondents agreed, yes. The thing is, it is a great idea for discounted shopping (see another post about this later), for using the swimming pool or leisure centre. But why on earth touch parking? Do people really want to carry a card to park? Of course not. We don’t mind (and are used to) using a card to go to the library or swimming pool, but why parking? Its maddening that they mess it up like this.

As for privacy, they can still fix this – change the system so it only stores data for one month before being deleted. I have seen that they store this for ‘financial’ reasons, but do they need to know the exact meter and car park being used? Of course not – a simple note saying parking has been used would be enough to satisfy the financial director.

I, for one, would feel a lot better about a system which guaranteed deletion of our personal ‘histories’ within one month of use (thats the dump, the parking, the leisure facilities, the school meals, the whatever comes next). Wouldn’t you?