Hospital parking fees 'prey on vulnerable'

Daily Mail
10:20am 28th March 2006

A cancer charity chief has called for a ban on hospital parking fees saying they shamefully prey on sick and vulnerable patients.
It comes as figures reveal hospital patients are being charged up to £1.5million a year for parking. Department of Health figures show that 12 hospital trusts raised more than £1million in charges.
Chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Relief, Peter Cardy has condemned the fees.
"Raising revenue by forcing cancer patients to pay for hospital car parking is morally wrong," he said.
"It is shameful that the sickest and most vulnerable people have to pay the most. Hospital car parking costs are often the final straw in a long line of extra costs faced by cancer patients."
The figures suggest that one trust, University Hospital Birmingham, raised £1.5million from the fees in 2004-05.
A University Hospital trust spokeswoman has defended the high revenue saying the funds were used the maintain the car park, run a shuttle bus service and subsidise patient care.
Other hospitals to break through the £1million barrier included the Cambridge University NHS Foundation Trust, Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust and Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust.
The statistics were obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act.

Here's what readers have had to say so far.

This is a scandal that should be rectified immediately. It's difficult enough having to visit anyone in hospital, especially if they have cancer, without it also being a financial burden.Patients have little enough pleasure, without their visitors being unable to come as often because of the cost of parking.- Maria Connelly, Lanarkshire, Scotland

Parking fines hit nearly £500,000

Evening Star
26 March 2006

UP to £450,060 has been generated by parking fines since Ipswich Borough Council took over the responsibility for issuing tickets, it emerged today.

Previously, the police were in charge of handing out tickets but the offence was decriminalised last October.

Since the council took over it has issued 7,501 parking tickets.

Those that pay up within 14 days of being given the ticket pay £30 but those who leave it any longer face charges of £60.

Richard Walker, manager of the Ipswich Parking Service, said the scheme has been a success since the council took over and attendants have carried out 32,654 visits.

He said: “Parking matters are now a civil offence and not a criminal one unless the vehicle is causing an obstruction.
“If you measure success in terms of the numbers of notices contravened then it has certainly been a success.
“We are not out to target people but we will catch them if they are doing the wrong thing and parking illegally.
“Our message is clear to people - don't take the chance.”

There are currently 15 parking attendants employed by the council to check parking in the town.

Their positions are funded from penalty charge notices served on those parking incorrectly and not from council tax funds.

Mr Walker said: “If everybody obeyed the rules there would be no funding for the staff but there also wouldn't be the need for any.
“Any money made as a surplus goes back into the community.”

Attendants go around in pairs and work Sundays and evenings as well as during office hours during the week.

RAMSEY TRAFFIC-FLOW PARKING CONCERNS

Isle of Man Today

NOT moving parking spaces after reversing the traffic flow in Ramsey's main street is 'absolutely ludicrous' and potentially dangerous.

That is the view of angry Ramsey Commissioner Edwina Carlile, who fears drivers and pedestrians could be put in danger.
On Sunday the Department of Transport will reverse the one-way system in Parliament Street, but it will leave the parking bays on the same side of the road.
Mrs Carlile believes the parking bays should be been moved to the other side of the road so passengers are not having to step out into the moving traffic to get out of vehicles.
She is also concerned drivers' visibility will be reduced by parking on the right of the moving traffic.'I looked it up in the Highway Code to see if it was illegal,' she said.
'It isn't, but the Highway Code strongly recommends passengers alight on the kerbside – now they cannot do that.
'There may not be a lot of children getting out of cars in Parliament Street, but it only takes a couple and there could be a problem, such as an accident. Also, a driver will not be able to see as well if they are emerging from a parking space on the right of the traffic.'It is absolutely ludicrous.'
The issue had already been raised by the commissioners, but 11 days before the flow was reversed Mrs Carlile asked the board to talk to the DoT again. Clerk Peter Whiteway confirmed he had again raised concerns about the position of parking spaces with the DoT.
A reply from the department said research showed the majority of vehicles which use Parliament Street do not carry passengers and, therefore, there was no increased risk by no relocating the spaces. It added safety might actually be improved by allowing drivers to alight on the kerbside.

It was also pointed out moving the parking was not a simple case of painting new spaces, but could involve lengthy disruption as signs and poles are moved and extensive engineering works – such as redesigning the pedestrian area at the Parliament Square end of the street – are undertaken.Mr Whiteway said the department feels the disruption would outweigh the benefits of doing it immediately. He added DoT has agreed to monitor the parking situation and will act if problems arise.
DoT staff worked overtime on Sunday to get everything in place for the change of the Parliament Street traffic flow.
Signs were reversed to inform drivers of the changes and the police were on hand to help with any confusion.
Department officials said everything possible is being done to let the public know about the change, but some glitches are expected as people get used to the new system.
Planning and schemes manager Jim Davidson said: 'As with anything new, there are bound to be teething troubles in the first couple of days.'
25 March 2006

Parking Profits Are A Disgrace

News and Star
25th March 2006

The revelation that car parking fees at North Cumbria's two main hospitals raised more than £100,000 in the last 12 months is enough to make anyone feel queasy.

At the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven, £49,500 profit was made from motorists last year.

Carlisle's Cumberland Infirmary is paid a fee of £65,000 by the firm that runs its car parks.

Unfortunately, that company declined to tell us how much money it raises from the car park there, or if it breaks even.

We would guess that it does make an annual profit, and that it is more than the £49,500 generated at Whitehaven.

Most visiting times are restricted, so not only do you have the stress of battling through traffic to get there in time, but also the added hassle of making sure you have the change - any change - for the ticket machine.

While we are certain that hospital visitors are not being ripped off, we have to ask the question: Why make a profit at all?

Couldn't the parking operations be run as not-for-profit businesses?

Certainly there are costs to be covered for lighting, maintenance and security.

But anything after that is surely just a tax on illness.

People do not use these car parks to go on shopping trips.

And they should not be fined for visiting a sick or dying relative or friend.

Roadside lifesaver given parking ticket

Ham and High 24
editorial@hamhigh.co.uk

A physiotherapist was given a parking ticket as she fought to save a man's life on the roadside.

Kelly Harry, 29, who works in Devonshire Street, near Regent's Park, had stopped in a 20-minute parking bay in Lewisham when she spotted a crowd around a man.

She realised he had no pulse and used her first aid training to try to revive him until an ambulance arrived.

Returning to find a £100 ticket on her car, she spoke to a warden who said she could not cancel the ticket but would note the circumstances.

But Transport for London refused to cancel the fine despite Ms Harry sending proof of her physiotherapy qualifications and attendance at a CPR course and a supporting letter from London Ambulance Service. Instead TfL increased the fine to £150 because Ms Harry had not paid it on time.

She said: "They said, 'The warden didn't see you give resuscitation so you still have to pay.' I said, 'I can't believe you're doing this.' I was appalled and prepared to go to court rather than back down."

TfL says it has now cancelled the fine however Ms Harry has not yet received confirmation of this.

Council clueless over how to catch £80,000 parking cheat

This is Scotland
ALASTAIR DALTON
TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT

COUNCIL officials have admitted they have no idea how to make Scotland's biggest parking cheat repay his fines.
Sandy Gillespie yesterday bragged about racking up £80,000 in penalties after receiving 472 parking tickets in Edinburgh in less than two years.
However, the city council and sheriff officers have so far been unable to make him repay the massive fines backlog.
The situation has angered motoring groups, which said Mr Gillespie had made a mockery of the parking fines system, and it sent out the wrong message to motorists.
It is understood Mr Gillespie has changed his vehicle six times in an attempt to evade officials.
He is also believed to live with his girlfriend, who is the mother of his daughter, and all the household assets are claimed to be owned by her.
Regulations restrict what sheriff officers can seize in such circumstances, and vehicles cannot be impounded if they contribute to someone's livelihood.
Three years ago, Mr Gillespie climbed into his car with his ten-year-old daughter while it was about to be towed away to prevent the operation from proceeding.
After he was identified as Scotland's worst parking fine accumulator, he said: "There doesn't seem to be anything they can do to get the money off me. I have been getting tickets since I moved here four years ago.
"I am probably nearing 1,000 tickets now and must owe the council around £80,000. It's hard to keep track because I've changed my van a few times to throw the wardens off," he said.
"I was getting two tickets a day and I'd just throw them away. Then the council started lifting my van before giving me a ticket.
"I swapped my white van for the blue pick-up because they didn't instantly recognise it. My new trick is to park down a side street close to a wall so they can't get near it with the tow truck. I have had loads of demand letters from sheriff officers. We've had the bailiffs round but my girlfriend, Tracy, tells them I'm not in."
Sue Nicholson, the campaigns manager for the RAC Foundation, said: "We would all like to get away with parking fines, but for this man to boast openly about it is an insult. People who see him doing this might be tempted to follow his example.
"Sheriff officers should have the power to impound his vehicle - I do not think law-abiding motorists would have a problem with that."
Neil Greig, the head of policy in Scotland for AA Motoring Trust, said: "It is very disappointing they cannot find a way of pursuing him, but they should never have allowed this situation to develop with so many tickets.
"It is very bad publicity for the system - the first high-profile persistent parking offender in Edinburgh seems to be thumbing his nose at them."
Parking fines in Edinburgh are £60, but this increases to £90 if they are not paid within two months. A spokeswoman for the council said it pursued such fines using sheriff officers rather than through the courts.
She said: "We don't comment on individual cases. However, with motorists who flout parking regulations constantly and owe money, the sheriff officers have the power to seize assets and arrange for payments to be deducted from earnings."
Andrew Burns, the council's executive member for transport, said: "We do use every available element of the law to pursue these people, but several of these individuals adopt numerous tactics to avoid full payment, committing other offences in the process. The council does everything it can to stop these serious criminal offences and we will continue vigorously to pursue full and proper payment for what are wholly illegal and unacceptable activities

Parking and Travel Appeals Service 22.3.2006

Mr. Greg Knight: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the work of the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service. [60146]
Dr. Ladyman [holding answer 21 March 2006]: I think the hon. Member may be referring to the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service (PATAS).
PATAS provides the independent adjudication service for deciding disputed parking and bus lane penalties charged by London borough councils and Transport for London (TfL) and congestion charging penalties issued by TfL.
PATAS has a team of Adjudicators who decide the appeals and can direct London Borough Councils and TfL to cancel Penalty Charge Notices. The adjudicators are independent solicitors or barristers of at least five years standing and their decisions are binding on both parties. They are appointed by the Association of London Government's Transport and Environment Committee ALGTEC who are also responsible for paying their salaries.
Parking Tickets
Mr. Greg Knight: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what steps he takes to monitor the number of parking tickets issued illegally by each local authority; if he will take steps to reduce the number; and if he will make a statement. [60148]
Dr. Ladyman: It is for local authorities to ensure that Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) are issued in accordance with primary legislation, Regulations, local Traffic Regulation Orders and on-street signage. A Local Authority Circular 1/95 Guidance on Decriminalised Parking Enforcement Outside London" has been issued to guide them in these duties. Records are not kept centrally of the number of unlawful PCNs issued but it is likely that an appeal against such a PCN would be allowed by the parking adjudicators and local authorities pay close attention to the results of appeals. It is also likely that the local government ombudsman would accept an invitation to investigate a local authority that persistently issued PCNs that were not in accordance with the national and local regulatory framework.
Bugsy, a brown and white lop rabbit, was sitting placidly in his hutch by the kerb in Salford, Greater Man- chester, while the owner of the Eccles Pet Store and Aquarium, Clifford Chamberlain, moved his van off a yellow line after spotting a parking warden. And there the trouble began. The warden, either frustrated by Mr Chamberlain's getaway or encouraged by the wheels on the hutch, slapped Bugsy with a £60 ticket.
The notorious case of the illegally parked bunny won Mr Chamberlain an award for the craziest parking ticket of 2003. It was almost as silly as the fine given to 2004's winner, Nadhim Zahawi, a Wandsworth councillor and the chief executive of pollster YouGov, who received a £100 fixed-penalty notice on his crashed scooter while he was being loaded into an ambulance with a broken leg.
And it doesn't stop there, as the grieving relatives of Marie Fourlla discovered. They emerged from her funeral service at St Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Westminster to find their cortège had been ticketed. Leverton and Sons, undertakers for the late Princess of Wales, said this had happened to them half a dozen times. Lambeth council gave Tom Tennant and Sheron Green tickets after workers painted yellow lines along the roads where they were already parked. Derek Scott stopped to ask one Westminster warden for directions and was ticketed by a second warden with him. Doctors' cars, ambulances and fire engines have all fallen foul of overzealous attendants.
Parking-ticket madness is now the cause of nationwide anger. And to feel it, you only have to go to one of the places where drivers pay for their transgressions, such as the flagship of Wandsworth's chain of Parking Shops, on the fifth floor of a 1970s-style annexe to the borough's town hall. Ironically, the complex is surrounded by a red route. Parking in the council's courtyard is by permit only. It is not clear where "customers" can leave a car while at the "shop".
William Millgate, 33, a plumber, tells a typical story. On a shopping expedition to Putney, south-west London, he left his grey BMW in what he thought was a pay-and-display bay on a street where a parking warden was patrolling. When he returned, he had a ticket. "I'd parked in a residents' bay by mistake," says Mr Millgate. "It wasn't the warden's job to warn me, but he could have." Austin Ince, 46, an electrical engineer, has an even more absurd tale. He was having work done on a wall overlooking his elderly neighbour's driveway, so she parked on the street across the entrance. "I can understand them issuing the ticket. She was on a yellow line," he says. "But you'd think that once the ludicrous situation was explained - that the only person she was blocking was herself - they'd have rescinded it."
Thanks to fines like these, paid by Mr and Mrs Angry Average Briton, the nation's councils are coining it. An estimated eight million tickets were issued in 2004, raising £1bn - 70 per cent more than in 1998. The combined profit in England was £440m, almost double the 1998 figure. Westminster topped the league tables in 2004, issuing more than one million tickets, clamping 45,000 vehicles and towing 20,000. Of the £65m it raised from parking in 2003, more than half was profit. No wonder critics claim that the persecution of motorists has become big business for local authorities.
So is the anger justified, or are we just a bunch of whingers? Have parking fines become a stealth tax, or are they an essential tool for smoothing traffic flow and increasing safety on Britain's crowded streets? To get to the answers we must, appropriately, reverse into the question.
The first parking restrictions were introduced in London in the 1920s. Yet it was not uncommon to find cars double- and even treble-parked in the 1940s. One study found that between 1947 and 1948, traffic accidents rose by 8 per cent, except in areas with parking controls, where they fell by 31 per cent. After meters were installed in London's Manchester Square in 1958, the number of parked cars halved and traffic speeds rose by 16 per cent. Even today, most people have little sympathy for the idiot who leaves his car on a red route at rush hour, and nothing but contempt for the driver who endangers children's lives by parking illegally outside a school.
But the proliferation of rules between the 1960s and 1980s created an onerous duty for the police, consuming time and money that could have been spent on tackling more serious crimes. By the 1980s, enforcement was rare except for the worst breaches. Chief constables wanted to get out of the parking business.
The result was the Road Traffic Act 1991, which decriminalised parking violations, making them an issue for councils, which crucially got to keep any profit they made. By 1996, all of London had switched to the new system and some 140 councils across the country have now decriminalised. Police can push reluctant councils into taking over simply by announcing that they will stop issuing tickets. Leicester is in the middle of such a transition, which is taking longer than the six months' notice given by its Chief Constable. The result has been a degree of chaos, says John Mugglestone, the Tory leader of the city council. "Even the dustbin wagons are having trouble getting round corners because of illegally parked cars."
With the emphasis on incentives over the past decade, the initial blunder made by most councils is at least understandable. Contractors were given performance targets, often measured by the number of tickets written. In the first year, these were easy to meet. So many drivers were used to the lax enforcement under the police that offenders could be found on almost any street.
By year two of the schemes, however, motorists had mostly learnt their lesson. Gross violations fell, and parking wardens had to apply the letter of the law ever more stringently in order to meet their quotas. Better enforcement and more compliance should have led to a declining number of tickets. Instead, the figures soared. The number of penalty charge notices in London rose from four million to nearly six million between 2000 and 2004. "The contractor is under the cosh to provide more and more tickets," says Kevin Delaney of the RAC Foundation.
The hyperactivity of today's parking attendants has resulted in a sharp backlash. Websites such as appealnow.com have been spawned that offer to help people fight tickets. And campaigners have successfully challenged the regulations that underlie parking restrictions. Called Traffic Regulation Orders, these documents specify exactly when, where and under what circumstances tickets can be issued. Many bear little relationship to the signs and lines on the streets. In the past couple of years, councils up and down the country have been forced to repay thousands of improperly issued fines.
But parking problems are not about to go away. The number of vehicles on Britain's roads is rising steadily, from 24.5 million when the 1991 Act was passed, to 31.3 million in 2004. The number of parking spaces is not keeping up. Multistorey car parks built in the Sixties are being pulled down. Where planners used to insist that developers provide two off-street bays for each flat built, now they often limit parking spaces to one. And annual off-street parking charges on some estates have risen much faster than the price of on-street residents' permits, pushing cost-conscious residents' cars on to the road, and reducing the number of bays available for others.
But many councils and contractors are trying to improve. Manchester was one of the worst offenders when Bugsy hit the headlines, but is now being lauded: incentives for writing tickets were dropped when it switched its contract to NCP. It rewarded the company if the number of successful appeals was low, encouraging NCP to get the ticketing right first time. Wheel-clamping was dropped, on the grounds that it kept cars on the street even longer. Westminster, too, has improved, issuing its wardens with digital cameras that make it easier to support legitimate tickets and harder to claim non-existent offences.
But many councils still have a long way to go, as any local paper can show. Christine Parker was one of three to appear in last week's Camden New Journal expressing her "dismay and frustration at the incompetence of traffic wardens". She has been fined twice for parking in disabled spaces, even though her car has a permit clearly displayed. The view of the council, she writes, is that "if the traffic warden did not see it, it was not there". For angry motorists, that sort of attitude isn't good enough.
Ticket tactics: What to do when you are booked
READ THE TICKET CAREFULLY: It should give the date, time and place of the offence and the date of notification. It should identify your vehicle, the rule that has been broken and tell you how to deal with the ticket. If it fails to do these things, it may be invalid.
GATHER YOUR EVIDENCE: If you have a camera phone, take pictures. Ask any witnesses to sign brief statements.
UNOFFICIAL CHALLENGE: Within 14 days, write to the council explaining, simply, why the penalty should be waived.
NOTICE TO OWNER: If the council rejects the first representation, it will inform the vehicle's owner by post, giving another 14 days to pay the discount rate. After that, it will issue a notice to owner.
APPEAL: The "notice to owner" details the grounds on which the owner can appeal. If your case doesn't fit into these categories, you can still challenge the ticket. You have 28 days to file.
ADJUDICATION: If the formal appeal is turned down, you can now turn to the adjudicators, independent lawyers paid for by a 55p levy on every ticket issued. They will talk to you and a representative of the council in person, or deal with evidence you've posted in, and reach an impartial decision. In more than half of cases they back the motorists.
CONTACTS: In metropolitan London, visit www.parkingandtrafficappeals.gov.uk; outside London, visit www.parkingappeals.gov.uk
1 CLAMPED
Moments after a warden slaps a ticket on, the clampers arrive. Ironically, this means the car will be illegally parked for even longer
2 REMOVED
Towing cars that are blocking traffic is one thing, but when all you've done is overstayed the meter, the cost is over the top
3 C CHARGE
The congestion charge has cut traffic in London, but drivers have been wrongly ticketed when cameras have been left on at night
4 PAY AND DISPLAY
Stick your receipt upside down or on the wrong bit of window and you will earn a ticket
5 LINE PAINTERS
Beware! If they paint yellow lines beside your parked vehicle, the traffic wardens will not be far behind
6 HELPFUL SHOP ASSISTANTS
With the warden around the corner, it is a race to your car. But helpful store staff may bring your purchases to you
7 CCTV CAMERAS
Pull into a parking bay, read the sign, realise you can't stay, pull out again. You may still be posted a ticket by an automatic camera
8 WARDEN WARNINGS
Some shops have started installing cameras that let patrons watch out for approaching parking wardens
9 PARKING ATTENDANT
Underpaid, even if they are on commission. They have so little room for discretion that it is not worth arguing with them
10 BROKEN METERS
Don't expect any sympathy if they don't work. Leaving a note saying you paid won't let you off a ticket
11 RUSH HOUR RESTRICTIONS
It may be OK to park here now, but not in half an hour. Some bays change status as often as five times a day
12 WHEELCHAIR ACCESS
A dip in the kerb usually means access for vehicles or the disabled, even if it is not marked. Park here at your peril
13 LOOK OUT!
One of the best defences against unfair ticketing comes from drivers warning each other that parking attendants are near
14 RESIDENTS' PERMITS
Being entitled to buy a permit doesn't mean you can park wherever you want. Make sure your permit is displayed properly
15 RED ROUTES
Don't even think about stopping here in rush hour. If you do, you deserve the fine you will almost certainly get
16 DOUBLE YELLOW LINES
Old, faded and patched lines may not be legally valid, but you will still have the hassle of disputing a ticket
17 DISABLED BAYS
Even with a blue badge visible, disabled drivers are often given tickets for using the bays reserved for them
18 HIDDEN SIGNS
Keep a sharp eye out when parking for signs obscured by trees or lorries. Not seeing the sign is never an excuse
19 LOADING
Don't take too long bringing that piano down the stairs. Parking wardens are not renowned for their patience

Drivers' blockade fury at parking fees

Mar 22 2006
By Roland Hughes,
Daily Post

ANGRY car owners last night blocked off a major road in protest against charges for parking.
Parking charges across Denbighshire are to be brought up to the same level, with a £65 annual cost for long-term users.
But residents of Corwen, who rely on free parking in the town centre, are angry they will be made to pay to park.
One dad claimed the £65 annual charge - equivalent to £1.25 a week - was an extra tax on car owners.
Protesters brought a section of the busy A5 road in Corwen to a standstill with their cars just after 6pm yesterday.

Plans approved by Denbighshire's environment scrutiny committee in January brought all council-owned car park costs in the county up to the same level.
Parking will now cost up to 40p an hour in every town, similar to other counties in North Wales.
Three car parks in Corwen - near the A5 in the centre, off Green Lane, and what is known as the Pavilion car park - will have charges,, having previously been free.
Residents say they will have nowhere to park cars free.
More than 70 cars parked on both
sides of the A5 passing through Corwen last night, making it virtually impossible for traffic to pass for more than half an hour.
Dad-of-four Andy Ballard, a Tesco lorry driver, led the protest.
Mr Ballard, 47, who is also a retained firefighter, said: "If you put car parking charges here, the majority of people will have nowhere else to go. These are the only places we can go.
"It's the equivalent of slapping a £65 increase on our council tax.
"It is a deprived area, and businesses are struggling. Everybody you speak to says it is an absolutely ridiculous thing to do and that it will kill the town.
"If you have family coming to visit, they will have to pay a parking fee.
"It's not fair for us or anyone." Councillor Eryl Williams, lead cabinet member for environment, said the charges would ensure "fair play throughout the county."
He added: "At the end of the day, these charges will result in everyone being treated the same throughout the county and extra income coming in which can be used to fund services."
Denbighshire officials believe the new charges will bring an extra £125,000 a year.

Calls for better town parking

Hailsham News
Anna Bailey
22nd March 06

HAILSHAM Town Council has voted to back a motion to Wealden for better car parking facilities in the town.
Councillor John Blake put forward a motion to ask the district council to implement a strategy and action programme for the future provision of car parking facilities in Hailsham.
Cllr Blake said, "We are concerned about the growing pressure of demand on public car parks in Hailsham, which is likely to increase still further with all the planned new developments in and around the town. Parking problems in Hailsham have got markedly worse of late and I have seen cars queuing up to park and tailing back on to the road causing traffic problems.
"I myself have gone down to the long term car parking area in search of a parking space and found it full, whereas in the past this wouldn't have been the case; or have driven round Hailsham at certain times of the day looking for a space and I haven't been able to find one."
Cllr Blake said his main concern was that the situation would only get worse with the new statutory local plan recently adopted by Wealden effectively meaning that 1,200 new homes would be built in and around Hailsham."Those houses will generate between 3,000 and 5,000 extra trips a day, not all of which will be in and around Hailsham, but a considerable amount will be.
"The county council always looks for contributions from major developers for schools and doctors and other essential services, and in my view the developers should actually make some contribution towards the extra car parking needs their developments will generate.
"I think that in looking at it, it is clear there is an issue with parking in Hailsham which needs to be and should be addressed by the district council and it would carry more weight if it had the backing of the town council."Cllr Blake's motion was supported by other members of the town council, including Cllr Nigel Coltman.He said, "I fully recognise that Hailsham is becoming overcrowded with cars.
"Apart from the parking issues and the effect on trade, it also doesn't make sense to me from an environmental point of view.
"I fully welcome this motion and I feel that we are going to have to bite the bullet."

Purge on disabled parking cheats

BBC News
Wednesday 22 March 06



Rogue motorists are using disabled badges for free city parking





Rogue motorists who illegally use bogus disabled badges to park for free in Edinburgh's city centre are to be targeted in a new crackdown.
A fraud prevention officer is being employed by the city council in a bid to catch parking cheats.
The new post will also see drivers, who use residents' parking permits but who do not live in the area, targeted.
The council will also tighten up the criteria for receiving a pass with the new officer monitoring on the streets.
Cllr Andrew Burns, Edinburgh's transport leader said: "Fraudulent use of parking permits is one of the most selfish and inconsiderate acts a motorist can do.
"We will use all available means to vigorously pursue these offenders and are tackling the problem head-on with an on-street fraud prevention officer.
"The majority of residents agree with this approach: 64% believe that we should crack down on those who flout parking regulations, which are there to allow fair access to parking and keep our city moving."
Cllr Burns said that disabled permits were often crucial to ensure people with disabilities could live independently.
"Those who abuse disabled permits were being highly disrespectful and affecting the quality of life of those who genuinely need the permits," he said.

Anger as students and locals compete for parking spaces

Newsquest South East
22nd March 06

Packet chief reporter Paul Armstrong and journalism student Robert Dickins investigate a growing problem in Penryn as the university grows WITH the number of students studying at the Tremough campus in Penryn set to eventually reach more than 5,000, car parking is becoming a contentious issue.
The government's green transport policy is forcing students to park on residential streets resulting in friction between themselves and local people. Students cannot park on campus unless they are eligible for a special permit because of planning restrictions imposed on the university by the government under its green transport policy.
The situation is about to get worse with the university already getting ready for phase two of its development with a new student accommodation "village" all set to be built. By the time phases three and four of the development of the campus are completed it is expected there will be more than 5,000 students on the site.
Some students say they now fear for their safety after their cars were vandalised. In the latest incident Emma Gilbert, aged 18, had all three bolts from every wheel of her car loosened while parked in Tremough Dale. Driving back from Falmouth on Treliever Road the following day one of the wheels came off and became trapped under her car, causing it to skid out of control.
Miss Gilbert said it was a miracle she and her three passengers had all escaped unharmed. "I was so lucky only one of the wheels came off the car," she said. "I could have been killed, it was very scary people just don't realise the harm that they're potentially doing to others. Everyone at the campus is really worried. I just can't believe it's happened."
A week earlier nine students' vehicles were broken into and their radios stolen. One car owner, Sophie Chambers, also had her insurance details thrown into a nearby river.
"It was horrible to see my car like that, I couldn't stop crying," she said. "The doors had been crow-barred open but I was really lucky that the police had fished my details out of the river."
But a week later on February 17 her windows were smashed and her hubcaps removed. Miss Chambers told the Packet: "I need my car here because my grandad is seriously ill with cancer and I may need to go home at the drop of a hat."
Students say there are plenty of empty parking places at the campus site but they are not allowed to use them. They say it's forcing them to park in nearby residential streets, which is causing a multitude of problems not only for the students but also local residents. They say parking is already limited and as student numbers increase, the congestion is only going to become worse.
But university spokesman Martin Horrox said its hands were tied over the number of campus parking spaces they were allowed to allocate students.
He says the campus authorities have been working on behalf of University College Falmouth and the University of Exeter and talking to the office of the deputy prime minister to try and reach a compromise.
It has also been talking to the parish, both the district councils and the county council to try and help residents and students.
"This is a problem Penryn faces for the long term existence of Tremough Campus but the town had parking problems before the university because the town is growing," said Mr Horrox.
He said it depended on the time of the day or the week whether the car parks were full or not but there were far more parking permits issued than there were places to maximise the usage of the car park. One of the car parks was also only allowed to be used for conference visitors and on certain days of the year such as open days.
Only those who lived outside a five mile radius of the campus were eligible for parking permits and this did not include Penryn and Falmouth.
"We spend nearly a £1,000 per working day on subsidised buses for staff and students in the Penryn area and across West Cornwall," said Mr Horrox. "That has an effect on local householders with a sustained and frequent bus service in the area."
In the meantime Miss Gilbert has had a letter from the police saying no further evidence had come to light regarding who had committed the crime and it was not possible to investigate the matter further.

Free Parking

This is Preston
20th March 06

A council blunder has led to a parking free-for-all in a city centre street.

Motorists have been parking in Guildhall Street, Preston, without fear of getting a ticket for nearly nine months despite double yellow lines, a single yellow line and signs clearly indicating no parking or loading.

The situation arose after the city's parking chiefs spotted an error in the street's traffic regulation order during a survey 18 months ago. The survey was part of the preparations for the decriminilisation of parking in September 2004 when parking enforcement was transferred from police to council control.
The error, caused by a legal technicality, meant that although there are all the usual no parking indicators, they are all unenforceable.
And workers and shoppers have been enjoying the a parking free-for-all, right in the middle of some of the city's parking ticket hotspots.
On most working days, there are around 25 cars lined bumper to bumper up the narrow side street, off Fishergate.
But business owners said the situation has caused chaos.
Charlotte Butler, of Spirit Health and Beauty, said: "It's been absolute chaos, it's caused traffic mayhem."
Grace Fraser, of clothing store, G-Funk, said: "I got stuck behind a loading van trying to get into one of the car parks at the back for 45-minutes.
"Some of the businesses are having trouble getting their rubbish collected because the vans can't get up. I've seen bin men walking up the street with the bins."
Margaret Bailey, assistant manager at Preston Health Food Store, said: "It's a pain. Some of our customers are disabled and struggle to get up the street when there's cars parked on the pavement. Pushchairs can't get through and people's wing mirrors are ripped off too."
Mrs Bailey said she could understand the attraction of `free parking' but believed people were taking advantage of the council gaff.
Now, a fresh order has been drawn up by the council to reinstate parking and loading restrictions, and Councillor John Swindells, executive member environment and sustainability will consider whether the order should be made at a meeting at the Town Hall on Tuesday.
If approved, warning signs will be put up in the street to warn motorists that parking wardens will start to give them tickets if they are parked illegally.
Peter Kuit, director of environmental services, said: "An anomaly has been found in the road traffic order for Guildhall Street and will be rectified in the next week.
"In the meantime, we urge people not to park there to help minimise obstructions."

Disabled drivers fined after parking changes

North West Evening Mail
Published on 18/03/2006


NO GO ZONE: Disabled motorists are angry that their allotted parking bay in Crellin Street, Barrow, is now a loading area. Barrow council’s parking manager Caren Hindle (inset) says fines will be given out to enforce the law, to allow vans to unload

TOWN hall chiefs have come under fire from motorists after they changed five disabled parking spaces into a loading bay.
Fourteen motorists have been issued with parking tickets since a section of parking on Crellin Street, Barrow, became a loading bay on March 6.
Fuming drivers have criticised the Crellin Street signage and road markings, which they claim is inadequate.
They also want the borough council to establish a different way to inform people of road changes — such as letters sent to individual houses.
Caren Hindle, parking manager for Barrow Borough Council, said the changes were needed to stop disabled badge holders parking for long periods and preventing vans getting through to unload.

Brian leading bank charge

BRIAN LEADING BANK CHARGE!
Fiona Phillips

TWO things are still really bugging me - excessive bank charges and fixed penalty parking fines.
Let's start with the banks, no strangers to a hammering on this page, and once again in the news for over-charging.
Only this time it's good news, thanks to Brian Mullen. The 29-year-old is a people's champion, a superstar, an absolute hero, after taking on his bank over sky-high overdraft charges.
He took his local Lloyds TSB to court claiming £1,500 of penalties racked up over six years were illegal. Lloyds ignored him, the court ruled against it, and on Thursday bailiffs were due to go and seize the bank's assets.
Wahaaay! So the bank coughed up £2,000 and settled with Brian on Wednesday.
Brian told GMTV: "The charges are wrong because they don't reflect the bank's costs. Many of the ones I paid were £30 charges for letters which probably cost a few pence to send."

Many of us suffer the same rip-off, and banks want to keep it that way.
On Thursday I spoke to someone who works at a bank call centre. She said: "One of our targets is NOT to refund charges when a customer calls in. If we do too many we lose our bonus."
She also told me that rule was only "the tip of the iceberg". Nice, eh?
Which brings me neatly to local council parking schemes which turn the law on its head by accusing us of being guilty until we can prove we're innocent. They're characterised by over-zealous parking attendants slapping penalty charge notices on vehicles to make fat profits for local authorities.
They're supposed to deter drivers from preventing the flow of traffic.
Does arriving back at a parking meter two minutes late really hold up traffic? No. But it does make an extra £40 or more for the council.
Let me introduce Ashley Mote MEP, another hero. Ashley told me about the Bill of Rights of 1689, which states "...that all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void".
He says it's still law today, which means all fixed penalties are illegal.
Ashley says anyone being threatened with a fixed penalty must be convicted of an offence in a court of law first.
If he's right, we have the power to take on the banks and the councils who rob us of our hard-earned cash.
If anyone's brave enough to give it a try, let me know how you get on

£55 fine for not displaying a ticket

LYNETTE ALCOCK
17 March 2006 06:30

A holidaymaker was yesterday ordered to pay £55 by a court for not displaying an 80p car parking ticket that fell from his windscreen.
And last night he promised never to return to the area for a holiday and said he would take his case to the Ombudsman.
Charles Glover parked for just five minutes in Newgate car park in Beccles during a short holiday to Suffolk.
But despite having bought a ticket, he was issued with a £55 fine from Waveney District Council for not displaying it, after he claims it fell from the windscreen into a footwell.
Thinking it would be an easy mistake to rectify, Mr Glover who works for Warwick District Council took the ticket to the council's offices in Lowestoft to prove he had paid.
But the council refused to back down saying the fine was for not displaying the ticket, and whether he produced a valid ticket or not was irrelevant.
Yesterday, after seven months of correspondence between the 52-year-old and the council, he returned to Waveney to appear before Lowestoft magistrates charged with failing to pay the £55 charge.
Speaking before his plea, Mr Glover said: “I think this is unjust, I am
being penalised even though I had bought a ticket just because it had fallen off the screen.
“I stuck it to the windscreen, I couldn't keep going back to check every five minutes, I was on holiday.”
Linda Damerell, prosecuting for Waveney District Council said: “At 12.10pmon July 2 the parking inspector in Newgate car park in Beccles saw no ticket displayed in Mr Glover's car and issued a penalty ticket for £55.
“In his view he wouldn't think that the ticket would have fallen off the windscreen.”
Ms Damarell went on to explain that having bought a ticket was not enough,it needed to be properly displayed.
After a short adjournment Mr Glover, who had travelled from his home in Bromsgrove near Birmingham for the hearing, agreed to plead guilty.
He was given an absolute discharge and ordered to pay the £55 owing to Waveney but nothing towards the council's £40 costs.
Speaking after the case, Mr Glover said: “They don't care that I bought a ticket, all they care about is whether it was displayed.
“I feel very aggrieved that I pleaded guilty but it sounded like I would lose whatever, and it is a five hour drive over here. I don't think my wife and I will ever return to Waveney.
“We came down for a long weekend in Corton and had just gone to Beccles for a day to arrange a boat trip. We were only there for about five minutes.
He added: “I asked the people in Warwick council's parking department what would happen, and they said if I produced the ticket to them the fine would be quashed. They give you the benefit of the doubt.
“But with Waveney they even wrote to us suggesting the ticket we had might not have been genuine and that they thought it “unlikely” that the ticket had fallen off.
“But we are not giving up here, I'm going to take the case to the Ombudsman.”

Parking nightmare will put off our customers

March 17th 2006
By Duncan Gibbons

More than 500 long and short-stay places will be lost when developers move on to central sites in Rugby over the next year, leaving just 2,500 places to park.
Contingency plans are being drawn up to combat the problem, including the possibility of car-sharing and park 'n' ride schemes, and asking organisations with private car parks to let shoppers use some of their spaces.
The move comes in the same week as Warwickshire County Council was praised for the success of a car sharing scheme for employees in Warwick.
In Rugby, spaces will be lost when developers move on to Chapel Street for the Asda development, Gas Street for a hotel plan and Craven Road as part of the station masterplan.

Although many of the spaces will return once the work is finished, a recent survey warned demand would still outstrip supply by 2011.
And parking meters will be installed in the town later this year, doing away with years of free on-street parking.
Liz Twynholm, owner of Joto Hobbies, in Lawrence Sheriff Street, said: "There is not even enough parking now - never mind in a few months' time. Lots of customers are saying it takes them ages to get parked.
"If people cannot get parked they will not come, they will go to Coventry, where there is more variety of shops, or Daventry, where they can park for free all day."
Rugby Borough Council asked several organisations if they could offer spaces during the crisis. Rugby School declined; Alstom, in Newbold Road, wants £35,000 a year rent, and Cemex, in Evreux Way, said its car park could be used on Saturdays.

Big changes on parking

Express and Star
The Chronicle
Mar 17, 2006

Parking in Stafford borough is set to be decriminalised after leading councillors backed plans to take on the responsibility of enforcing fines from the police.
The county-wide scheme, which is expected to cost £400,000 to set up, would begin in the autumn next year and could also lead to a residents' parking permit system.
In recent months many people living near Stafford town centre, and in particular the railway station, have complained of commuters clogging up their narrow streets.
At a meeting of Stafford Borough Council's cabinet on Tuesday, member for planning Councillor Doug Davis, said that a residents' permit scheme was now a possibility.
"The process of starting to look at areas for residents' parking zones would start early," he said.
"We will have to consult with the residents without a doubt.
"All in all it is a good thing for the borough."
Leader of the council Judith Dalgarno, added: "It is the opportunity now to address that situation because it is really bad in some areas."
But a report to the council said that the introduction of residents' parking zones would require a high level of enforcement and such a resource would not be available until after the introduction of the decriminalised scheme.
It is believed that the new decriminalised system will require 11 additional parking attendants as well as administration and management staff.
Councillor Davis said he wanted the parking attendants to become the eyes and ears of the council in areas other than just parking.
Litter and dog fouling were matters which the wardens would be capable of dealing with, he added.
"It enables us to have wardens out in the districts — it means we have 11 more people out helping us," he said.
His views were echoed by the member for resources Councillor Mike Heenan.
He said: "We will have people walking the streets looking to see if things are wrong.
"In my ward there are lots of road signs that are dirty or bent.
"The whole street scene will be kept under observation. I see that as the biggest benefit of all."
The estimated £400,000 cost of setting up the scheme is due to be spent on ‘one-off' costs such as painting yellow lines and plotting their locations onto a digital map.
It is possible that these costs will be recouped from individual councils across the county with Stafford Borough Council expecting to pay £77,920.
The council estimates that it will get an extra £31,000 per year from increased use of its car parks, but Councillor Davis said the figure could rise to as high as £50,000 per year.

Parking ruling stands

Barnet & Potters Bar Times
By Alex Galbinski
Thursday 16th March 06

The ruling that effectively labels all Barnet Council's parking tickets invalid will not be overturned or reviewed, the parking and traffic appeals service (PATAS) said last week.
The council had asked PATAS to overturn the ruling in mid-February which said that two tickets given to motorist Hugh Moses in Golders Green were unlawful, partly due to the fact that council penalty charge notices (PCNs) do not state the date of issue of each ticket.
The council argued that its PCNs state the date of contravention tickets are issued when a contravention is spotted and that the decision would cause many of its PCNs to be regarded as non-compliant and unenforceable.
But Austin Wilkinson, PATAS's duty adjudicator, wrote last week: "I nevertheless find it a somewhat curious concept that a legal finding of a potentially widespread failure of compliance with statute in a penal system could possibly be regarded as unduly detrimental to good administration of the council and other London authorities'.
"Surely good administration commences with compliance with the law?"
Parking campaigner Barrie Segal, of web site AppealNow.com, which helps motorists fight incorrect or illegal parking tickets, believes that all the council's parking tickets can now be considered illegal' and not enforceable.
"The rejection document is one of the most important documents to be published in the history of parking," he said.
"The council argues on its web site that the decisions in the original two cases are one-offs and do not affect the validity of its other parking tickets. Yet in its submission to the adjudicator it astonishingly states that if it lost its appeal it would make many parking tickets issued by Barnet Council and other London authorities unenforceable."
Both the council and the Association of London Government (ALG), which funds PATAS, argue that the tickets are valid.
A council spokeswoman said: "We are surprised we didn't get an opportunity to explain our position to PATAS. We feel that a number of the points raised by PATAS are not relevant to our case and we are, therefore, dissatisfied with the decision.
"We are now discussing with our solicitors how the matter might best be further pursued."
The ALG's director of transport, environment and planning, Nick Lester, said: "All cases that come before the independent adjudicators are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
"They are decided on the evidence provided for that individual case. No decision by an adjudicator sets a legal precedent for other cases."
Mr Segal argues that no parking adjudicator has ever contradicted a previous adjudicator's ruling.

Boss sees red over yellow lines

Sunderland Echo
By Jeremy Wicking


Furious motorist Malcolm Storey formed a barricade to stop workmen painting double yellow lines outside his workshop.
And now road bosses are threatening to call in the law over the businessman's protest.
The 54-year-old businessman, who runs C ans M Framing, next to the Stadium of Light, on the Sheepfold Industrial Estate, deliberately parked his car in the road to stop highways workers' doing their job.
He said he was taking a stand because the council had not informed businesses about the new traffic restrictions - claims the council disputes.
Mr Storey, who employs three staff and rented his council-owned small business unit for eight years, said that workers had a notice to paint all of Millenium Way from North Bridge Street.
Mr Storey said: "What's annoying is that I went to a meeting with council officials and the chamber of commerce before the Metro extension arrived. The council said it would let us know if there were ever any changes over parking arrangements and we've never seen anything, absolutely nothing.
"If I had seen something official then I would have disputed it as we've never had a parking problem around here on non-match days. Nobody can understand why the yellow lines have to go down here."
A council spokesman said: "Sunderland City Council has been undertaking an exercise to ensure that lines and signs correspond with traffic regulation orders. As part of that process, it was identified that a section of highway along Millenium Way did not have yellow lines although there was a traffic regulation order in existance covering that section."
The spokesman said restrictions were advertised in November last year, again in January, on lamposts, and there was plenty of alternative parking available nearby.
"The remainder of the yellow lines will be provided at the earliest opportunity and if necessary the police may be requested to remove the vehicles that are obstructing the highway to enable these works to be completed," he added.
Parking campaigner Neil Herron, who has been high-lighting loopholes in the council's parking rules, said: "How many home games are there a year? To me, this shows a complete lack of respect for small city businesses."

Thousands of parking tickets may be unlawful

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
(Filed: 15/03/2006)
Telegraph news

Hundreds of thousands of parking tickets may have been issued unlawfully across England because councils have not followed the proper rules.

Lawyers have advised that penalty charge notices (PCNs) that do not carry the date of issue may be invalid.

One local authority, Sunderland, has agreed to waive about 40 outstanding unpaid tickets on which the date was not displayed. The city has changed the wording on its PCNs after legal advice was received last November that it might have been in breach of the 1991 Road Traffic Act.
Neil Herron, a local campaigner, said 75,000 tickets had been issued without the proper wording.
In a recent case in Barnet, north London, the independent parking adjudicator ruled that two £80 tickets were not issued in accordance with the Act for the same reason.
However, the adjudicator only hears appeals on a case-by-case basis and its decisions do not set a precedent.

Mugged by an anti-crime camera

Times Online
CCTV systems installed to deter street crime are being turned on drivers, write Nicholas Rufford and Jonathan Futrell of The Sunday Times


CCTV images, left, record Jonathan Futrell pausing to pick up a friend in Albert Street. The car is stopped for less than a minute, but the result is still a fine
When a London council decided to locate a CCTV camera in a quiet area of Camden the residents were delighted, especially as its declared purpose was to make the streets safer from muggers, drug dealers, burglars and car thieves. The £25,000 swivelling spy camera made them feel they were at last getting a tangible benefit from Camden’s rising council tax.
But it didn’t take long for them to discover it was going to cost a lot more — in ways they hadn’t expected. The camera proved not very good at identifying suspects lurking in the shadows but it was very good at reading residents’ car numberplates.

Since the Albert Street camera was installed last year its operators have issued 2,558 penalty notices for a range of minor motoring offences, such as double parking to unload groceries or allegedly blocking the flow of traffic.
The fines are part of a fast-spreading “reciprocation” policy that allows anti-crime CCTV cameras in London to be used for traffic enforcement, and traffic cameras for crime control. What began as a pilot study will soon be joined by 13 London boroughs, including Westminster, which already makes annual profits in excess of £30m from the issuing of parking tickets.
Thousands of cameras installed originally to counter terrorism or robbery could end up trapping more motorists than criminals. Indeed, the use of CCTV cameras for traffic enforcement has been so successful it is likely to be taken up nationally. The Traffic Management Act sets out powers for local authorities outside London to use CCTV against drivers and the Department for Transport wants them to do so from 2008.
The number of fines is set to soar. There are many, many more CCTV cameras than traffic cameras. In some urban areas they cover every inch of tarmac. Motorists could conceivably be watched from the start of their journey to their destination and penalised for if they fail to obey a no-right-turn sign or no-U-turn sign, pass a no-entry sign or stop in the wrong place.
Councils are naturally delighted about the prospects for revenue raising; private contractors such as NCP will set up the cameras while the councils watch the money roll in. The disadvantage for motorists is that they can’t escape. Traffic cameras are usually painted bright yellow, but CCTV cameras are often on the walls of buildings and on poles above drivers’ field of vision.
Certainly the residents of Albert Street were sitting ducks. Families coming home with the weekly shop were hard-pressed to find parking spaces (the council had cut the number of residents’ bays in favour of metered parking) and so were stopping alongside cars outside their front doors to unload.
Motorists who pulled up — even for less than a minute — were sent penalty notices for double parking and demands for £100, even though some were stationary for less than the time it typically takes a taxi to drop a fare. One was fined for waiting while another motorist pulled out of a meter bay so that he could slip in. Others were fined for loading up before long journeys.
Emily Windsor, a barrister and Albert Street resident, doesn’t deny she briefly double-parked. Camden sent her pictures with the fine. “My husband was in the car, sitting in the passenger seat. We knew about the camera and thought if he stayed with the car it would be all right. I’m carrying a few boxes and I’m there in the photographs shown carrying them,” she said.

Windsor organised a petition of more than 100 residents but Camden council seemed uninterested, dismissing complainants as a vocal minority.
Tony Parsons works in advertising and has lived in Albert Street for 27 years. “On one occasion we had a car full of shopping, and on another we were trying to unload my elderly mother. There was nowhere else to park so we had to double park, but for just minutes.”
Parsons asked Camden why a camera designed to stop muggings was being used to mug residents. He was told by Mark Roe, the council’s senior community safety officer and one of those who helps administer the scheme: “In order to sustain CCTV in Camden it is essential that funds are secured to monitor and maintain the system. Therefore, there is a reciprocal arrangement that all cameras may be used for traffic enforcement and all traffic enforcement cameras be used for community safety purposes.”
Nick Lester, the director of transport for the Association of London Government, which regulates the use of CCTV for traffic enforcement, justified the cameras on the grounds that they combat congestion. He said most cameras were set up by private contractors but pictures showing alleged motoring offences were checked by council employees and stored for evidence.
So next time you’re dropping off the shopping, don’t forget to smile.

Just what offence have I committed?
I was one of those fined £100 for an alleged traffic offence, writes Jonathan Futrell (pictured). I double parked in Albert Street at 8pm on a winter’s evening with my lights on and engine running.
The time on the top right of the pictures sent by Camden council shows I stopped for 52 seconds to pick up a friend to give him a lift (strangely, Camden supports car sharing). I wasn’t in a bus lane — no buses come down my street, and I wasn’t blocking traffic because there wasn’t any.
In fact it wasn’t clear at all what laws I and other residents accused of double parking had broken. A spokesman for the council said in response to that question: “It’s not a bylaw — it’s in the Highway Code. It’s a parking contravention.” If it is, I can’t find it, and nor could any of the local people I spoke to.
Albert Street is a desirable address between Camden High Street and Regent’s Park, where three-storey white stucco Victorian homes sell for well in excess of £1m. It’s a hunting ground for law breakers, even under the watchful eye of the camera. Could it be Camden is more interested in raising revenue than preventing crime? The council recently backtracked a little, allowing a five-minute loading and unloading period. It remains to be seen whether this is workable for those with infirm relatives or those making deliveries. The concession is not necessarily permanent, nor is it an amnesty for outstanding fines.
The use of CCTV in this way reinforces the impression that councils and transport bodies are increasingly run by people who see motorists as a soft touch — too busy to dispute fines that hurt but which aren’t worth going to court over. Someone, somewhere is raking in a tidy sum.

Tom Conti defends his stance on parking

Ham & High 24

editorial@hamhigh.co.uk

12 May 2006

Where does Tom Conti get off, claiming he speaks for the people? So begins Val Bynner's letter (H&H May 5). I have never made such an arrogant, imbecilic claim. She goes on to suggest that people are swayed by 'clamour and glamour'. That may have an effect when choosing between recordings by Vanessa Mae or Nathan Milstein but it is an insult to people to suggest that in matters politic, they are so easily swayed.People may, however, need encouragement to take their opinion to the ballot box. I simply attempted, by advertising in this excellent paper, to provide that encouragement. I have never been against parking restrictions but I will always be against bullying and state robbery. Camden charges very high rents and business rates, then frightens customers away with spy cameras and parking attendants who give no quarter. Raj Chada, ex-leader of the council, blamed his losses on 'national circumstances'. Wrong. He and his party colleagues caused a large section of residents to feel persecuted so they removed him - and for this I compliment them.Mrs Bynner suggests that I lend my weight to the improvement of state education. I have been doing so for years, but it doesn't get the headlines. She should watch BBC2's The Daily Politics on, I think, June 14.Tom Conti

Parking in London

Parking in London
16th March 06

"If enforcement is to be effective, it needs to be fair. Enforcement must be equitable, proportionate and governed by clear and transparent standards... The system must be democratically accountable, and it must be perceived to be by the public."

The new enforcers: Local authorities and the penalty notice system, Fellows' Associates, 2004

On street with a Westminster Parking Attendant
Is decriminalised parking enforcement about revenue raising or about keeping the streets free of obstructions and providing residents parking?

In February 2005 I spent four hours on street with a Westminster Parking Attendant trying to find out.
You can decide for yourself (as we ticket Royal Mail vans, unmarked police cars, a BT van and a disabled driver and call in the clampers on a driver who dares to pay for 40 minutes of parking in two lots of 20 minutes!)
It is interesting to compare this experience with the rather different (unsurprisingly perhaps) experience of the chairperson of the recent London Assembly scrutiny investigation into Parking in London.

I featured in a recent Saturday Times magazine article about "Britain's Parking Hell" by David Rowan.

BBC 1 aired a "Whistleblower" programme on Wednesday 1 June 2005 at 9pm about decriminialised parking enforcement. We saw prima facie evidence of illegal ticket issue, bribery, corruption and even criminal activity (if only I could say I was surprised...)
Here is a summary!
Channel 4 recently featured a Dispatches special "Confessions of a Parking Attendant," which was rather consistent with my experience. Here is a summary of the Dispatches special.
Not to be outdone, ITV aired a program called "Parking Mad" at 7:30pm on Tuesday 22 March on ITV London. Very interesting viewing! The highlight for me was the council parking attendants sneaking around and ticketing vehicles in a quiet cul de sac at 3am - definitely helping to keep traffic flowing there then, and nothing to do with making money of course!!
Avoiding tickets and your rights when dealing with Council Parking Attendants
Here is some good advice on avoiding parking tickets. Enforcement (particularly by Westminster Parking Services) is now so overzealous you should take care to safeguard yourself and your car by reading these guidelines carefully.
Wanting to pay for your parking and taking every commonsense precaution to park legally is not enough. Read this case study to find out why.
If you do come back to your car to find a Council Parking Attendant in the process of issuing a Penalty Charge Notice (a process which can take several minutes), simply get into your car and drive off (checking first that the attendant is not a police officer or non-council traffic warden!) A PCN issued by a council parking attendant is not legally valid until it is either fixed to your vehicle or handed to you. You may wish to read (and use in any appeal) this letter from Westminster Parking Services clarifying the position.

Consequently, ignore any delaying tactics or scare stories from the attendant (e.g. that if you drive off this will result in a "double" fine) and drive off. If you do later receive a Notice to Owner, appeal the case on the basis that the PCN is illegal because it was not attached to your vehicle or handed to you, and make it clear that you are prepared to take your case to the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service (we are 2 for 2 on such appeals so far! You can read a case study of one of these appeals to find out more about the appeals process)
Do not ask Council Parking Attendants for permission to park somewhere illegal while you do something really important.
The Council Parking Vulture in question or another one of his/her ilk not familiar with your story may very well issue you with a ticket while you are gone.
An insight into the pressures on Council Parking Attendants
In my many discussions with them, I have come to understand that Council Parking Attendants are caught in a sandwich between, on the one hand, revenue-driven pressure from the Council (or the private contractor working on behalf of the Council) to issue tickets and, on the other hand, angry members of the public who believe parking enforcement should be fair and carried out in accordance with common sense.
Many Parking Attendants I have spoken to actually agree wholeheartedly with the latter point of view but feel that they are powerless to do anything about it.
As I understand, the problem starts right at the top. The Council views parking enforcement as a good source of revenue (forget anything they tell you about keeping traffic flowing etc. - that may be a side effect of ruthless enforcement but it's certainly not the primary motivation).
To collect this revenue, they contract their on-street parking services enforcement out to a private company (NCP in the case of Westminster, APCOA in the case of Kensington and Chelsea).

I have not (yet) seen the actual contracts involved but I would not be surprised to learn that there are financial rewards for the contractors based on the number of tickets issued etc. After all, the contractors are private companies in it for the money, while the Councils want to collect as much revenue as possible, so such an arrangement would be mutually beneficial.
This pressure to generate revenue filters down onto the street. In Kensington and Chelsea, supervisors push PAs to issue a minimum of 10 tickets in a shift. In Westminster the situation is far worse, with PAs pushed to issue 15-20 tickets per shift; there are also financial rewards for exceeding targets. Failure to meet a target results in a "discussion" with a supervisor and possible disciplinary action.
Parking attendants are not encouraged to use their discretion and are closely monitored to ensure they issue the maximum number of tickets possible.
Besides having to make a note in their logbooks as to where they are every three minutes, supervisors (who themselves have probably been given operating targets to achieve) patrol the streets; if they see illegally parked vehicles that have not been issued with Penalty Charge Notices, this could result in disciplinary action against PAs who were in the area at the time.
Before their shifts, PAs are briefly by their supervisors on the top targets of the day (e.g. scaffolders' vehicles) and are also told which company vehicles they should and should not target. Bizarrely, for example, in Kensington and Chelsea, BT vans are prime targets, whereas NTL vans are not to be ticketed.
I've heard this from at least three different K&C parking attendants. I'd be very interested to learn how such an arrangement comes about - I bet it's not anywhere in the Road Traffic Act 1991 but I bet it involves a lot of money!!!
Interestingly, compliance officers in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea parking service claim to know nothing about this, blindly insisting "We deal with all parking contraventions in the same manner, regardless of vehicle operator."
Well, perhaps they would like to, but they clearly don't. (17 April 2005 UPDATE: I'm pleased to report APCOA has now been instructed to "review" their policy towards NTL vehicles.)
It is not surprising then that these pressures result in PAs occasionally issuing illegal tickets, and in misleading uninformed members of the public about their rights in order to achieve their targets.
What to do if you receive a Penalty Charge Notice or Notice to Owner
Firstly, familiarize yourself with the the enforcement and appeals process that the Councils operate under.
There is a procedure to follow; it will take many months to complete and there is nothing that can be done to speed it up. The Councils will in general not stir themselves an inch beyond their obligations under the law, and seem to have no procedures in place to cater for common sense objections or queries outside of this framework.
The sooner you understand this and the quicker you learn the procedures the more frustration you will save yourself. I have also put together a case study of the appeals process for your information.
Although it makes for depressing reading initially, do not be put off by the incompleteness of the law and the narrow grounds for appeal that the law seems to offer. Study Section 66 of the Road Traffic Act carefully and read anecdotes of successful appeals to see which paragraphs of the act may be relevant to your case (here is just one example; the web site http://www.parkingticket.co.uk/ contains several others; also check out details of key appeal cases that may apply to you).
If you have already paid your fine, but on reflection now wish to appeal it, all hope may not be lost.
In particular, if you paid the fine by credit card, it may be possible to "charge back" the fine to the council through your credit card issuer (in the same way as you would if you had a dispute with a retailer over goods sold), thus rendering the fine "unpaid". At the very least your credit card company can send a "Request for Information" or RFI request to the Council whereupon they must provide proof that your card was charged legitimately.
By initiating (and later cancelling) a chargeback, I have successfully managed to get my case into the channels usually reserved for "unpaid" fines (i.e. where appeal is a possibility).
If you follow this route, be prepared to receive intimidating letters from the council containing untrue and unnecessarily forceful sentences such as "Enforcement action will continue until payment is received"; this is in fact not true because in the case that you successfully appeal the PCN, no payment is due and enforcement action ceases.
Follow the process - when you receive your Notice to Owner, write to the Council laying out your grounds for appeal, mitigating circumstances etc. and attaching copies of any evidence that you have. Remember the poor souls replying to these letters (generally nice people open to logical argument) get shouted at if they don't turn out 20 to 30 replies a day so lay out your letter clearly and be polite and concise.
If your representation to the Council is rejected (and you receive a Notice of Rejection), you may appeal your case formally through the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service.
The resources below give much more complete information and advice (e.g. in cases of clamping or vehicle removal).
What Council Parking Services need to do
By issuing over 1,000,000 tickets a year, Westminster Parking Services (through its contractor NCP) is making itself pretty unpopular (to put it mildly) with hundreds and thousands of people. Here are some ways in which they (and other council parking services) could improve:
Stop petty and overzealous enforcement of parking rules.
Stop giving inducements/commission payments to parking attendants encouraging them to issue tickets to boost revenue. Schemes such as the one described in this Evening Standard article about bonuses for parking attendants are not acceptable.
Remarkably, this recent BBC news article suggests that some aspects of this practice have now been terminated; however this Times newspaper article suggests ARGOS points are now being used as incentives for attendants who "achieve agreed targets".
Instruct parking attendants to cancel a PCN if a motorist arrives while a PCN is in the process of being issued (Kensington & Chelsea Parking Services do this but Westminster Parking Services do not).
It is a wretched sight to watch a Westminster PA issuing a ticket in the presence of a stunned and confused driver who is convinced they have parked legally; especially when (a) the PA refuses to explain why they are issuing the ticket and (b) the PA omits to inform the driver of their right to drive off (often compounding this omission with misleading statements like "I am sorry you are too late; I cannot cancel the ticket"; instead the PA should say "You are just in time; if you leave before I have attached the PCN to your car or given it to you I will have my supervisor cancel the ticket according to proper procedure.")
Review offences that are nonsensical and/or illogical in terms of traffic management and/or which place PAs at high risk of assault - e.g. meter feeding should only be an offence if the total time purchased exceeds the maximum time allowed (UPDATE July 2005: Well done to Westminster Parking Services for scrapping meter feeding as an offence. Westminster's Cabinet Spokesman for Transport is quoted as saying, "This is an offence which has probably caused more anger and frustration among drivers than any other because effectively we were punishing them for trying to pay for their parking... This rule offended against natural justice and caused no end of conflict on the street and we are glad to see the back of it.")
Stop ticketing the vehicles of scaffolders, telephone technicians, couriers and others who are unavoidably in the area as a consequence of providing services to local residents (UPDATE July 2005: Well done again to Westminster Parking Services for having a policy to not ticket vehicles involved in the erection of scaffolding for health and safety reasons.)
Stop moaning about public reaction to and treatment of parking attendants (also described in this Guardian article) and realise that this results directly from the draconian legislation they are enforcing and the (often pigheaded and oppressive) manner in which the legislation is sometimes enforced. If they doubt the latter, they should consider the case of the Canary Islands where no one minds the parking attendants - because they issue optional fines of 2 euros 50 cents! Even the union UNISON (which represents many parking attendants) suggests that the government should "review parking control methods, to encourage its use primarily as a method of public safety and congestion control, rather than a revenue collection service." As far back as 2002, a UNISON spokesman said "We know some local authorities, or more particularly the private companies working for them, are exploiting drivers and attendants alike in their ruthless pursuit of making money out of fines. This has a knock-on effect on the health and safety of attendants, putting them at even greater risk of violence in an already dangerous job, and this has got to stop". The GMB Union is equally vehement in its condemnation of the status quo. Also some badly trained parking attendants are no angels themselves - they readily lose their temper, hit motorists with their handheld computers, threaten to spit on motorists, attempt to deceive motorists about their rights etc. (I've seen/personally experienced all of this).
Educate the public about their parking rights, and respond quickly and accurately to enquiries (I sent one in to Westminster Parking Services and it took them well over a week to reply; Kensington & Chelsea Parking Services are much better, replying almost instantly).
What Government needs to do
Westminster Parking Services and others are only allowed to act in the way they do because they are exploiting (to the fullest extent possible) the rights given to them under the Road Traffic Act 1991. Government needs to take a serious look at this vague and incomplete piece of legislation paying careful attention to:
Lowering the price of the fines to be commensurate with the offence (e.g. 10 pounds for minor parking offences not causing an obstruction).
Broadening motorists' grounds of appeal.
Placing obligations on Councils to provide adequate free parking where road space is available and not required by local residents, particularly around underground stations in outer London.
Drastically simplifying the morass of parking regulations and making restricted areas more visibile (perhaps by requiring the colour coding parking bays/kerbs to make it obvious which areas are restricted and how they are restricted).
Putting the same kind of time limits and responsibilities on Councils as are placed on the motorist (e.g. a Council must respond to a representation from a motorist within 28 days).
Enshrining in law the right for companies delivering services to local residents to be exempt from parking regulations (unless causing a serious obstruction or where safety is at risk).
In the case of unpaid fines, remove the ability for private debt collection agencies to add "collection fees" to the amount owing.
Investigate NCP's near-monolopy of off-street parking provision as well as NCP's role in enforcing parking legislation in many boroughs - surely a blatant conflict of interest?
Some statistics about parking tickets issued in London
My PCN statistics page shows Association for London Government figures for the number of PCNs issued by London boroughs for every year from 1999/2000 to 2003/2004 inclusive, as well as the revenue (£297.4 million in total) and net profit (£112.6 million in total) on their Parking Accounts. As you can see, generating revenue and income through parking services is a very profitable industry (average 38 percent profit margin) that is growing rapidly in many boroughs (PCNs issued grew by an average compound growth rate of 10% per annum for every year since 1999).
Resources
http://www.parking-appeals.gov.uk/ contains useful information about the enforcement and appeals process in England and Wales.
http://www.parkingandtrafficappeals.gov.uk/ contains a useful guide to the enforcement and appeal process in London.
You may want to read the full text of the Road Traffic Act 1991. This wretched piece of incomplete and woolly legislation is what gives Councils the power to conduct "decriminalised" enforcement of parking offences. Pay attention to Sections 63 through 77 which cover Parking in London, and particularly to Section 66 which covers the issuing of Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs). Paragraph (3) of Section 66 details the exact requirements which a PCN must meet. If it fails to meet any of these then the PCN is not valid.
The London Motorists Action Group is an organisation that aims to stop tax farming abuse by London Councils and Transport for London.
http://www.parkingticket.co.uk/ contains much useful information and anecdotes of successful appeals.
http://www.appealnow.com/ will help you to rapidly appeal a PCN for a small fee. The website also contains a great list of some of the parking-related tricks tried on by councils (see the "Media Links" section).
An interesting Times article about overzealous parking enforcement in London.
Many Islington residents are very upset with the way NCP is conducting parking enforcement there on behalf of the council - so much so they have formed their own protest websites and even a political party!
Video footage of the first meeting of the London Assembly scrutiny investigation into Parking in London held in City Hall on 13 January 2005 (carried out by the Transport Committee) (recommended viewing for those with the time to spare; pay particular attention to many of the extraordinary statements of ex-WCC parking chief Alan Clark. The origins of Westminster Parking Services' brutal regime are pretty clear to see!) A transcript of this first meeting is also available in Word format.
Video footage of the second meeting of the London Assembly scrutiny investigation into Parking in London held in City Hall on 10 February 2005 (a less open and frank affair owing to the borough's threatening legal action early in proceedings and a steady stream of childish and unnecessary comments to the courageous chair from a certain panel member!) A transcript of this second meeting is also available in Word format.
My submission to the London Assembly scrutiny investigation into Parking in London.
The Association of London Goverment's submission to the London Assembly scrutiny investigation into Parking in London. The main body is filled with carefully chosen words (some of which are actually quite informative) and highly selected statistics, but the tables of figures and graphs in the Appendices (regarding PCN volumes, parking account profits, and volumes of vehicles clamped and removed) speak for themselves!
A very interesting report "The New Enforcers: Local authorities and the penalty notice system" by Fellows' Associates and the Improvement and Development Agency. Highlights some key problems with the way in which local authorities enforce penalty notices (for a variety of offences including parking) and makes some excellent recommendations.
The Freedom of Information Act makes it possible for anyone to request information (including information related to parking enforcement) from local authorities as of January 2005. More information is available from the Information Commissioner's Office. A case study of a parking-related FOI request will be published here soon.
Is Angle Grinder Man a nut or a super hero?
My long lost twin brother has set up a business in the US challenging parking tickets - the videos in the "Press Coverage" section are worth a watch!
My home page

No power to curb parking

Express and Star
By Rebecca Jones
Mar 11, 2006

Police are powerless to enforce a parking ban at Bewdley's £500,000 showpiece square - because residents say yellow lines would ruin the look of it.
There are now fears the square will become nothing more than a car park because of the campaign to protect its York stone.
Police say physical barriers - such as bollards or benches - are needed to keep cars off. However, these have so far been rejected as they could get in the way of the new flood barriers on Severn Side South.
Although yellow lines will be painted along Severn Side South, the civic space will not be included as it would ruin the look of the York stone and the new paved area.
Bewdley Mayor Liz Davies said: "I will be raising the matter with the police we need their help to stop people parking there."
However, traffic management officer Pc Julian Turner said: "Basically, they have designed as a car park and without lines the restrictions are unenforcable."
He added that the force would normally be consulted before any alterations well in advance by the county council, but on this occasion police were only contacted at the beginning of September when the scheme had already been designed and constructed.
Meetings were requested with the Environment Agency, highways and councillors at which various options were put forward, including bollards and signs directing traffic to the main car parks.
Police say that without yellow lines, bollards, planters or seats across the civic area, a parking ban will be unenforcable.
Pc Turner said: "The police support a scheme for removable bollards, which would allow the Environment Agency access to erect the flood defences in an emergency without the need to remove parked vehicles."

Council fines charity for illegally parked bank

Bucks Free Press
By Rachel Sixsmith
10th March 2006

A CHARITY that recycles old clothes and shoes has come to blows with the council after one of its immovable recycling banks was slapped with a parking ticket.
Traid, which stands for Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development, had a recycling bank in Bridge Street car park, High Wycombe.
But last August the bank was illegally sat in a parking bay because the charity had put it there by mistake.
At the end of that month Wycombe District Council (WDC) told traid about its mistake and asked for the bank to be moved "asap".
Traid says it did just that and moved the bank within 24 hours but it still received a fine of £136 for the unauthorised use of a parking spot.
Kelly O'Connor, traid's recycling development manager, said: "What a shame that traid has to pay a fine for what was a genuine mistake that was rectified immediately.
"The £136 that traid is paying Wycombe District Council could be used for much better causes such as the Asian Earthquake Appeal, or one of traid's long-term overseas development projects."
The charity still hasn't paid the fine and wants the council to drop the charges in light of the fact that the penalty money could go to a good cause.
All of the clothes and shoes that people drop into its banks are sold off in its charity shops and the cash raised is donated to some of the poorest countries in the world.
But WDC is not budging and is even threatening legal action if the charity which has recycling banks in Tesco car park in Loudwater and Budgens in Flackwell Heath doesn't cough up.
It also says that traid got off lightly because it was only charged for the loss of revenue from the parking spot and not fined a hefty £60 a day.
Catherine Spalton, a spokeswoman for WDC, said: "The charity was advised that the council would seek loss of revenue from the car parking space, which at that time amounted to 18 days at the standard daily rate.
"It took the charity a further ten days from the time that they were notified to remove the clothes bank from the car park.
"Wycombe District Council sent an invoice to traid for the total of 28 days occupation of a parking bay at standard daily rates £5.50 Monday to Saturday and £1 on Sundays in the former Bridge Street car park, as opposed to a standard penalty notice of £60 per day.
"This was neither a fine nor a parking ticket."