25 August 2011: VisitEngland, today announces the results of a new star rating scheme for motorway service areas (MSAs) around the country, revealing 86% to be three star and above.

As the national tourist board, Visit England is committed to ensure that the highest possible level of standards is available to the many millions of tourists travelling the length and breadth of England.  Attractions and accommodation are of course the focus for the national drive for quality. Motorway service areas are, however, a key part of the journey many visitors to England make to reach their end destination, and as such contribute significantly to the visitor experience.  It is important, therefore, that the welcome visitors receive, and the quality of services on offer at these key focal points adds to, and does not detract from the visitor’s overall holiday experience.

Working with the Highways Agency and the five main operators of motorway service areas  – Moto, Welcome Break, Roadchef, Extra and Westmorland -  VisitEngland conducted four waves of assessments and awarded the 71 participating MSAs with their appropriate star rating.

Using consumer research, criteria were set that would assess areas that consumers had indicated as important to them when using MSAs.  Areas of particular importance highlighted in the research and included within the assessment process are:  the range of food on offer and its overall presentation; the cleanliness, both overall and in particular the toilets; service and general attitude of staff and the types of products sold in the retail outlets.

THE TOP PERFORMING AREAS

James Berresford VisitEngland’s Chief Executive commented:

“Motorway service areas form an important part of the journey many visitors to England take to reach their end destination and as such contribute to the visitor economy of this country.  It is important, therefore, that the welcome visitors receive, and the quality of services on offer at motorway service areas adds to the visitor’s overall holiday experience.”

Roads Minister, Mike Penning said:

“I fully support the introduction of the Quality Award Scheme. An independent and voluntary star rating scheme that informs road users of the quality of service at roadside facilities will improve choice for all road users, and will encourage drivers to take frequent breaks on long journeys.

“Motorway service areas help to keep drivers and passengers safe by providing a place to rest and refuel so I want to make sure they provide the best possible service. That is why I am investigating how we can reduce regulation, increase competition and improve the quality of service areas.”

The team of independent assessors will visit each of the motorway service areas annually.  Each site will receive three full visits and three face to face de-briefs with the onsite management team.

The government published its rather grandiosely named Protection of Freedom Bill last week. It covers a whole tranche of proposals including, among other things, cutting back the CRB system, destruction of DNA samples retained by the police and reducing the maximum time someone can be detained without trial. But it also contains a section on parking enforcement, which will affect the way that MSA operators do it.

The section on parking covers two main things. Firstly, it bans wheelclamping and impounding, which aren’t really relevant here as MSAs don’t use them. But the other major change is that in future, parking operators will be able to recover unpaid parking costs (including penalty charges) from the registered keeper of a vehicle, not just the driver. That gets rid of the commonly-used loophole whereby a notice is sent to the keeper, who then declines either to pay or to name the driver, leaving the parking operator at a dead end. Once the new law is in place, if the operator can’t get their money from the driver, then they will be able to get it from the keeper even if the keeper wasn’t driving at the time.

On the face of it, that’s good news for parking operators (including those at MSAs), and potentially bad news for people who have, in the past been able to exploit that loophole. But this new ability comes with some conditions, and one of the conditions is that it can only be used where a notice has first been given to the driver. And the law stipulates that

A notice to the driver must be given before the vehicle is removed from the land in question (and while it is stationary) by affixing it to the vehicle or by handing it to a person appearing to be in charge of the vehicle.

What that means in practice is that the ability to pursue the registered keeper can’t be used where enforcement is solely by means of ANPR cameras with automated notices sent by post afterwards. To be able to recover charges from the keeper, the car (or the driver) has to be ticketed while on the premises.

So, MSA operators are going to have to make a decision here. If they want to be able to recover parking charges from the registered keepers, then they will need to change their practices. Instead of using ANPR technology, they will need to have parking attendants on site and actually handing out tickets. Alternatively, they can stick with their current system and accept that parking charges are effectively unenforceable, since they have no legal means by which to obtain the identity of the driver.

It will be interesting to see which they choose.

The Sunday People printed an article about the “Ten Worst Motorway Services” last weekend, which was picked up be several other media outlets and led to me being interviewed on a couple of BBC local radio stations, Kent and Surrey. BBC Radio Kent had done an interesting vox pop as part of the feature where they spoke to people at a local MSA (not sure which one, but I suspect Maidstone) and asked them what their main complaints were. Unsurprisingly, I supppose (but worth noting, given that their audience is probably somewhat different to that of the website), their complaints were much the same as those here – prices and cleanliness.

The next day, BBC Radio Surrey asked me what I thought the main complaints were and what the operators could do about it. My response, in the nutshell soundbite allowed for on radio, was cleanliness and parking. Coming back to the website admin system to check for new comments, I was reminded again that Moto seemingly have made it the job of one of their staff to check for parking complaints here and continually tell people about the appeals procedure. It’s certainly an issue which generates a lot of traffic in the comment system.

So, what do I think the operators ought to do to improve their reputation? I think that most MSA users, while they grumble about the prices, are generally willing to accept that it’s the price (literally) that they pay for the convenience of just being able to pull off the motorway and stop rather than having to leave the motorway and hunt for somewhere that’s both open and offering what they want. What they don’t accept, though, is being treated unreasonably when they actually do use an MSA. So this is my open letter to the MSA operators, based on my own experience of service areas and the comments on this website, with my suggestions about how to improve things.

Firstly, cleanliness. Yes, I know that a lot of your customers are their own worst enemies in this respect. I’ve been at an MSA and watched a family finish their burgers in the outside seating area and then just drop the wrappers on the floor rather than walk 30 yards to a bin. I’ve seen brain-dead smokers drop smouldering cigarette butts on the path just outside the door. So you have my sympathy. A lot of your customers are antisocial at best and positively malevolent at worst. But not all of them. Not even most of them. And by letting the antisocial ones spoil it for the rest, you’re colluding in it. By not clearing up litter, the message you give is “dropping litter doesn’t matter”.

The same applies to the toilets. Yes, keeping them clean is hard, especially when they’re abused. But, again, by letting them deteriorate you’re encouraging people not to care by giving the impression that you don’t care either.

Secondly, parking. I think most people would accept that it’s fair to pay for parking beyond the standard free period. But don’t make it a rip-off. Don’t make people pay for 24 hours if they’re only going to be there for three or four. Let people pay for exactly what they’ve used. If someone comes in for a break and stays for two hours thirty minutes instead of two hours, then let them pay for the thirty extra minutes before they leave.

Make it easy to pay. Have machines in the car parks (yes, in the car parks – not some obscure location inside the building) that people can put real money, or credit cards, into. Payment by phone is fine for geeks and gadget addicts, but most of your customers don’t fall into that category. In any case, a lot of people (including myself) who are geeks and/or gadget addicts are reluctant to give away our mobile phone numbers to an organisation we don’t know and trust.

Stop using ineffective ANPR systems to monitor parking – probably the biggest source of complaints about these is that they fail to distinguish between multiple visits in one day. Saying that people can appeal isn’t the answer – the answer is to fix the problem which is generating spurious charges!

My suggestion would be to install barriers on the car parks and use the pay-on-exit system similar to many municipal car parks. If people leave before the two hour free period is up, they get charged nothing. If they leave later than that, they pay for exactly what they’ve used. No arguments, no spurious charges, no excess penalties for a relatively short overstay. If that’s not practical, then use the old-fashioned method of dispensing tickets from a machine and having them checked by parking attendants. Either way, requiring people to jump through hoops to pay and then penalising them over the odds when they don’t is simply unacceptable.

Any chance of these suggestions being taken on board? It would be nice to think so. Maybe some of the newer and smaller operators could have a go at shaming the big three by adopting a more user-friendly approach. Or maybe it will take a mass revolt by customers to force a change. If you get a parking ticket, then appeal. Always appeal. Bog down the appeals process in so many complaints that it becomes obvious the system needs to change. After all, Heather and Gareth need to have something to show for their efforts here in pointing people towards it.

Regular visitors will have noticed that the site looks a little different. I’ve been wanting to rewrite the underlying code that the site runs on for a while, as this is one of my oldest websites so as well as being out of date by current standards it’s got progressively cruftier below the surface over time since it was first created.

So, I’ve finally found the time to rewrite it completely. All the original code has gone, the new system is based around a modular, object-oriented design that uses the same underlying code as some of my newer sites such as BritishListedBuildings.co.uk.

In the process, I’ve taken the opportunity to clean up the visual design a bit as well. It isn’t radically different, but I’ve switched to a fixed-width layout in place of the previous fluid one (yes, the web-design purists will be aghast, and no, I don’t care) and moved the Google adverts to the top so that the main content of the page has more space. I’ve also increased the default font size a tad, and utilised some cool Web2.0-ish  tricks for the comment and update forms. The site also uses textual URLs throughout, in place of the old “area=23″ style URLs. Don’t worry if you’ve got the old ones bookmarked, though, they’ll redirect to the new ones.

Some of the features that have disappeared will return once I’ve written the new code for them, but some have gone for good. I do, though, have some plans for newer features that i think will be more useful.

One new feature that I’ve already introduced is the ability to rate MSAs on how good they are for caravanners, truckers and families as well as giving the usual overall impression. With the closure of the Motorway Parking for Caravans website, there’s a gap there for information of that type and I though to would be useful to offer ratings for other user groups as well. I may extend this later, if there’s enough demand.

Another new feature is the inclusion of OS maps and Bing maps as well as the usual Google maps – these give different aspects to the view and I think that offering alternatives will be useful.

I’ve also made the decision to include Irish MSAs in the listings. I didn’t originally intend to extend the scope of the site beyond the UK, and I still have no intention to include sites from mainland Europe, but Ireland seems a natural fit for the website as the language and culture are broadly the same.

It goes without saying that any changes are likely to throw up bugs, so if you see anything that isn’t working correctly then let me know – preferably by posting a comment to this blog thread. Any other opinions, complimentary or otherwise, are always welcome.

It’s been widely reported in the media today that the proposed Gloucester Gateway MSA has been given planning permission. See, for example, this report in The Guardian, in which motorwayservices.info gets a brief mention,

Normally, a new MSA wouldn’t warrant much in the way of comment, but this one seems to be different. For a start, it’s been very controversial locally – there’s been a strong campaign against its construction from local residents who fear that it will be a blot on the landscape (although, to be fair, there’s been an equally strong local campaign in its favour, on the grounds that it will be a much-needed economic bost to the area).

What’s more interesting, from the point of view of the travelling public, though, are the organisations behind the proposal. Gloucester Gateway Services (to give it its working title, the official name hasn’t yet been decided) won’t be run by one of the “big three” operators, or even by the up-and-coming Extra MSA group. Instead, it’s a joint venture between a local organisation, the Gloucester Gateway Trust, and Westmorland, operators of the Tebay services. Like Tebay, the new site won’t be reliant on national franchise burger and coffee bars, instead, it will operate the restaurant and shop entirely under its own brand name (whether that’s Westmorland or a new brand is, again, yet to be decided) and obtain as much food as possible from local sources.

Independently-run MSA aren’t entirely novel – apart from Tebay itself, the new Stop24 services at Folkestone aren’t operated by one of the major chains, and Cairn Lodge operates Happenden on the M74 in Scotland. But the link beteen a local organisation and Westmoreland is unusual, and it’s also notable for being Westmorland’s first venture outside their home territory.

The Tebay services have, ever since their construction, won praise from the media and regular travellers for their ambience and quality. But I suspect that comes, to a large extent, from the MSA cognoscenti who value Tebay primarily because it is different. But the major operators aren’t stupid, the reason they have national franchises on board is because their market research tells them that that’s what their customers want. The risk for Gloucester Gateway’s operators is that Mr and Mrs Average and the kids on the way home from holiday, or Mr Mondeo Man on his way to the next appointment, will skip Gloucester Gateway and continue to Strensham because what they really want is a burger or a coffeee, and Strensham will offer them that from a recognisable brand name while Gloucester Gateway will be an unknown quantity.

The same applies to Tebay, of course, but when you’re regularly winning awards for being the best MSA on the network then you can afford the downside of not having well-known brands. But only one area can be the winner, and if that continues to be Tebay then Gloucester Gateway will merely be another MSA with nothing special to set it apart – other than the fact that it doesn’t have national brands.

On the other hand, if Gloucester Gateway is a success, then it may well spawn many more that are similar. While the branded franchises of the major operators may suit a large proportion of the travelling public, they clearly don’t appeal everyone – just look at the comments on motorwayservices.info, for example – and there probably is a market for MSAs which deliberately set out to offer something different. The key question, therefore, is whether or not that market is big enough. Gloucester Gateway may well go some way towards answering that.

There’s a good article in today’s Observer magazine in which comedian Alex Horne talks about his “secret love affair” with motorway services. Motorwayservices.info gets a mention, as do some of our contributors.

A motorway service station may not sound like a key election battleground, but according to psephologists, service stations – or rather, the people who regularly use them and live near them – hold the power to swing the outcome on 6 May.

At least, that’s the claim made by the BBC’s Newsnight programme, in an edition broadcast on 7th April. The reason, according to Experian’s Bruno Rost, is that

They tend to live in new housing, on the periphery of small provincial towns and cities, within easy access of the motorway networks.

They’ll have new cars, houses full of all the new gadgetry like Blu-ray and HD. They’re also driven by personality politics and the next new thing. They voted for Blair in 1997. In 2010 they’re inclined towards the new man on the block.

Apparently, these voters represent 15% of the vote in key marginals, which means they can easily swing the election.

So, what do you think? I’ve created a new poll on the main site asking which party you think will do a better job for MSA users. Please take a moment to vote, and add your comments to the debate!

The Highways Agency has just published a report into the provision of motorway service facilities in the UK, and it’s worth reading if you’ve got a bit of time to spare. I was, however, much amused by these paragraphs in the National Report PDF:

There is no official database of MSAs available therefore it was necessary to perform a desktop study in order to identify the locations of such sites on the Motorway Network.

The desktop study used online aerial mapping sources to identify the locations of service areas on the Motorway Network. The information was then cross-referenced with conventional mapping to establish the names of the MSAs. Thus a comprehensive list of MSAs in England has been produced. As an additional check, information was cross-referenced with unofficial internet based guides to MSAs – motorwayservices.info and motorwayservicesonline.co.uk.

It’s nice to know that we’re providing a useful service to the Highways Agency!

This was one of the comments waiting to be checked this morning:

Why don’t you put  a note on your site referring drivers who are being ripped off by Private Parking Companies that they may wish to visit moneysavingexpert.com or pepipoo.com for advice before making their payments. Or are you, as I suspect, less ‘independent’ and less driver/customer orientated than you let on.

Apart from the unjustified paranoia (the fact that we don’t link to your favourite websites doesn’t mean that this site is any less independent), there’s a fair point there. The penalty charges incurred for overstaying your welcome at MSAs are, in many cases, probably unenforceable. So, for those who wojuld like to read more on the subject, then I would recommend this page:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/private-parking-tickets

What I wouldn’t recommend, though, is taking advice from unqualified conributors to various website forums. In particular, the other website mentioned above – pepipoo.com – is one that I’d avise you to steer well clear of.  Although it does contain a lot of good, accurate advice, there’s also a vast amount of dross posted in the forums by well-meaning but ignorant bar-room lawyers. Unless you’re capable of telling the difference between the good advice and the rubbish, then don’t go there – and if you can tell the difference, then you probably don’t need to!

If you’re looking a for a forum in whch to discus legal matters (including parking, clamping, etc), then my suggestion would be to forget the web and go to Usenet instead. The uk.legal.moderated newsgroup has a high proportion of intelligent, informed contributors and you’re far more ikely to get good advice there than on any web-based forum.

I’ve taken advantage of some spare time over the holiday period to add the ability to view larger versions of the photos on the site. This only works for ones submitted in the last year or so, as before that I didn’t keep a copy of the original photo submission due to space constraints. But, for those where I do have a copy of the full-size original, it’s now linked from the standard images under the “Photos” tab – if the icon changes to the “link finger” when you mouse over an image on the Photos tab, then it’s clickable and the link will show the large image.

For an example, go to the Photos tab for Beaconsfield services and you’ll see that all the images are clickable and lead to the larger version.