PARKING HIKE: Will you share a car to station?

Peterborough Today

CAR sharing groups are to be set up to help commuters combat GNER's huge increase in car parking prices.
Hundreds of people have signed The Evening Telegraph's Great Train Parking Robbery petition to say they cannot afford the railway operator's 82 per cent rise.
Travel experts say the solution is for people to share lifts into work each day so they can split the cost of parking with other passengers.
However, many people say they are in a Catch 22 situation because they live in areas too remote to share a lift.
Gary Tall (39), a commuter from Shepeau Stow, near Crowland, said: "I don't want to have to wait an hour for a bus or for someone to pick me up and then spend another hour on a train to London. I live too far out for this."
Despite people's concerns, Peterborough City Council says commuters could turn an expensive parking ticket into a big saving if they start to carshare.
It is urging people to visit the council's Travelchoice website, www.travelchoice.org.uk, where people can view potential matches and arrange to share lifts by clicking on the carshare logo.
Workplace travel plan officer for the council Nicola Francis said: "Rail passengers are ideally placed to switch to car sharing."
She added that contact details are kept secure at all times and tips are given about personal safety.
Since GNER revealed it is going to increase its parking prices, the train company says it has also done a lot of work with cycling charity Sustrans to encourage people to cycle to the station and has got more Stagecoach buses to stop at the station.

Petition deadline today
THE deadline for signing petitions in The Evening Telegraph's Great Train Parking Robbery campaign finished today.
This afternoon, city council leader John Peach was due to travel to GNER's head office in York to hand the petition in to one of the directors.
The campaign attracted roughly 1,000 signatures from furious commuters determined to stop GNER from raising the prices to extortionate levels.
Daily tickets will go up from £5.50 to £10, weekly charges from £22 to £40, quarterly tickets from £198 to £360 and annual prices from £594 to £1,080.
The new prices are due to come into effect tomorrow.

Parking fine income due to decrease

Edgware and Mill Hill Times
By Lawrence Marzouk

The seemingly inexorable march of the parking fine has been halted in Barnet, it emerged this week, with the council announcing that earnings from fines will be £2.8 million less than expected.
In April 2005, the council said it expected to make £6.7m from parking in the borough in the year to March 2006, but it raised just £4.9m in that period.
Its prediction for money raised from fines during the current financial year up to the end of March 2007 has been set at just £3.9m.

But when this year's budget was set, council officers were expecting an income for the coming year of £4.9m, leaving them with a predicted £1m shortfall by March 2007.
Income from pay and display, permits and fines issued by CCTV cameras is in line with expectations, but it is the number of parking fines handed out which continues to fall, suggesting that fewer drivers are parking illegally, rather than car use reducing.
And according to informal briefings with other parking departments across London, it appears that the tide is turning across the capital, with residents becoming wise to the regulations.
Councillor Matthew Offord, cabinet member for environment and transport, said: "The reality is that we are issuing fewer tickets than last year so our projections for income have been reduced.
"Also, as part of our customer-focused parking review, we now allow people a five-minute grace period for over-staying on their pay and display tickets which is resulting in the issue of fewer PCNs (Penalty Charge Notices).
"I have always made it clear that this policy would mean a reduction in parking income but I balanced that against the fairness it promoted for the Barnet motorist.
"The reduction in predicted parking income demonstrates that this council has not engaged in the sharp practices seen elsewhere in London and that it is not a money-making service in Barnet."

FGH jumped gun on parking

North West Evening Mail

Hospital chiefs have admitted that they increased car parking charges earlier than they should have done.

At a board meeting on Monday, Morecambe Bay Hospital Trust executives approved plans to increase parking charges by as much as £1.30 on July 1.

But the Evening Mail was contacted by angry readers who said that the fines had already been introduced - four days ahead of schedule.

The Hospital refused to comment whether reimbursements would be made for those who were forced to pay the higher fees.

But charges have been suspended until the official change to the new prices on July 1.

Fiasco over city car parking signs

ic Coventry
by Fiona Scott

TRAFFIC wardens have been told not to hand out tickets to motorists in hundreds of spaces around Coventry - because the signs are out of date.
They're under orders to turn a blind eye to drivers parking in areas with old-fashioned blue and white signs.
Signs are only legal if they have black writing on a white background.

* What do you think? Have you been fined? Get in touch by email, messageboardor by sending a web letter to the editor*
Coventry has scores of out-of-date signs and the council isn't expecting to replace them all until the end of the year.

Parking fines a nice little earner

North Devon Gazette
devon.editorial@archant.co.uk

SIR - Further to the unfortunate disabled people with parking problems in Ilfracombe, they are not alone.
I have been following correspondence in the Press for some time now on Bideford's desire to attract people and businesses into the centre of town. Torridge District Council is doing everything in its power to prevent visitors in cars using the town centre by its rapacious car parking policies.
Not only has it raised the car parking fee to 80p an hour in central Bideford (Bude is 50p) it is charging people wishing to worship at St Mary's who use the car park adjacent to the Church on Sundays.
Recently I had an appointment in town and parked on The Pill, purchasing a ticket for £1.20 to ensure I had enough time to complete my business. On returning, with 45 minutes in hand, I found I had been 'booked' because, unnoticed by me, the parking ticket had flipped over when I had closed the car door because the windows had been open a little for our dog's benefit.
Having got a valid ticket, proof of purchase no less, it seemed reasonable to appeal the threatened £40 fine - half a week of my state pension - rather than pay the immediate and exorbitant £10 into the machine as required - assuming I had the £10 available to do so, which I had not.
An appeal was not, however a reasonable thing to do. I had what is known as a 'slipped ticket' in the car parking jargon, and woe betide anyone who experiences such an accidental disturbance to the purchased ticket.
After all, the Warden takes not one, not two, but three photographs to prove it and the labourer is surely worthy of his or her hire.
One either pays up or risks an increased fine of £70 if any delay in payment occurs.
Furthermore, when one appeals, the person who scrutinises any appeal (and automatically rejects almost every one I gather) is the very person who issues the fines - the car parks manager!
One might at least expect an elected councillor, committee or other independent person or body to scrutinise appeals. But, as with the disabled people at Ilfracombe, the district council hides behind the law designed specifically to ensure that reasonable appeals against it are useless - and many councillors seem quite content to let the officials of the council get away with this.
A recent correspondent on this subject said that Devon County Council actually gets the parking fines, albeit I paid Torridge District Council.
A nice little earner.
I understand that some £50,000 in 'slipped tickets' and the like is the current annual 'take' - 'steal'.
Not only this, but advertising revenue is also obtained from the tickets. Some who have experienced this gratuitous "scam" have shrugged their shoulders and said: "That's how it is."
Even the Mayor of Bideford has told me this. It needn't be. In circumstances such as the above a reasonable administrative fee of, say £5 would be more appropriate if a valid ticket can be produced.
"Dear sir/madam,
your parking ticket is not properly visible.
If it is valid and still in time please send it with this notice with an £x administrative fee, otherwise the full excess charges will be applied."
It costs little to be polite.
Better still, issue the sticky-backed tickets to be found in many parking machines in more enlightened parts of the country.
I was sent a free sticky-backed holder for parking tickets which item can, of course, be purchased, I know not where.
This clearly obviates the initial requirement to install machines which issue stick-on tickets in the first place.
One can patronise the outer shopping areas quite easily without risking this 'Bideford Experience'.
The Reverend GeraldSmith
Woolsery

Parking not fault of staff

Express and Star
27 June 06

Letters
We read with dismay your attack on staff parking at Russells Hall Hospital (May 17). This is a situation not of the staff's making and we wish to clarify how this has occurred.
Following yet another reconfiguration of the car parks last month, it had already been reported that staff took up to two hours to park and after the intense negotiation over a period of two weeks the staff were allocated the car park at the maternity entrance.
The visitors' car park now runs from opposite the accident and emergency department, past the main entrance to the maternity entrance, opposite the new staff car park, with access only from the island.
Parking is readily available only a few meters from the old maternity car park and after dropping off mothers-to-be, partners will have the same distance to drive to access a large car park with plenty of empty spaces.
The fact that this car park is only half full is due to the greed of a profit-motivated company taking advantage of patients and visitors and inflating prices by 500 per cent overnight. This has forced visitors to park in surrounding streets alongside staff who are still unable to park and who can not afford the exorbitant fees charged at the hospital.
It is hoped that the eventual building of the car park at the rear of the site will ease staff parking and the on-street parking in the immediate vicinity.
However, if you care to visit the hospital, you will find that as a visitor you will find it easy to park, with easy access to the entire hospital frontage.
Unfortunately, as a regular visitor, you will be unable to afford to.
Stephen Astill, on behalf of Staff Representative Committee, Unison, Dudley Group of Hospitals.

Verging on ridiculous: motorists to appeal fines for parking outside busy school fair

This is Hertfordshire
By Louisa Barnett

The borough's parking attendants have come under fire yet again after issuing 15 tickets in an hour to motorists visiting a school fair in Winchmore Hill.
Fines of £80 were given to drivers who parked on grass verges outside Merryhills School, in Bincote Road, which was holding its annual summer fair on Sunday.
The fines have perplexed motorists as there were no signs detailing parking restrictions.
Jackie Warner, whose niece attends the school, said: "They're all just greedy.
"The attendants looked like they'd won six lotteries at once.
"It was a Sunday and we were all just parked up on the grass verges.
We weren't obstructing or hurting anybody.
"There were so many cars there, and there was another event going on at a nearby school, so where was everyone supposed to park?
"I'm absolutely fuming."
Last week, Enfield Council vowed to review its parking ticket policy after it was inundated with calls from angry residents who received tickets for parking their cars on the kerb outside their homes to avoid obstructing the road.
A council spokesman said the motorists who left their cars outside Merryhills School were all illegally parked as they were on a grass verge and there is therefore no need for signs and lines.
He added that parking attendants do not get paid commission on the number of penalty charge notices that they issue.
Mrs Warner added: "We'll all be appealing against the fine, but we don't hold out much hope of success as it's the council which deals with complaints."
The council spokesman added: "Motorists who are dissatisfied with the council's response have the right to go to the independent adjudication service known as PATAS (Parking and Traffic Appeals Service).
"Our success rate for winning appeals is the best in London, and only 0.2 per cent of the grand total of penalty charge notices issued in Enfield are appealed at PATAS."
In the financial year 2005/06, the council made £1.5million through parking fines of which £1.3million went to fund concessionary travel and £200k was reserved for future parking schemes.

TRANSPORT: Rail firm to hear parking outrage

Peterborough Today

TRAIN operator GNER will be holding a public meeting to address passenger concerns about travelling from Peterborough.
During the meeting at the Great Northern Hotel tonight, commuters plan to question the company's representatives about how they could justify increasing the cost of parking at the city's railway station by a huge 82 per cent.
The company is set to come under pressure from members of the public who object to the rise, and have flocked to sign The Evening Telegraph's Great Train Parking Robbery petition calling for plans to increase parking charges to be dropped.
They will also be looking for answers about how GNER staff dealt with the chaotic delays on Monday following the closure of King's Cross station after a fire, when all trains to London had to be cancelled.
IT systems manager Andy Cullum, who has collected more than 500 signatures for The Evening Telegraph's petition, plans to make his voice heard at the meeting.
He said: "I suspect this meeting has everything to do with this campaign and the criticism GNER has been getting.
"I feel very strongly about this on behalf of everyone else. People have been very keen to sign it (the petition). In a lot of cases you didn't have to ask people, they knew what it was and just signed it."
The attitude from people is very much 'right, I'll sign it'. People feel so strongly."
From July 3, daily charges will shoot up from £5.50 to £10, weekly rates from £22 to £40, quarterly costs from £198 to £360, and annual fees from £594 to £1,080.
Hundreds of outraged people have rung and e-mailed the ET offices voicing their objections to the increase, which they deemed "outrageous" and "exorbitant".
One coupon sent to The Evening Telegraph simply reads: "Don't let them get away with it."
Passengers learned of the meeting through a notice put up at the entrance to the platform entrance on Monday.
Peterborough station manager Simon Pashley, who called the meeting, said: "In order for us to look at delivering higher standards of customer service at a localised and more personal level, we're holding a passenger forum.
"The forum will be based around local issues at Peterborough, including the timetabling of trains and people's experiences of travelling with us."
The meeting is due to start at 6pm tonight.
To support The Great Train Parking Robbery campaign, sign the online petition at www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk or e-mail eteditor@peterboroughtoday.co.uk.You can also text PETCOM plus your message to 84070. Texts cost 25p, plus normal network charges.Anyone who requires a full petition to gather a list of signatures should call The Evening Telegraph on 01733 588713.

£35m in parking fines written off

BBC News
27th June 06

Nearly £35m worth of unpaid parking tickets served to motorists in central London have been written off.
A Westminster Council report said it was impossible to trace all drivers and so it wanted to cancel tickets that were old and unlikely to be recovered.
Opposition Labour leader councillor Paul Dimoldenberg said those getting away with not paying fines were bringing the system into disrepute.
Penalty charges in Westminster cost £100, or £50 if paid within 14 days.
A spokesman for Westminster Council said:"Over the last seven years the council has issued some 800,000 penalty charge notices each year."
'Inefficient system'
He said of those, 15% went unpaid because they relied on information from the DVLA to track down drivers.
He added: "Although these sums have now been written off, this does not prevent the council from still seeking to recover the outstanding money."
Councillor Dimoldenberg said the parking system was inefficient and needed to be reviewed.
"It's not just about unpaid parking tickets but to see if the system can be improved for motorists."
He added the money that should have been recovered could have been invested in transport improvements or used to bring down council tax bills - band D households currently pay £659 a year.

Call for free parking in Thame and Wendover

Bucks Free Press
By Lucy Clapham
26th June 06

BUSINESS owners in Risborough called on the council last week to make car parking free to stop their community from turning into a ghost town.
Members of the Risborough Area Business Group (RABG) met with Robin Evans and Caroline Hughes, from Wycombe District Council, to discuss parking in the town.
RABG believe that customers are being driven away from visiting their shops due to the availability of free parking in nearby Thame and Wendover.
Graham Wiles, RABG chairman, said: "The retailers are starting to close down and when you get shops closing down you get a ghost town.
"What value do Wycombe District Council put on the survival of a local high street?
"They could go a long way to helping us."
The architects of the Risborough 2035 study warned small shopkeepers at a meeting in May they would need to become more competitive if they wanted to stop customers shopping in neighbouring towns.
‘In Thame there is free parking, in Wendover there is free parking – people aren’t coming to us because you can go to the other places for free.’
The study highlights the town's strengths and weakness and sets out the options for future development.
As part of the study's findings RABG called on Mr Evans to make parking in Risborough completely free as they feared parking issues would lead to them being closed down.
Heather Brown, owner of Pickles Deli in the High Street, said: "The town is looking for anything that will improve the number of shoppers on the street.
"The number of people shopping on the High Street has dropped.
"In Thame there is free parking, in Wendover there is free parking people aren't coming to us because you can go to the other places for free."
The town currently has one long stay car park, The Mount in Stanton Road, and one short stay in Horns Lane and although parking costs just 20p for an hour, RABG members are still pushing for free parking throughout the town.
Mr Evans, however, maintained that free parking was not the way forward and would lead to even bigger problems for businesses in Risborough.
He said: "We need to deter long stay parkers and that is why free parking never works.
"Here in Princess Risborough it's a different price structure but it's nowhere near the prices in a big town.
"I think there are issues that need to be addressed because it could do with better resourcement, and if the town is going to grow then logically parking has to be part of that."

Controlled Parking Zones in Cheshunt

Press Release by Broxbourne Council

A consultant will be appointed to prepare design options for a parking control scheme (not necessarily a Controlled Parking Zone) in the area east of Cheshunt town centre.
Designs will be presented to the Council’s Environmental Services Committee for review and shortlisting, and the preferred design will then presented to residents and businesses for consultation.
The design will include the type and location and times of restrictions and controls, the number of permits available, the price of the permits, whether there will be on-street charging and the street scene enhancements proposed.
Feedback from this, and the statutory consultation (the police, Hertfordshire Highways, etc) will be fed into a final design which the Environmental Services Committee will review.
The Committee will also be asked to decide whether the final design is to be implemented. This is the Council’s first such scheme and the Council will work with the consultant to firm up the design and proposed implementation timetables, which will be published at Environmental Services Committee.
If any scheme is approved, the Council will write to affected residents and businesses to advise them.

Parking wardens on ticket frenzy

Portsmouth and Southsea
A parking ticket is handed out every 12 minutes in Portsmouth.

A 50-strong army of wardens patrolling the city streets dished out 43,500 fines to motorists last year. But 3,500 – eight per cent – of them were wrongly ticketed, having their £30 fines overturned on appeal.
City chiefs defended the figures, claiming it was necessary to make roads safer and free up congested residential streets.
But critics today accused the city council of simply 'picking' on motorists.
Tory opposition leader Steve Wemyss said: 'In the end you will just drive people away.'I don't believe that all 43,500 tickets are cars causing serious problems.'
The city council took over street parking enforcement from the police in 1999. Since then, the number of fines have increased, fuelling claims that the council has become too keen to fine the motorist.
The city hands out roughly four times as many tickets as in Fareham and Gosport where the police still control on-street ticketing and councils deal with its car parks. And compared with Portsmouth's 50 parking attendants, there are just 18 in Fareham and Gosport.
Although Portsmouth City Council pulled in £1.5m from the fines, it actually made a loss of £50,000 because of staff and bureaucracy costs.
However, Lib Dem transport boss Cllr Alex Bentley said the fact the council made a loss proved fines were not being used as a stealth tax.
And he said Portsmouth had more traffic than Fareham and Gosport, so inevitably there were more tickets handed out.
'There are people who get angry about tickets but many more who think we should hand out more of them.'
david.maddox@ thenews.co.uk

Scandal of the parking lottery

Manchester Evening News
24th June 06
Ian Craig

THE cost of parking in Greater Manchester has become a multi-million pound lottery for motorists - and MPs say the system is "a mess".
Nationally, the amount of money raised by local authorities through car park fees and parking fines has increased six per cent in a year, to almost £1.2bn.
New government figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats reveal vast differences in the amount of money raised by different local authorities since 1997.

In Manchester, the figures show a drop in parking income, including fees and fines, of 61 per cent since 1997.
Every other authority in Greater Manchester has had more income from parking, with the biggest rise in Bury - where the figure has rocketed by 168 per cent.
Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Alistair Carmichael has accused the government of using motorists as a "cash cow", punishing them without reducing congestion.

Administration
The Commons Transport Committee said the administration of parking enforcement by councils was too often inconsistent, with poor communication, confusion and a lack of accountability.
Chairman Gwyneth Dunwoody, MP for Crewe and Nantwich, said: "Our present parking system is, frankly, a mess."
The committee complained of unclear parking signs and lines, badly-trained staff, drivers not properly told how to appeal and parking attendants with poor communication skills.
And members called for more training, a major review of parking regulations and a sliding scale of parking fines.
However, the committee did have praise for Manchester city council.
They said it had moved from one of the worst-performing authorities - with MPs complaining of "jackbooted" parking attendants - to giving traffic wardens discretion over whether to issue a ticket.

Reduction
The Liberal Democrats say that since 1997, there has been a reduction of 61 per cent in the income from parking charges in Manchester, down to £3.2m.
The figures show how variable the cost of parking is in Greater Manchester, with increases in income from fees and fines over the nine years ranging from just 46 per cent in Bolton to the massive 168 per cent in Bury.
Income levels, according to Liberal Democrats are:
Bolton up 46 per cent to £4m,
Bury up 168 per cent to £2.6m,
Oldham up 58 per cent to £2m,
Rochdale up 57 per cent to £1.7m,
Salford up 132 per cent to £1.3m,
Stockport up 25 per cent to £3m,
Tameside up 41 per cent to £1.6m,
Trafford up 104 per cent to £2m, and
Wigan up 34 per cent to £3m.

Mr Carmichael said he wanted to know how much of the increases came from the employment of private parking contractors and how much from fines.
He said that since Labour came to power, England's parking charges had increased by a massive 82 per cent.
Fifteen years ago, local authorities were given power to take control of parking enforcement from the police and the Commons Transport Committee said while some have done so, police are still in charge in other areas - so they called for a single system of parking.
The committee said that in 2003, local authority parking attendants issued 7.1m penalty charge notices, but 20 per cent of them were later cancelled.

One year’s parking fines add up to £1m

This is Lancashire
By Gareth Tidman
24th June 06

PARKING bosses took £1.1 million in fines last year after handing out 44,000 tickets in Bolton.

The figures were released by Bolton Council as local authorities across the country were accused of using parking as a "cash cow" by Opposition MPs.

Parking bosses in Bolton said that the money they raised through fines went straight back into running the parking enforcement system.

Ian Taylor, head of car parking services, said that last year there was a surplus of just £100,000 after the council had paid its contract to NCP, which manages parking attendants in the town, and after it had covered the cost of running the central parking office in Marsden Road, Bolton.

He said money had also been usd to pay off the costs of setting up the present parking service in 2000 when local authorities took over from police the responsibility for enforcement. Mr Taylor said: "Some councils make a lot of money out of parking, but Bolton is not one of them.
"This most certainly isn't a cash cow for the council. We do not forecast to make a surplus, we just aim to run the scheme. We draw up an enforcement strategy in the town tailored to what we think is required to make sure people park safely.
"If all the drivers in Bolton started parking properly, we would have to downsize the service pretty quickly."

Figures show that of the 44,000 tickets handed out in the borough, 27,000 were for on-street offences and 16,300 went to drivers parked in council-run car parks.

Of these, 6,315 or nearly 14 per cent were quashed on appeal, most of them as a result of a rule which lets off on the first occasion drivers with a valid ticket or blue parking badge which has not been displayed correctly.
Drivers caught parking illegally are given £60 fines but can claim a 50 per cent discount if they pay within 14 days.

Opposition MPs said councils were using the parking system as a "cash cow" after it was revealed that drivers are paying out £1.2 billion nationally in fines a year.

Calls are being made in Parliament for a single national system governing parking attendants to cut out confusion over parking laws and over-zealous enforcement.

Cllr John Byrne, executive member for environmental services at Bolton Council, said: "I think standardised parking rules across the country would be a good idea and would help to eliminate confusion.
"I think that the Government should look at Bolton when establishing a new system because parking services are run very well here."

In Praise of Parking Attendants

The Guardian
The Leader
24th June 06

The pages of yesterday's newspapers reverberated in two directions: demands for tougher crackdowns on crime followed by complaints about overzealous parking enforcement. Attitudes to breaking the law, it seems, depends on the law being broken - a moral relativism that is usually not looked upon so kindly by those on the right.
The parking furore followed the parliamentary transport committee's report on the confused and arbitrary nature of council parking policies.
Yet they are a legitimate and necessary part of modern urban transport policy and traffic control, while unchecked illegal parking can cause costly disruption.
That is little comfort, though, to anyone who has received a fine after a brief dash into a school or shop - and who feels resentful to the official issuing the penalty notice. But parking attendants are people too. The MPs' report noted that assaults on parking attendants are exacerbated by media coverage making them into hate figures.
The British Parking Association points out that attendants are "generally poorly paid in poor conditions", often earning around £5 an hour. The simple solution is to pay them more, train them better and allow them some discretion in issuing tickets.
A pilot scheme run by Manchester city council, empowering attendants and giving them some choice in borderline cases, saw appeals against fines drop by 30% and an increase in job satisfaction - a happy outcome for both attendants and drivers.

Time to sort out parking fines mess

MPs say motorists are being let down by a flawed system that is open to revenue-raising abuse
Yorkshire Post
William Green
Political Correspondent

CAR parking fines were yesterday branded a "mess" by MPs because motorists in the UK are being let down as huge sums of cash are raked in under the current system.
The Commons Transport Committee said there were "serious flaws", and urged the Government to lead efforts to overhaul a system where illegal parking is widespread, and costing London £270m alone in delays and accidents a year.
It added too few councils were publishing figures which fuelled suspicions of revenue-raising – with parking activities in England raising a £439m surplus in 2003/04, according to a new committee report into parking.
The report came as the Liberal Democrats unveiled research claiming England's parking charges have risen by 82 per cent since Labour came to power.
The party said charges were up six per cent in the last year with the nation's motorists charged almost £1.2bn a year.
The Transport Committee said a UK-wide system of decriminalised parking enforcement – done by town halls – should replace the system of police and councils working in different areas.
Committee chairman Gwyneth Dunwoody said: "Our present parking system is, frankly, a mess. If a motorist parks illegally on one street they are branded a criminal and will be dealt with by the police and criminal courts.
"On another street they will have committed a civil infringement and will be processed by the local authority. It is high time to move to a single system of parking enforcement."
She said standards had to improve and condemned enforcement contracts with incentive regimes based on the number of tickets issued as "utterly misguided".
The MPs warned change was needed as problems in council administration was causing anger, wasting resources and bringing the system into disrepute – highlighted by 20 per cent of the 7.1 million penalty charge notices issued in 2003 being cancelled.
Many councils fail to make clear how to challenge fines or re-offer a 14-day payment discount after an appeal has ended, or ensure motorists are aware of their ultimate right to appeal to the independent national parking adjudication service.
Problems existed with regulations and signs, including lines on the road, while performance varied too much with some authorities contesting six per cent of appeals but others fighting 56 per cent.
MPs voiced concern about poor training and pay for parking attendants, a lack of outside monitoring, and too little attention paid to the potential of well-managed parking strategies to contribute to traffic management.
And they called for proportionate penalties distinguishing between resting on double yellow lines and overstaying in car parking spaces. They also asked the Government to examine if councils are breaking human rights laws by towing illegally parked vehicles away.
Ministers should also consider restricting wheel clamping to persistent offenders and unregistered vehicles, while its use on private land should be governed in the same was as public on-street clamping to stamp out abuses.
The report also said the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) should not release information to parties whose activities would damage the parking system, such as so-called cowboy clampers.
The RAC Foundation welcomed the report, saying: "Over-zealous enforcement, confusing signs and lines, and the belief that councils are using parking fines to raise revenue rather than keep the traffic moving should become nothing but bad memories if the Government takes this report seriously."
The AA Motoring Trust said drivers, many wrongly ticketed, should be compensated by councils that string out fine appeals before deciding against contesting them.

Britain's punishment culture is a one-way parking ticket to hell

Littlejohn
Daily Mail
Friday 23rd June 06

A committee of MPs has woken up to the fact that Britain's motorists are being screwed into the Tarmac.
Parking fines topped £1.2 billion last year and enforcement ranges from merely over-zealous to demanding money with menaces.
In some areas, drivers are 400 times more likely to be punished for a minor parking infringement then they were when Labour came in to power.
That's right - four hundred times. And the amount extorted in fines and clamping charges has doubled.
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem transport spokesman, said: "The Government clearly sees motorists simply as a cash cow."
Let's ignore for a moment that if the Lib Dems had their way we'd still be travelling round in oxcarts and that the councils Mr Carmichael's party controls are among the most deranged and vindictive of the anti-car warriers.
Ever since the Tories stripped the police of responsibility for parking enforcement and handed it over to local authorities, the number of tickets issued has gone through the sunroof.
This was done in the name of 'decriminalising' minor parking offences. Decriminalisation? It certainly doesn't feel like it. If paedophiles were pursued with the same ruthlessness as drivers who pull up on a double-yellow for 30 seconds, there wouldn't be a child-sex offender left on the streets.

Councils have recruited ruthless private firms to issue penalty notices and collect the cash by the vanload. Dubious methods, deception and downright illegality are the order of the day.
One in five tickets has to be cancelled because of 'irregularities' by the traffic wardens - in other words, handing out tickets which should never have been issued in the first place and hoping that the mug motorist won't have the time or the inclination to appeal.
Is it any wonder, when wardens are offered incentives from flat-screen televisions to foreign holidays to ticket every car in Christendom?
We'd be outraged if we thought the police were being bribed to frame certain types of criminals (although most of us wouldn't object to the odd iPod or plasma TV if we though it might persuade the Old Bill to take burglary and car theft seriously).
Yet councils have colludded in this semi-criminal enterprise. As long as the Town Hall gets a fat slice, they'll turn a blind eye to the widespread abuse. They will also make parking restrictions as arcane and perverse as possible to maximise revenues.
No two yellow-lines are ever the same. The time of day you can park, the side of the road you can park: it changes from week to week, with the expressed intention of tricking motorists. It is entrapment, pure and simple. And if these weren't crimes of limited liability, a court would throw them out.
Red routes, temporary parking bays, cameras. As soon as we get behind the wheel, we put ourselves on offer. And the penalties bear no relation to the so-called 'crime'.
Fines of £60 are commonplace for infringements which cause absolutely no obstruction to anyone, merely for stopping in a 'restricted' area drawn up on a whim by a bored council official with a box of crayons, simply to justify his miserable existance.
Cowboy clampers demand up to £350 - more than a week's take-home pay for many people - to release confiscated (ie stolen ) cars.
And, of course none of this money goes towards mending the roads or making journeys any easier. It's frittered away on humps, chicanes, little red bricks, barriers and bare-metal road-width 'restrictors' designed to rip the paintwork and wing-mirrors off anything wider than a bubble-car.
Most of it goes on wages. Town Hall traffic departments are stuffed with scruffy cycling enthusiasts, sexual inadequates, otherwise unemployable polytechnic graduates and certifiable tree-hugging 'environmentalists'.
Their policies are dictated by misanthropic megalomaniacs such as Red Ken and madwomen who believe everything they read in The Guardian.
They have turned the streets of Britain into a giant crazy golf course, specifically designed to milk motorists and cause the maximum possible inconvenience to people trying to go about their lawful daily business.
Some people complain that this is 'un-British'. Sorry to shatter your illusions, but this is very British indeed. Very New Labour British. As British as shopping your neighbours for breaking the hosepipe ban and as British as Eastbourne Council fining shopkeepers £75 if a seagull tears open their rubbish bags.
It wouldn't occur to the council to provide more dustbins. Punishment is always the weapon of first resort.
It's about showing us who's boss.

Since the collapse of socialism, all those who once though they could rule us through nationalisation and trades union bullying have decamped into local government, the health service, 'safety camera partnerships' and dozens of other agencies which they manipulate to control our lives by other means.
We now live in a punishment culture, established to feed the voracious appetite of politicians and public sector employees for power and privilege.
'The Government clearly sees motorists simply as a cash cow.'
Oi, you can't park there.

Parking Mad

Confused mess of a system blasted by a group of watchdog MPs.
Sunderland Echo
Britain's parking enforcement is in a 'mess' according to a committee of MPs. The findings follow a series of parking fiascos in the city.
Jeremy Wicking examines why it's driving motorists crazy.

Inconsistent, confused, a mess - that's the verdict on our parking policy by a committee of MPs.

In February 2003, Sunderland City Council and its business partner National Car
Parks (NCP) took over the issuing of parking tickets from Northumbria Police and its traffic wardens.

MPs say our parking enforcement rules are just not in gear but still say councils should police our parking system.

Too many councils are already causing anger and dismay, wasting resources and giving the whole system a bad name.

Campaigner Neil Herron has been picking holes in Sunderland's parking rules and said: "If it's a mess across the country, then Sunderland Council's is one of the biggest.
"They have done everything wrong with regard to lines, signs, Traffic Regulation Orders and the wording on the tickets. Their inflexibility and overzealousness has been reported on many occasions by the Echo."

Sunderland Council began its DPE (decriminalised parking enforcement) scheme three
-and-a-half years ago and has never published an annual report on city parking or how much has been collected from motorists.

If drivers get ticketed and pay within 14 days, motorists get their £60 ticket discounted to £30.

Straight-talking Gwyneth Dunwoody MP, chairwoman of the House of Commons transport committee, has examined bundles of evidence about local councils and how they are running parking.

She said: "Our present parking system is, frankly, a mess. Unfortunately, we heard that the administration of parking enforcement by councils was too often inconsistent, with poor communication, confusion, and a lack of accountability. This must change."

Her comments are similar to a Sunderland Council report that was published last year after campaigners found loopholes in parking rules and regulations.

That saw refunds totalling more than £30,000 going to drivers who had been fined for parking in taxi-only bays and disabled drivers who had parked in loading bays.


Why? Because the council did not have the correct legal rules known as TROs (Traffic Regulation Orders). In the end, more than 300 Sunderland TROs have had to be corrected.

Mrs Dunwoody, said in some parts of the country a motorist parks illegally on one street, is branded a criminal and dealt with by the police and criminal courts. Then, in another street they have "committed a civil infringement" and will be dealt with by their council.

She said: "It is high time to move to a single system of parking enforcement. But this roll-out of decriminalised parking enforcement must take place in the context of improved professional standards."

Mr Herron said one of the biggest problems was the lack of an independent adjudicator service.

The introduction of DPE meant people were no longer taken to court and Mr Herron claims that should be brought back.

He has had more than 60 parking tickets cancelled after complaining about their wording, and added, "Neither should councils be allowed to keep money raised from parking fines as, like it or not, it gives them too much of an incentive to raise revenue. Monies collected should go into a central pot and be redistributed.
"That would remove the suspicion that people have about over-zealous traffic wardens."

Sunderland Council has not had a bonus scheme with its partner NCP and the company's boss Bob Macnaughton welcomed moves to get rid of imbiguities as national guidance rules is expected from the Government soon.

"Drivers will perceive the system to be fairer and will be less likely to take out their frustrations on attendants," said Mr Macnaughton.

No one from Sunderland Council was available for comment.

Council's catalogue of errors
A catalogue of errors on the council's running of car parking in Sunderland was published in December last year.
The council's Chief Executive Ged Fitzgerald and a special audit team said there were "significant weaknesses" in how it was running DPE.
These included major failings in traffic, parking and road safety departments, such as poor management, a lack of communication between traffic staff and council lawyers, and not keeping clear records.
Plus, there were more than 300 errors on where there should be parking and waiting restrictions in the city.
The council held its hands up and said there were "organisational and operational failures". An action plan to correct the mistakes is ongoing.

Sunniside coffe bar owner Phil Jones was left feeling bitter after getting two tickets while unloading outside his Frederick Street business.
Mr Jones, 40, who has been trading in the city for three years, said: "When I got the tickets, I neber even had the courtesy of a warning from the wardens. We're a small business, we're not the only business in this part of the city, and all we wanted was a bit of respect and some courtesy."
Mr Jones, who used to run businesses in London, said even the capital's attendants would give people more leeway than here.
He appealed against his tickets, was set to go to a tribunal but then had them cancelled.
However, Sunderland Council reminded Mr Jones it had a duty to promote road safety and keep traffic flowing.
It said in cases similar to Mr Jones's that "vehicles are observed for five to twenty minutes depending whether they are a private or commercial vehicle respectively to see if they are actively loading, before any decision on parking penalties is made.
"The purpose of traffic regulation orders is to maximise road safety and ensure an effective use of the public carriageway for the benefit of pedestrians, motorists, business premises, service uses and that public transport is maintained."

What the MPs said

Traffic Regulation Orders underpinning traffic regulations are often deficient, and at worst illegal.

Lines and signage to indicate rules not often clear.

Parking attendants should get more training.

Councils were not giving enough discretion when challenged by motorists.

The Government was not scrutinising council DPE schemes closely enough.

Too many councils not making appeals rules clear.

Time to sort out parking fines mess

MPs say motorists are being let down by a flawed system that is open to revenue-raising abuse
Yorkshire Post
William Green
Political Correspondent

CAR parking fines were yesterday branded a "mess" by MPs because motorists in the UK are being let down as huge sums of cash are raked in under the current system.
The Commons Transport Committee said there were "serious flaws", and urged the Government to lead efforts to overhaul a system where illegal parking is widespread, and costing London £270m alone in delays and accidents a year.
It added too few councils were publishing figures which fuelled suspicions of revenue-raising – with parking activities in England raising a £439m surplus in 2003/04, according to a new committee report into parking.
The report came as the Liberal Democrats unveiled research claiming England's parking charges have risen by 82 per cent since Labour came to power.
The party said charges were up six per cent in the last year with the nation's motorists charged almost £1.2bn a year.
The Transport Committee said a UK-wide system of decriminalised parking enforcement – done by town halls – should replace the system of police and councils working in different areas.
Committee chairman Gwyneth Dunwoody said: "Our present parking system is, frankly, a mess. If a motorist parks illegally on one street they are branded a criminal and will be dealt with by the police and criminal courts.
"On another street they will have committed a civil infringement and will be processed by the local authority. It is high time to move to a single system of parking enforcement."
She said standards had to improve and condemned enforcement contracts with incentive regimes based on the number of tickets issued as "utterly misguided".
The MPs warned change was needed as problems in council administration was causing anger, wasting resources and bringing the system into disrepute – highlighted by 20 per cent of the 7.1 million penalty charge notices issued in 2003 being cancelled.
Many councils fail to make clear how to challenge fines or re-offer a 14-day payment discount after an appeal has ended, or ensure motorists are aware of their ultimate right to appeal to the independent national parking adjudication service.
Problems existed with regulations and signs, including lines on the road, while performance varied too much with some authorities contesting six per cent of appeals but others fighting 56 per cent.
MPs voiced concern about poor training and pay for parking attendants, a lack of outside monitoring, and too little attention paid to the potential of well-managed parking strategies to contribute to traffic management.
And they called for proportionate penalties distinguishing between resting on double yellow lines and overstaying in car parking spaces. They also asked the Government to examine if councils are breaking human rights laws by towing illegally parked vehicles away.
Ministers should also consider restricting wheel clamping to persistent offenders and unregistered vehicles, while its use on private land should be governed in the same was as public on-street clamping to stamp out abuses.
The report also said the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) should not release information to parties whose activities would damage the parking system, such as so-called cowboy clampers.
The RAC Foundation welcomed the report, saying: "Over-zealous enforcement, confusing signs and lines, and the belief that councils are using parking fines to raise revenue rather than keep the traffic moving should become nothing but bad memories if the Government takes this report seriously."
The AA Motoring Trust said drivers, many wrongly ticketed, should be compensated by councils that string out fine appeals before deciding against contesting them.

Parking ticket rise nets council £1.2m

Cambridge Evening News
23rd June 06

DRIVERS are paying more than £1 million a year in parking fines, the News can reveal.

Since Cambridge City Council took over from the police as parking enforcer, the number of tickets being handed out each year has risen from 10,000 to 46,000.

The shock figures are revealed as a report by MPs branded Britain's parking enforcement measures inconsistent, confused and a mess.
But the council has defended its actions, claiming it is "not overzealous".

In Cambridge:
■ The city council pulled in £1,211,000 from penalty charge notices in the 2005/06 financial year.
■ 46,630 tickets were slapped on motorists to reach that total.
■ This compares with just 10,000 tickets given out in the year before the council took over parking.

The Government will issue new statutory guidance to councils on parking in response to widespread criticism of over-zealous enforcement.

Nationally, the sum paid by motorists in parking fees and penalties has almost doubled to £1.2 billion a year in eight years.

In Cambridge, despite pulling in £1,211,000 from penalty charge notices, covering the cost of the service cost the council £1,140,000.

This gave a profit of £71,000 - money that will be used to improve transport facilities in the city.

The city council took over parking enforcement from the police in October 2004 after the number of traffic wardens dwindled to just two, and since then, the number of parking tickets issued has shot up.

The number of tickets issued is far higher than council bosses originally forecast. In September 2003, before the council took over parking enforcement, they warned the scheme could mean as many as 20,000 tickets being issued in Cambridge.

But Philip Hammer, contract manager, insisted enforcement in Cambridge was not over-zealous.

He said: "Our aim is only to issue tickets to people who park in ways that flout the restrictions in place, act without respect for other road users and pedestrians and hinder the free flow of traffic."

Yesterday (Thursday, 22 June)'s report, by the House of Commons transport committee, said parking policy in Britain was "inconsistent and confused".

It said lines and signs to indicate parking rules were often unclear and many drivers had difficulty understanding the law.

But Mr Hammer said this was not the case in Cambridge. He believes Cambridge already follows many of the recommendations in the report.
MPs are expected to ask for a national system of standards for privatised parking enforcement.

Mr Hammer said: "Any initiative to bring enforcement throughout the country up to the standards employed here in Cambridge can only benefit everyone and restore public belief in the system.
"Our aim is to be consistent in enforcement across the city and in all sectors of the community."

He said the success of Cambridge's system was shown by the low rate of appeals received by the National Parking Adjudication Service - 0.0005 per cent of tickets issued resulted in an appeal.

MPs said they were "shocked" by the number of penalty charge notices issued but later cancelled.

Nationally, in 2003, this amounted to 20 per cent of the 7.1 million notices issued. But Cambridge has one of the lowest cancellation rates in the country at fewer than 10 per cent.

The committee is expected to favour the policy of giving wardens discretion when issuing tickets rather than rigidly sticking to rules.
But Mr Hammer warned giving too much discretion could result in wardens being drawn into angry confrontations with drivers.

He said: "There is limited discretion given to Cambridge parking attendants during their observation time and they are encouraged to seek guidance from senior staff and council officers if the infringement is relatively minor."

Confrontation and abuse were not uncommon, he said.
"Even in a peaceful city like Cambridge, in the last six months we had 21 incidents of intimidating behaviour towards parking attendants and three cases in court for assault or threatening behaviour.
"If a parking attendant is given too much discretion, it increases their vulnerability, as the belief would be that they could be intimidated into withdrawing a ticket. We do have severe concerns over putting attendants in a situation that could be potentially dangerous."

The committee's report criticises systems where parking wardens are given targets and incentives - a practice not used in Cambridge.
Mr Hammer said targets could lead to underhand practices and destroy public confidence.

He said: "We are not interested in high numbers at the expense of quality if this reduces the effectiveness of enforcement as an educational tool. We fully support moves to introduce contracts like the one we have with Legion Parking Services, which strictly forbids bonuses, incentives and any other type of target-based payment based on the number of tickets issued."

Mr Hammer said "virtual" parking permits could replace paper ones, which can slip or be obscured, and phone payments for pay and display could do away with tickets that can fall or get blown away.

But John Bridge, Cambridgeshire Chamber of Commerce chief executive, said: "People believe that there is a very aggressive policy towards motorists in Cambridge.
"Sometimes you park with good intentions but something happens outside your control and you don't get back in time. I don't think the punishment fits the crime if you run five minutes over. This is like a business plan where they set targets to recover their costs. Common sense does not prevail."

In the last financial year Huntingdonshire District Council received £167,521 from excess charges and penalty notices.

A spokeswoman said they did not have an incentive regime for parking attendants and said they were paid the going rate for the job.

She said: "A lot of them are mature people and as far as we are concerned we feel they are doing a great job. If anyone appealed against a decision we would extend the deadline.
We try and be reasonable in terms of operating the policy."

In Newmarket, parking charges were introduced in most of the public car parks earlier this year and the possibility of residents' parking permits is being discussed.

But currently enforcement of parking regulations in car parks is the responsibility of Forest Heath District Council and on-street parking restrictions the responsibility of traffic wardens and police.

Coun Robin Millar, spokesman for the council's Conservative controlling group, said: "Parking does raise revenue for the council, but it's not about creating a cash cow."

Sue Fisher, from North Hertford- shire District Council, said: "Parking attendants in North Hertfordshire do not work on an incentive basis. Their aim is to encourage drivers to park legally - they would be happy to issue no tickets at all."

A spokesman for St Edmundsbury Borough said it currently had responsibility for council-owned car parks and streets where residents' parking schemes were in place, whereas the police issued tickets for areas with double yellow lines, etc.
"We are looking into the viability of taking over responsibility for the on-street environment from the police. Once this work is complete, a report will be considered by the car parking working party," he said.

Uttlesford District Council, which covers Saffron Walden, received £68,200 in penalty charge notices for on-street parking in the last financial year. A spokeswoman said: "We openly patrol; we don't hide behind bushes. We have an appeals process but don't get a lot of complaints."

East Cambridgeshire District Council spokesman Sean Gallagher said: "In 1997/8 revenue from tickets was £9,000 and in 2004/5 it was £18,000. This is due to the inflation of the price of excess parking charge tickets and because we now better enforce the system."

Income from parking - Britain's top 10.
Unlike many local authorities, Cambridge City Council has retained control and ownership of most off-street multi-storey car parks within the city. Approaching 90 per cent of the parking income for Cambridge comes from these car parks.

Britain's punishment culture is a one-way parking ticket to hell

Daily Mail
BY RICHARD LITTLEJOHN,
23 June 2006

A committee of MPs has woken up to the fact that Britain's motorists are being screwed into the Tarmac.
Parking fines topped £1.2billion last year and enforcement ranges from merely over-zealous to demanding money with menaces.
In some areas, drivers are 400 times more likely to be punished for a minor parking infringement than they were when Labour came in to power.
That's right — four hundred times. And the amount extorted in fines and clamping charges has doubled.
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem transport spokesman, said: "The Government clearly sees motorists simply as a cash cow."
Let's ignore for a moment that if the Lib Dems had their way we'd still be travelling round in oxcarts and that the councils Mr Carmichael's party controls are among the most deranged and vindictive of the anti-car warriors.
Ever since the Tories stripped the police of responsibility for parking enforcement and handed it over to local authorities, the number of tickets issued has gone through the sunroof.
This was done in the name of 'decriminalising' minor parking offences. Decriminalisation? It certainly doesn't feel like it. If paedophiles were pursued with the same ruthlessness as drivers who pull up on a double-yellow for 30 seconds, there wouldn't be a child-sex offender left on the streets.
Councils have recruited ruthless private firms to issue penalty notices and collect the cash by the vanload.
Dubious methods, deception and downright illegality are the order of the day.
One in five tickets has to be cancelled because of 'irregularities' by traffic wardens — in other words, handing out tickets which should never have been issued in the first place and hoping that the mug motorist won't have the time or inclination to appeal.
Is it any wonder, when wardens are offered incentives from flat-screen televisions to foreign holidays to ticket every car in Christendom?
We'd be outraged if we thought the police were being bribed to frame certain types of criminals (although most of us wouldn't object to the odd iPod or plasma TV if we thought it might persuade the Old Bill to take burglary and car theft seriously).
Yet councils have colluded in this semi-criminal enterprise. As long as the Town Hall gets a fat slice, they'll turn a blind eye to the widespread abuse. They will also make parking restrictions as arcane and perverse as possible to maximise revenues.
No two yellow-lines are ever the same. The time of day you can park, the side of the road you can park: it changes from week to week, with the expressed intention of tricking motorists. It is entrapment, pure and simple. And if these weren't crimes of limited liability, a court would throw them out.
Red routes, temporary parking bays, cameras. As soon as we get behind the wheel, we put ourselves on offer. And the penalties bear no relation to the so-called 'crime'.
Fines of £60 are commonplace for infringements which cause absolutely no obstruction to anyone, merely for stopping in a 'restricted' area drawn up on a whim by a bored council official with a box of crayons, simply to justify his miserable existence.
Cowboy clampers demand up to £350 — more than a week's take-home pay for many people — to release confiscated (ie stolen) cars.
And, of course, none of this money goes towards mending the roads or making journeys any easier. It's frittered away on humps, chicanes, little red bricks, barriers and bare-metal road-width 'restrictors' designed to rip the paintwork and wing-mirrors off anything wider than a bubble-car.
Most of it goes on wages. Town Hall traffic departments are stuffed with scruffy cycling enthusiasts, sexual inadequates, otherwise unemployable polytechnic graduates and certifiable, tree-hugging 'environmentalists'. Their policies are dictated by misanthropic megalomaniacs such as Red Ken and madwomen who believe everything they read in The Guardian.
They have turned the streets of Britain into a giant crazy golf course, specifically designed to milk motorists and cause the maximum possible inconvenience to people trying to go about their lawful daily business.
Some people complain that all this is 'un-British'. Sorry to shatter your illusions, but this is very British indeed. Very New Labour British. As British as shopping your neighbours for breaking the hosepipe ban and as British as Eastbourne Council fining shopkeepers £75 if a seagull tears open their rubbish bags.
It wouldn't occur to the council to provide more dustbins. Punishment is always the weapon of first resort. It's about showing us who's boss.
Since the collapse of socialism, all those who once thought they could rule us through nationalisation and trades union bullying have decamped into local government, the health service, 'safety camera partnerships' and dozens of other agencies which they manipulate to control our lives by other means.
We now live in a punishment culture, established to feed the voracious appetite of politicians and public sector employees for power and privilege.
"The Government clearly sees motorists simply as a cash cow."
Wrong. This Government sees everyone as a cash cow.
Oi, you can't park there.

Parking fines laws shambles, say MPs

IC North Wales
By Peter Woodman , Daily Post
23rd June 06

PARKING policy and enforcement in Britain is "inconsistent and confused", a report from MPs said yesterday.
It is "absurd" that some parking offenders are dealt with by police and others in neighbouring areas dealt with by local councils, the report from the House of Commons Transport Committee added.
"Our present parking system is, frankly, a mess", said the committee's chairman Gwyneth Dunwoody. She added that parking enforcement contracts with incentive regimes based on the number of tickets issued were "utterly misguided".
The report said lines and signage to indicate the parking rules were often unclear and many drivers had difficulty understanding and complying with the law.
Some parking attendants were poorly trained and poorly paid, there was inadequate scrutiny of council parking operations by the Department for Transport and the Audit Commission and some councils did not make it clear how to challenge a penalty charge notice.
The committee said that decriminalised parking enforcement - where councils handle matters - must be extended throughout the country, but first the standards of enforcement must improve.
The committee added that it was astounded by the number of parking penalty charge notices which were issued but later cancelled.
In 2003, this amounted to 20% of the 7.1m notices issued, a far too high a proportion which indicated that the system was malfunctioning, MPs said.
There was too much variation in performance between local authorities. For example, some councils contest just 6% of penalty charge notices which go to appeal, while others contest 56%.
The committee said failure to comply with parking restrictions was anti-social. It also caused traffic disruption, congestion, delays to public transport, and danger for pedestrians.
MPs added that the scale and cost of illegally parked vehicles had not been estimated for the UK as a whole, but was clearly high. In London it is estimated at £270m a year in additional delays and accidents.
The committee said it was 15 years since local authorities were given the power to take control of parking enforcement from the police. In that time the regime has succeeded in raising the level of enforcement and compliance.
There was no evidence that a return to criminal parking enforcement would be beneficial.
The report said that in looking at parking policies the committee had "all too often" found "inconsistent, poor and creaking administration, lack of drive for reform, poor communications, confusion and a lack of accountability".

Parking fines bring in £1.2m

Oxford Mail
23rd June 06
By Phil Vinter

County Council raked in more than £3,000 a day from city centre parking fines between April 2004 and March 2005.

The county council gets £3,000 a day from In that period, drivers forked out £1.2m in fines to private company Control Plus, which took on parking enforcement duties for the county council in 2003.

A further £1.9m was made from pay display machines, taking the council's total parking revenue to £3.1m. Although the money has to be invested in transport, the county council is under no obligation to improve signage.

The news comes in the wake of yesterday's report on parking policy and enforcement by the Commons Transport Committee. It said that signs informing motorists where and for how long they could park were often not clear, with the result that many drivers had difficulty understanding and complying with the law.

Paul Watters, head of roads and transport policy for the AA Motoring Trust, said: "The goal of local authorities should be to reduce non-compliance of drivers. How you achieve that is not necessarily through parking fines.
"People do take chances and try to get away with things, but equally the authorities should not be happy with high levels of non-compliance and money could be better invested."
Oxford resident Michael Quinn, of Bailey Road, Oxford, was one of scores of residents caught out by a council parking restriction which meant he had to move his car twice a day from outside his own home to avoid a fine.

He said: "It's disgraceful the amount the council is making. I don't think they should make any money. It doesn't act as a deterrent it just lines their pockets. I think those handing out the tickets are on big bonuses for the number of tickets they hand out, which is totally wrong."

Income from parking charges has risen by 51 per cent in the last eight years up from £2.1m in 1997/8 to £3.1m in 2004/5. However, the £3.1m figure includes revenue from Thornhill and Water Eaton park-and-rides which became the county council's responsibility in 2003.

David Robertson, the council's cabinet member for transport, said: "If people didn't park in the wrong place, they wouldn't have to be fined. It is our responsibility to enforce parking laws. Our situation in Oxfordshire is comparable to that in the rest of the country."

Earlier this year, the Oxford Mail reported that a total of 48,534 parking tickets were issued in the city in 2004, costing drivers at least £1m. The most frequent offence related to residents' and visitors' parking permits.

Church submits parking petition

Peterborough Today
23rd June 06


A PETITION requesting the relaxation of parking restrictions for worshippers attending a city church has been presented to council chiefs.

More than 850 people put their name to the petition drawn up by parishioners at St Peter and All Souls Roman Catholic Church in Geneva Street, Peterborough.Parking in Queensgate shopping centre is free on Sundays.

Parking outside the church and surrounding streets, however, is free only until 11am. But the Sunday service often goes on until 11.30am or later, meaning churchgoers have to buy tickets.

The petition, asking for just one hour's extension, was presented to Peterborough City Council in the hope that councillors will give church-goers the small concession.

Cllr Raja Akhtar, who represents the city's central ward, handed in the petition on behalf of residents and the Church at a meeting of Peterborough City Council on Wednesday.

He said: "I fully support the parishioners at St Peter and All Souls in their campaign to extend the free parking period.
"Sunday is a special day, and people should be allowed to worship without having to pay for the privilege.
"Shoppers using the Queensgate car park on Sundays are not charged. It seems wrong to charge others who choose to attend church, particularly when the change they ask for is only a small one."

Parish Priest Father David Jennings said he hoped the petition will be given careful consideration.

He pointed out that worshippers at the Gladstone Street mosque are allowed to park in two bus bays in the Acland overflow bus park on Friday afternoons and says he is happy that the council has made the concession in view of the lack of parking near the mosque.
"All I ask is that the city council is fair on this issue," Father Jennings said. "Many of our congregation are at the lower end of the financial scale and many are either elderly or have very young children. Surely it's not too much to ask for the free parking period to be extended by just one hour."

Mike Lennox, a spokesman for Peterborough City Council, said the petition will be considered as part of an ongoing consultation into parking in the city centre.

He said: "The deadline for submissions passed several weeks ago but we have agreed this petition will be included in a report. A decision will be made later this year."

Plea for car parking

Blackpool Today
23 June 06





CAR PARK CALL: Traders in Cleveleys claim that a lack of parking facilities is putting off customers





TRADERS in Cleveleys are calling for a new multi-storey car park for the town.
Limited space and a rise in the use of parking wardens are being blamed for a drop in visitors to the Victoria Road shopping area, according to some business owners.
Joey Blower, owner of the Sugar Sugar bar on Bispham Road, said: "We don't want to get into the same situation as Blackpool where people steer clear because of the over-zealous parking wardens.
"There is simply not enough parking in Cleveleys and what does the council do about it?
They stick three traffic wardens on the town centre and allow Asda to build a huge supermarket with tons of free parking – how are we supposed to compete?
"Visitors to Cleveleys have the choice of 383 council-owned spaces on three car parks plus some one hour on-street spaces.
Mr Blower said: "The 383 parking spaces might sound a lot but if there are 100 shops and businesses on Victoria Road then that is less than four customers each, and that doesn't include staff or tourists.
"There isn't even a coach park. Let's have a multi-storey big enough to help Cleveleys compete as a tourist resort and shopping centre."
Mr Blower believes the two-hour car park behind Tesco would be an ideal site for a multi-storey.Martin Hunns, chairman of the Traders Association and owner of the Carousel Cafe, agrees. He said: "The parking problems are slowly killing Cleveleys and it has got worse since we lost more than 200 spaces to the Jubilee Gardens development.
"The fear of traffic wardens means people are not risking stopping for even a coffee.
Cleveleys shoppers are often elderly and so take longer to go round the shops."
Brian Sager, owner of Vincent's Cafe on Victoria Road West said: "With the new Marks and Spencer opening, there will hopefully be more people coming into Cleveleys so we are going to need more spaces."
Russell Adair, from discount store Super Shopper, added: "People are understandably going other places where there is free parking and we have seen a slump in trade. A multi-storey car park would be an asset for traders."
A Wyre Council spokesman was unavailable for comment.

Brum backs parking warden revamp

Birmingham Mail
By Jonathan Walker
23rd June 06

CALLS for a ban on targets which encourage parking wardens to hand out tickets were today welcomed by Birmingham City Council.
The city collects more money in fines than any other authority outside London last year, but Neil Dancer, chief highway engineer, denies that the wardens are over-zealous.
"We don't set targets here, but I know in other places it does happen, and then motorists think it's the same everywhere," he said.
He was speaking as the Commons Transport Committee published a hard-hitting inquiry warning parking policy across Britain was "inconsistent and confused".
"Our present parking system is, frankly, a mess", said the committee chairman, Gwyneth Dun-woody (Lab, Crewe and Nantwich).
She added that parking enforcement contracts with incentive regimes based on the number of tickets issued were "utterly misguided".
Birmingham was one of the first authorities to take over responsibility for parking enforcement, previously dealt with by police
The city collects £17.7 million a year in parking fines, and makes a profit of £6.7 million.
But its parking warden scheme has been dogged by complaints down the years. including:
* Birmingham restaurant owner Carmine Sacco, manager of San Carlo in the city centre, hit with a £60 ticket while he was asleep in his car in Snow Hill earlier this month.
* Disabled grandmother Bertha Williamson, 78, was issued with a ticket because her orange badge was upside down.
* Jobseeker Chris Butler received a ticket because the back of his car jutted slightly beyond the parking bay markings.
* District nurse Nicky Willetts, from Sutton Coldfield, was left fuming after a traffic warden slapped on a £60 parking ticket as she delivered equipment to a patient's home.
* Ray Hickinbotham, dressed as Santa, was fined as he was handing out presents in Birmingham Children's Hospital.
Mr Dancer said: "We are the largest local authority. If you look at the amount of parking fines per person, we are actually eighth or ninth.
"We train our staff in depth, and there is also a code of conduct. This is an emotive issue, and sometimes we are accused of setting targets for wardens to hand out tickets. We don't do that in Birmingham."
Mr Dancer added: "I welcome this report, because if it leads to standards improving across the country then that is a good thing."

MPs committee condemns parking fines system

MPs call for parking fines overhaul

This Lancashire
22 June 06

Parkwise is responsible for handing out parking fines in Lancashire








Lancashire MPs have blasted the parking fines system, calling for an overhaul which makes it fairer and more sensible.
Michael Jack, MP for Fylde, and Lindsay Hoyle, MP for Chorley, spoke out as a House of Commons committee urged the Government to step in and change the "inconsistent and confused" way that the system is currently run.
The transport committee is urging the Government to ban "bonus" schemes where parking attendants get extra pay based on the amount of tickets they issue.
They also say that attendants should be better trained and show more common sense when it comes to whether a ticket ought to be issued at all.
Mr Hoyle said in response to the damming report from the committee of MPs: "We need to see a more flexible and sensible line being taken when it comes to issuing parking tickets.
"There are cases where people may be parked one inch over the line or they come back to the car a couple of minutes late.
"There needs to be better public relations between parking attendants and motorists.
"We also ought to be taking any incentives for issuing tickets out of the system completely."
Mr Jack said: "I think that what people object to is that there is little flexibility in the system.
"They feel that some attendants are being overzealous in enforcing parking."

Overhaul of parking policy urged

BBC News

A committee of MPs is set to call for a major overhaul of the way parking regulations are enforced in the UK.
The Transport Select Committee report is expected to recommend a single national system governing traffic wardens and parking attendants.
Some councils have been accused of treating parking enforcement as a money-making exercise.
The committee has heard evidence that up to a fifth of tickets are cancelled after complaints from motorists.

Paul Watters, head of transport policy for the AA Motoring Trust, said local authorities were often driven by profit, where parking was concerned.
He expressed concern that parking control appeared to have "lost its way" under the deregulated regime.
Mr Watters said in many areas there was "a feeling that it was about fining and punishment, rather then about trying to help people out of their minor parking mistakes that they make."

'Controversial local issue'
And Keith Banbury, chief executive of the British Parking Association, called for a "transparent" system that was consistent.
He also called for fairness and proportionality, by which he meant "different sorts of fee for different sorts of offences".
BBC Transport Correspondent Tom Symonds said parking had become "a seriously controversial local issue in many parts of the country" since the gradual transfer of powers to issue tickets from the police to councils.
The committee is likely to call for reform of the system of traffic wardens, or parking attendants.
MPs are expected to ask for a national system of standards for privatised parking enforcement, with more councils being able to use their discretion when issuing tickets rather than rigidly sticking to the rules.
Our correspondent added that this was an important report because the government is planning to issue its own new guidance for parking in the next few weeks.

MPs committee condemns parking fines system

Guardian Unlimited
Jackie Dent and agencies
Thursday June 22, 2006

A parliamentary committee today demanded a major overhaul of Britain's parking fines, with the committee's chairwoman, Gwyneth Dunwoody, describing the system as "a mess".

The House of Commons transport committee report said a system in which parking fines were issued by police and local councils was "irrational", and called for the introduction of a single approach.

"If a motorist parks illegally on one street, they are branded a criminal and will be dealt with by the police and criminal courts," Ms Dunwoody said. "On another street, they will have committed a civil infringement and will be processed by the local authority.
"It is high time to move to a single system of parking enforcement. But this rollout of decriminalised parking enforcement must take place in the context of improved professional standards."

The extensive report described the system of providing incentives to wardens meeting targets on the numbers of tickets issued as "misguided", saying it resulted in over-zealousness and misjudgment.
The committee also heard that some local councils were putting parking managers under pressure to meet financial targets because revenue from the issuing of fines was critical to overall local authority budgets.

It had been "astounded" by the number of penalty charge notices issued but later cancelled - 20% of the 7.1m fines issued in 2003. "This is far too high a proportion and indicates that the system is malfunctioning," the report said.
It added that parking attendants needed to be better trained and better paid, saying it was "essential to raise the professionalism of those who are responsible for applying the rules ... in parallel with improving the quality of the rules themselves."

Edmund King, the executive director of the RAC Foundation, said motorists would be delighted by the recommendations.
"Over-zealous enforcement, confusing signs and lines and the belief that councils are using parking fines to raise revenue rather than keep the traffic moving should become nothing but bad memories if the government takes this report seriously," he said.
He added that he was delighted the report addressed the "scourge of cowboy clampers" and the committee's recommendation that clamping on private land should be treated in the same way as on-street clamping, with a proper code of practice and an appeals system.

Parking wardens will lose incentives

The Independent
By Colin Brown,
Deputy Political Editor


Incentives to encourage parking wardens to issue more tickets and clamp more cars are to be banned under guidelines issued by the Government after a withering report by MPs on the "mess" in Britain's parking laws.

The army of 15,000 wardens helped to raise £450m in fines for local authorities by issuing 7.1 million notices. But the over-zealous enforcement of parking laws is to be curbed under the proposals to be issued by the Transport Secretary, Douglas Alexander, next month.

Q&A: Parking policy report

BBC News



A highly-critical report of parking enforcement, branding current policy inconsistent, has been published by the Commons transport committee.






Who enforces parking restrictions?

It is now 15 years since local authorities were given the power to take over control of parking enforcement from the police.
In total, enforcement has been "decriminalised" in 75 local authorities and 33 London boroughs.
In 2003, local authority parking attendants issued 7,123,000 penalty charge notices, while the police issued 1,043,000 notices, says the report.
Why do we need parking enforcement?
An estimated 50 million illegal parking acts take place every year in London alone.
According to the committee, the scale and cost of illegal parking throughout Britain is not known but clearly significant.
In London illegal parking is estimated to cost £270m a year in additional delays and accidents.
Breaking parking restrictions disrupts traffic, increases road congestion, heightens levels of danger, causes injuries and delays public transport, it says.

What are the committee's main findings?
The MPs call for a single unified system of parking enforcement under the control of local authorities.
The police, they say, have failed to enforce parking regulations properly for years because of more pressing priorities.
Before that happens, the MPs want to see a number of improvements to the decriminalised system.
For example, traffic wardens should get better pay and training, and there should be clear performance standards in applying parking restrictions.
Scrutiny of council parking operations by the Department for Transport and the Audit Commission should be improved.

What about appealing against a parking fine?
According to MPs, many people can be unclear about the appeal process, with instances where appeal information is omitted from "notice to owner" letters sent out by authorities.
And while motorists have 28 days to appeal against a penalty, there is no time limit for local authorities, which the committee calls "plainly unfair".
It also wants a 14-day discount period on the fine re-offered to offenders if they decide to appeal but then lose.

What about wheel-clamping?
The report also directs its attention to wheel clamping, which it says is a powerful and visible deterrent to illegal parking.
It says clamping is a severe penalty which must be applied "proportionately".
It calls on the government to consider restricting the use of wheel clamping to persistent offenders and unregistered vehicles.
The RAC said it was "delighted" that the report tackled the "scourge of cowboy clampers".
"The committee has recommended that wheel-clamping on private land should be treated in the same way as on-street clamping, with a proper code of practice and an appeals system," said its executive director, Edmund King.

MPs brand parking policy a mess

Daily Telegraph
22nd June 06

Parking policy and enforcement in Britain is "inconsistent and confused", a report from MPs said today.

It was "absurd" that some parking offenders are dealt with by police and others in neighbouring areas dealt with by local councils, the report from the House of Commons Transport Committee said.
"Our present parking system is, frankly, a mess", said Gwyneth Dunwoody, the committee's chairman.
She added that parking enforcement contracts with incentive regimes based on the number of tickets issued were "utterly misguided".
The report said lines and signage to indicate the parking rules were often unclear and that many drivers had difficulty understanding and complying with the law.
The committee said that decriminalised parking enforcement - where councils handle matters - must be extended throughout the country, but first the standards of enforcement must improve.
The committee added that it was astounded by the number of penalty charge notices which were issued but later cancelled.
In 2003, this amounted to 20% of the 7.1 million notices issued, a far too high a proportion which indicated that the system was malfunctioning, they said.
Also, there was too much variation in performance between local authorities.
For example, some councils contest just 6% of penalty charge notices which go to appeal, while others contest 56%.

Overhaul of parking regulations urged

ITV
22 June 06


Plans are being published next month to scrap targets for traffic wardens and to extend the grace period before a car is clamped to an hour



Local councils have been accused of targeting innocent motorists with heavy-handed parking regulations to rake in cash.
The all-party Transport Select Committee will recommend the introduction of a single, nationally-applied system to regulate traffic wardens.
It is in a bid to defuse growing resentment from drivers. The committee has heard evidence that up to a fifth of tickets are cancelled after complaints from motorists.
The proposals will recommend a two-tier fines system so there will be lesser charges for overstaying a few minutes on a meter than for more serious breaches, such as blocking an emergency exit, for example.
And plans are being published next month to scrap targets for traffic wardens and to extend the grace period before a car is clamped to an hour.
Among the more bizarre parking enforcement incidents were a hearse being ticketed during a funeral, a bus at a bus stop getting a ticket and a ticket affixed to a lorry while the driver lay dead inside from a heart attack.

Transport Select Committee wants fairer fines

What Car
19th June 06

• Also wants quotas for parking tickets scrapped
• Improvements to parking rules due next month

Motorists should enjoy lower parking penalties and have more opportunity to appeal against fines under recommendations being proposed by influential MPs this week.
The Transport Select Committee wants to see a two-tier system of parking fines introduced. Motorists only overstaying their allotted time by a few minutes will get smaller fines than those parking on double yellow lines.
Motorists should also be made more aware of their right to appeal against fines - many ticket-issuing authorities hurry drivers into handing over cash by increasing fines if they are not paid promptly.
The committee also wants targets or quotas for the number of tickets issued by parking attendants to be scrapped.

All of the measures are expected to be adopted by ministers in a shake-up of parking regulations due next month.

'Little priority' in government transport strategy

The Transport Select Committee's suggestions follow a year-long investigation. When the committee launched the enquiry last summer, it said the Government gave parking enforcement 'little priority' in its transport strategy.
Chief amongst concerns was how parking penalties have developed since councils were given the opportunity to take over enforcement from the police in the mid-1990s.
Since then, revenue from penalties has more than doubled to £1 billion in 2004, prompting suggestions that enforcement by councils is more about raising cash than keeping traffic flowing as freely as possible.
Any improvement will be welcomed by whatcar.com readers, 95% of whom said parking enforcement was in a mess in a poll taken last summer.
• UK motorists will be pursued for parking penalties and speeding fines incurred on the Continent from spring next year.
Ministers have given the DVLA the green light to pass on driver details to agencies in other European

Two-Tier Parking fines call

By Rosa Prince
19th June 06

DRIVERS parked illegally for just a few minutes should get smaller fines, according to MPs.
A Transport Select Committee report out on Thursday, calls for a two-tier system with reduced fines for minor breaches.
It criticises over-zealous parking attendants and calls for drivers to be given more help when challenging unfair tickets.

The committee, chaired by Labour's Gwyneth Dun-woody, found that rates of fines have soared since private firms took over from the police in the 90s.
The British Parking Association said: "If people park illegally they will still get a ticket, but hopefully it will take some heat out of this emotive issue."
Drivers say one in five tickets is unfair, but fewer than one in 100 challenge them because fines are smaller if paid within 14 days.
Parking tickets are major earners for councils. Outrageous fines have included tickets on hearses and ambulances