whelkstall

I was refused adjudication on my parking penalty appeal. The gist of their reasoning is that if a ticket is misdisplayed then the task of cancelling the penalty would be too costly, time consuming and complex to administer, so the law assumes that if the ticket is misdisplayed then no payment was made. It appears that they believe that the public much prefer this approach.

I can’t help wondering how much time and money is wasted in contesting appeals. Nearly 200 items of paper, countless letters, hearings. Realistically, it must cost thousands of pounds and tens of hours for each case and would appear to be a lot more costly, time consuming and complex to administer than simply having a file for cancelled penalties.

I have discovered that the Council does cancel some penalties when tickets are misdisplayed. There is no specific policy, but the officer can make that decision, if he feels it is appropriate. What is appropriate? They refuse to say.

Whatever happened to open Government?

I now have to apply to the High Court for a Judicial Review to try to remove the branding of being a cheat. There is a County Court hearing scheduled so I will certainly receive a County Court judgement and a visit from baillifs to remove my property.

All this despite my having paid the fee and all the authorities accepting that I did.

Eight months on and it has been decided at the Traffic Penalty Tribunal that having a valid parking ticket is not grounds for appeal. Proof that you have paid is no defence. It was never in dispute that I had paid the parking fee. I have the ticket that the parking attendant photographed. The ticket was not properly displayed and that’s enough.

You would have thought that there were some rules that Councils have to operate by. In fact they have ’Absolute Discretion’. Absolute Discetion means that, provided the parking system is propely in place with proper notices, road markings and the like, then the Councils can do whatever they like with regard to infringements. There is not even a requirement for them to be consistent.

A couple of people in the Tribunal queue with tickets wrongly displayed, dropped of the windscreen or otherwise obscured and I would imagine that they would all have lost their appeals - assuming the Tribunal is consistent.

The reality is that parking provides a considerable income to Councils - and to the private contractors who operate it it for them. They even have targets for income from penalties. Penalties in other areas of the law are designed to act as a deterrent to illegal behaviour so that a sensible target would be to see them reduced. If penalties are seen as a source of income then deterring behaviour that is a source of income is counter productive. It also explains why Councils pursue every infringement to the limit.

In reality, it makes sense to just pay up and accept that you’ve been skinned. Even if you were fortunate enough to win, you lose pay from time off to attend the hearing and preparing your case is not an inconsiderable task. Councils probably depend on people resigning themselves to the injustice of it.

Among the largest number of complaints to Members of Parliament are those about parking penalties. It was even raised by the Liberal Democrat spokesman in Parliament. I contacted my MP and he suggested that I mention "common sense, fairness and justice". I discovered that common sense, fairness and justice have no place in the Tribunal. They have a set of grounds for appeal. If you meet the criteria you win, if you don’t you lose. It’s a rubber stamping exercise and therefore a waste of time appealing if your grounds for appeal is not on the list.

What do you pay your parking fee for? I assumed that it was to park. It is, in fact to purchase the ticket to prove that you have paid.

I parked in Wellington Street again so that I could buy my wife a birthday present. I paid for an hour, put the ticket in the car and, having brought the present, returned within half an hour. There was a parking ticket on my car. My ticket was improperly displayed. In fact, it was upside down.

It was a mistake, but I assumed that it was one that was easily resolved. A call to the Parking Enforcement Team revealed that having a ticket proved nothing. I could have picked it up in the street. The idea that people would scrabble around in the gutter looking for a parking ticket with their car’s registration number on says a lot about the mentality of the people who manage parking.

What makes the attitude even more ridiculous is the fact that the Traffic Wardens photograph the tickets in the cars and these photographs are placed on a website.On the photograph of mine the number is clearly readable and matches the one I have. I can therefore prove that I paid the fee. No compromise from the Enforcement Team. The offence is, "parking without clearly displaying a valid pay & display ticket or voucher."

I could pay £70 and accept the idiocy of the Council’s policy, but I will let it go to court. The court will doubtless support the council, but there is just a chance that the idiotic waste of time and the injustice of it may make someone think.

I paid to park. I can prove it. Is £70 a just penalty for a lapse of attention that left my ticket upside down?