Idiotic Management: Britanic Industries, Newquay Town Council & Fistral Beach

Fistral Beach in Newquay, Cornwall is a world famous magnet for surfers. Yet a hidden danger with a shark’s bite lurks on arrival for the unsuspecting visitor, particularly foreigners. The car park is run by a ruthless management, Britanic Industries and its’ operator, Smart Parking, with zero interest for the visitor experience and for the express purpose of making hundreds of thousands in car parking penalties. In the height of season the local Town Council receives 40 complaints for unfair practices and doubtless 100s of people are ripped off daily. Visit Britain, the UK’s marketing arm has invested millions behind its’ “GREAT BRITAIN” campaign, yet the experience at Fistral Beach is designed to encourage a “HATE BRITAIN” thought in the mind of visitors.

The management of the large car park, Smart Parking, provide a perfect experience where the use of high technology enables a low touch customer experience. Reliant on camera sensors and nothing else, they keep electronic records of entry and exit to the car park. They daily fine innocent families, who are unable to find a car parking space in this half mile square beach, gather their beach equipment, walk 800 yards to the sole parking meter and have the right payment within 10 minutes. They rely on signs that don’t make clear payment is due from the time your car passed the entry sensor to the time you return to the car, pack up and physically pass the exit sensor, which can be half a mile from the place you are parked. They then issue penalty charge notices upto 16 days after the event, by which time you have no doubt destroyed the parking ticket if you have paid by cash. If you seek to Appeal, wait you are in for a 6 month determination of whether your claim is legitimate. You will receive the plaintiff, Smart Parking’s boilerplate template 24 page document, usually copied and pasted with hundreds of factual errors. It is death by a hundred shark bites.

If you think that this is a great way to encourage first time visitors, build tourism revenues and attract investment into a town, which outside of the holiday season has a number of severe social and economic issues, you are deluded. However that is precisely what the idiotic management of Britanic Industries, the leaseholder, think makes sense. Their decision-making process is flawed. The Newquay Town Council are impotent. Indeed the Mayor won’t even respond to written offers of help with smarter parking ideas.

Technology is a powerful enabler when it is used effectively to enable a higher touch customer experience (Uber, Amazon and Spotify). Equally, when it is used poorly it can have serious and catastrophic consequences.

Does your organisation’s decision-making process give sufficient thought to the desired outcomes, the benefits and risks of technology and the appropriate course of action? Does it solely look from your firm’s perspective or that of its’ customers? Fistral Beach has shown what happens when the sharks are left to run riot with technology and the lifeguard is asleep.

© James Berkeley 2015. All Rights Reserved.

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6 Responses to “Idiotic Management: Britanic Industries, Newquay Town Council & Fistral Beach”

  1. James says:

    With zero regard for its’ customers, the only sane approach is to not give them any business.

  2. Steve Greenway says:

    What a scam Smart Parking run. Smart indeed!!!

    This organisation charges for the time spent ON SITE, not time parking. They have ANPR cameras on the approach road, so they time your entry and exit, not the time of parking.
    So if the car park is busy, be aware that you are being “charged” for waiting for a space, plus the time it take you to leave the car park, so don’t be polite and let others maneuverer, you jut go for it, unless of course you remember what time you entered the car park, and have enough time left to take into account the time you pass the cameras on the exit.

  3. James says:

    This is a classic example of a business, who have long ceased to care about their customers. A high-tech solution providing a low-touch customer experience. The real villains are any land owner, local government official, entrepreneur or business executive, who choose to work with this firm.
    They are undeserving of our business and support. Our only meaningful response is to go elsewhere.

  4. Pam Newman says:

    I received a penalty from initial parking for the Fistral Beach carpark 23/7/19. I was on the carpark for 25 mins during those 25 mins I drove around the carpark 3 times then my sister went to ask if there were any disabled slots, which there weren’t, I did not leave the car, park in a space or switch off the engine. I was driving home the following day and was involved in a collision so when I received the letter I passed it onto my brother-in-law and asked him to appeal against it as I was still extremely shaken by the accident. He emailed them 3 time but received no response. Today I received a letter from a debt collector asking for £170. What can I do? I don’t have that kind of money. Thank you Pam Mewman

  5. James says:

    Citizens Advice Bureau or call your MP.

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