Decriminalised parking enforcement is a common subject which is often splashed all over the newspapers, and the public may therefore be forgiven for thinking there is not a lot of good to be said about this industry. However, the BPA's new president Peter Guest is planning to use his time in the post to focus more on the positive aspects of the parking industry. He wants to move the organisation away from talking solely about decriminalised parking and onto off-street issues and the positive moves the industry is making to improve parking provision.

"My strong desire is to move us away from talking just about DPE," he says, stating that too much of the coverage has been 'sensationalised' and 'not terribly well informed'.

"We need to look at the provision of parking. What do we do about improving standards and quality and providing people with what they need?

"I said in my presidential opening that I want to talk about standards and training and structures and less about DPE."

Guest has a long history in the parking industry. As a graduate mathematician, in 1972 he got a job with the Greater London Council working on a traffic study and was there for 14 years. He then moved to consultancy MVA where his focus shifted away from the capital and onto the world's view of parking. In 1997, after 10 years with MVA, he moved to Hill Cannon before setting up his own private consultancy business in 2003. Guest was inaugurated as president of the BPA on July 11, and when Shopping Centre met with him last month he was certainly rushed off his feet. Having just returned from Abu Dhabi where he is implementing their first ever controlled parking scheme, he was set to jet off to Chicago for a conference in a few days time. And time is certainly not going to stop still for Guest during his year as president, as along with holding down a day job, Guest wants to bring a number of issues to the table.

As a member of one of the European panels, Guest is planning to start a debate about design standards in the parking industry.

"We are creating a car park to last for 50 years based on a car of five years," he says. "When we design the next car park, if I am going to do my job properly I have to have a view of what the car in 2050 will be like because that structure will be there for 50 years probably."

Guest points out that car parks designed in the 1960s are not suitable for many of today's modern vehicles, which are now bigger than they were 40 years ago. Even the width of car doors may take off around 30cm in terms of available space.

So how does Guest predict what cars will look like in 50 years?

"You can only use you best guess, but what is very important is that people start to design down to the minimum standards for an average car," says Guest. "At the moment people are designing a car park for the average car and to me that means 50 per cent won't fit.

"You have to have a design process where you design to suit the longest, widest, tallest, worst turning car. Maybe taking attributes of the Jaguar, Land Rover and Ferrari. And if you design around that you know everyone will fit.

"You design it so most of the people most of the time find it easy to use and that doesn't mean it has to cost any more."

Guest uses an example of where, after reaching the fourth floor of one particular car park, a sign warned that there was a risk of grounding. At that point it was too late and there was no way out of the car park in his ordinary family saloon without grounding the car on the ramps.

He also stresses that a car park is a specialist building with a specialist function and says it needs a specialist designer. "What I would like to see most importantly is the development industry engaged more with our industry, recognising it is a specialist building with a specialist function," he says.

Guest is also keen to ensure incidents such as what happened at the Pipers Row car park in Wolverhampton, where the structure partially collapsed due to lack of maintenance, do not happen anymore. Despite requirements, since that incident in 1997, for people to prepare a life care programme for their structures, Guest says there are still structures that are not adequately assessed and not being adequately looked after.

Guest wants to raise the profile. "The result of Pipers Row is that if you go into a car park and a piece of concrete falls on you and kills you, someone is going to go to prison for that," he says. "There are a lot of car parks out there where people aren't looking at how they can repair them. Other car parks had a 30-year time line and are now 40-odd years old and people still think it is good enough now and it's not true."

And it's not just on their legal responsibilities that Guest believes car park owners are failing, he also believes a lot of work needs to be done on customer service

He says: "Whether talking about a town centre or a shopping mall, the car park is the front door. If you have a good experience you will come back, but if you drive around a dark and dingy car park with lots of concrete falling off, you won't. We have a lot of work to do and we have to bring the offer up."

The Park Mark award is one area which Guest hopes will ensure an improved quality in car park provision. The award is about safer parking and as such issues such as lighting and cleanliness have to be addressed, but anyone who wins the award must also have a life care plan in place.

"In America if you spend money each year, it's more cost-effective than letting it fall into decline for 20 or 30 years and then doing a major refurbishment," he explains. In the shopping centre environment, Guest says the owners are educated by the retailers and customers voting with their feet.

He also puts a lot of emphasis on the new retail and shopping centre group formed by the BPA, explaining it's a good way for the parking industry to get across to the sector the issues they think need to be addressed but also to understand and address the issues important to them.

"I am very keen to listen," says Guest. "I think I know what the industry needs but I want the retailers and shopping centre operators to tell me what they need and what's important to them. If we have a dialogue we can identify the things we can do something about and those that we can't.

"If you have a car park with marginal profitability and you only have £10 to spend, what's the best way to spend it? The best thing to do is make it structurally safe and secure and people feel better about the place and spend more money and you get positive feedback. It's very simple."

Guest also thinks it is time that a harder form of regulation was introduced. At the moment the industry is almost completely unregulated and there is no ombudsman. The Traffic Management Act has raised the possibility of regulating standards of parking equipment.

"I think it will be interesting to see how far the government takes it," he adds.

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