Stop the parking madness...

Is anyone else out there utterly fed up with the way local authorities use parking enforcement as a form of legalised extortion? Over the last three years, I have had my car towed, clamped, and ticketed on numerous occasions and not once have I ever done anything other than try to park legally.

On one occasion in Islington I correctly used a resident’s visitor’s voucher but when I returned to my car it had been clamped. The parking attendant mistakenly believed I had parked in a pay and display bay instead of a residents' bay. It took an hour and a half to get through to the clamp release phone line because its “systems were down”. (Clearly if cars cannot be released because of system problems all clamping activity should be postponned until the systems are working again.) Anyway, after forking out £120 it took a further hour and a half for someone to release my car. Photographs I took with my mobile phone proved that the arrows painted on the residents’ and pay and display bays were the wrong way round. Eventually the Council refunded me but offered no apology for impounding my car for three hours and offered no explanation as to how clamping cars makes it easier for people to park.

On another occasion in Westminster – just two weeks after the Islington incident – my car was towed away at 9.30 in the evening. When I returned to my car I initially thought that it had been stolen because when I parked both I had read the parking sign four times in an attempt to avoid the same fate as a fortnight before. I thought it clearly said that parking after 6.30pm was allowed. What I had missed was another sign about two feet further down the lampost stating that on two nights a week the bay was reserved for disabled parking between 6.30pm and 10.30pm. Having two separate signs was clearly, I dare say, deliberately confusing. For my sin, I had to pay £200 to have my car released, a fine completely out of all proportion to the offence. I have not visited a West End theatre since. Well done Westminster.

Most recently I bought a pay and display ticket in a quiet residential street in Islington only to find a parking attendant loitering around my car when I returned. Despite my return and protest that I was back in time he proceeded to issue a ticket. We were arguing for at least a couple of minutes and the Penalty Charge Notice had a time exactly three minutes after my ticket expired. His attitude was rude and arrogant. After the rigmarole of another appeal the ticket was eventually cancelled but it never should have been issued and I had to waste hours of my life and no little stress. Thanks Islington.

I just cannot understand how the Councils – who are elected to represent their constituents – allow residents to be persecuted in such a way. Parking enforcement appears to have lost all sense of proportion and attendants police the streets without common sense, leniency or discretion. The current system is not run in the interests of residents, traffic flow, safety, business or the environment. It is run by jobsworths, adds noting to the real economy, and in many cases, actually harms local businesses. It is strange that on Sundays when there are usually no parking restrictions that there is never usually a problem.

But the greatest tragedy of the current system is in London. Councils such as Newham and Hackney – two of the poorest boroughs – have some of the most ruthless parking attendants. They issue thousands of incorrect or unfair tickets often to people who are least able to pay the extortionate fines. In many cases, the victims do not understand the complex parking rules and are unable to appeal because they have poor English or are intimidated by taking on the often-bullying Council bureaucracy.

Unpaid fines can rapidly escalate in value and this means that one small parking indiscretion can often lead to a huge debt, a County Court Judgement and even a visit from the bailiffs. This can genuinely ruin lives, as the victims are forever more unable to get good credit, often turning to loan sharks for money at extortionate rates. It is nothing short of a scandal.

Sadly, the current system principally targets the law-abiding population because only those people who drive and register their cars legally are ever caught. The worst offenders just get away with bad parking because the Councils have no way of tracking them.

It is about time that local authorities realised how awful and unfair the current system is and did something about it. A start would be to encourage wardens to show discretion, review the areas and times where restrictions are necessary and ensure the fines are more proportionate to the offence.

I would love to hear what you think about this issue. Post your comments below or read my article on how to appeal unfair tickets.

Comments

[TONY SLINGSBY]

It is sometime since anyone commented on this thread and all i can say is that things are getting worse.In Doncaster where i live the local council and the Civil Enforcement Officers are ruining the town with their hitlerite running of the parking services.Many many bays within the town are illegally marked yet PCNS are still issued.I am fighting a PCN where they have tried to lie and cheat, issuing a photo showing x marks the spot where my car was supposed to have been parked,yet another photo that they themselves took proves that i was yards away from that position,then by saying No notes were displayed when they were(you can see the note on the front dashboard) and then by trying to impose a traffic order that by their own admission from paperwork recieved from them is invalid.I sincerely hope the adjudicator throws the book at them for their utter contempt to try and steal from me.They wanted a war,now they are going to get one.

[Rob Stewart]

Firstly, we should ALL abide by the Law if the Law is in place! If the Councils don't do their job by following the rule of Law, how can they hand out parking tickets to motorists? I am on my 8th parking ticket (none of which I have paid) because the Council have got it so wrong by not abiding by The Road Traffic Act. I have taken the Council to The National Parking Adjudication Service which is an independent body made up of lawyers/barristers and won the case. If the Councils are not following the Law laid down by The Road Traffic Act they can't impose these tax gathering fines. If you have had a parking ticket for whatever reason, query it first. Check the registration number, date, colour, road name, time etc. But more than that, check the state of the road markings. If you were on double yellow lines, follow them to the end and they should be joined with a a yellow "T-bar". Check that the lines are unbroken all the way. THIS THE LAW ! (which they break constantly)!!!

[Amy Beck]

I recently fell victim to the UKCPS in Leeds. Currently my fines stand at £249 and raising because I refuse to pay them. The land I received the tickets on are directly opposite the business that I run and due to extreamly limited parking in the area, I've been forced to park on this land for short periods of time. The owner of the land told me that she would have the tickets cancelled however it hasn't happened!
I know for a fact, that the enforcement officer that comes to issue the tickets brings along a 2nd person who photographs the car at the same time. I've seen this been done on many occations. I'm just wondering what the legality of this is??? Can they photograph your car without your permission? How legal are these parking enforcement companies?

[Martin scott]

Having gone out on Tuesday with a friend, we ended up in shoreditch. The time was 10:52pm when we pulled up and parked. I parked in a place that I had before thinking everything would be ok. The sign near to the double yellow line was on the other side of the road. It read 'controlled parking zone between 8am and 12pm'. Thinking that this sign was relevant for the double yellow lined areas I left the car on a single yellow line reassured I had behaved correctly. When I returned my car had gone. I thought it had been stolen. After phoning the police they asked me to phone a number, as my car could have been towed away. After ringing the number, I found out my car had been taken to a pound in Poplar; this was 3am. I asked whether I would be able to collect my car if I made my way to the pound. The man said it would be ok. After my friend and I had reached the pound we were told that I needed to show my log book with drivers licence or log book with two utility bills. Who carries their log book with them? Why do they need to see a log book to prove that the car belongs to me?
I argued that I had the car keys. Is that not proof? I will pay the 200 and fax the details later. NO!!!!! The sleepy female attendant was rude and had no sympathy. I had to get a cab from Poplar to my house in Tottenham to get my documents and then get back to the pound to pick up my car. The cabbie charged 30 pounds for this. I got home at 6.30am.
The ironic thing about the situation is that if I had parked on the high road, where you are causing more obstruction and inconvenience to other vehicles you don't get a fine. Nothing but entrapment in my view. Something needs to change.

[julien diaz]

I work as a masseur,pilates and dance teacher and have individual clients with whom i work on a 1 to 1 basis all over london.On average i have 4 clients a day situated all over london,from the city to notting hill,from hampstead to clapham.The only practical way for me to get around is by car purely because of the amount of equipment i need to carry,and the only time i get a rest and have the oppurtunity to eat lunch is sitting down in my car.On average i spend 8-£12 a day on parking meters,and on average i get 1 parking ticket a month.My experience is that parking wardens will hover around pay and display areas and the moment that your time has expired(3 minutes over) you will get a ticket.It is blatantly obvious that councils and parking firms are making a huge amount of money from "my crime" of spending too long with a client.To be fined £50 on top of the money one has already spent on the ticket for being 3-5 minutes late is totally out of proportion to the offence committed.The anger and rage i feel at having to,on average,pay an extra£600 a year is hard to keep manageable.This is of course on top of the £8 pound a day i pay for the congestion charge.When put into context,a person caught with heroin or cocaine pays less of a fine than i do for being 5 minutes late back to my car.Why is nobody protesting?why has'nt governement tried to change the laws?who gives these people the right to be able to crimanlize decent,hard-working people like myself?....today,16-05-07,i woke up to take my son to school and realised my car had been clamped.Not for being parked in a wrong bay,but because of4 unpaid congestion charge penalties that i had incurred 3 years ago whilst living at a different address.I phoned the number on the piece of paper and was informed that i had to pay£846 to have the clamp removed.I subsequently found out that despite the fact i had moved address,and informed the DVLA i had good ground for appeal.My son was late for school,i missed 2 clients,and now have to go through an arduous appel process to try and reclaim money that i dont have.Transport for London clamped me at 5am because they have cars with cameras trawling the streets of london searching for people who have unpaid tickets.These is disgraceful behavior,i feel violated and wronged.Its like a form of extorsion.All TFL had to do was check with the DVLA to find my new address and i would have paid my fines.I am so angry,to the point i want to start breaking parking machines,breaking cctv cameras,physically abusing parking wardens....this is how i feel.There is no protection for me whatsoever against this legal form of extorsion....someone please help!!!!

[N. Demko]

Help Please?
As most London boroughs allow disabled badge holders to park freely in residents' bays, I had to travel to Lewisham on 2 occasions and parked in residents' bays with my blue badge and correctly set clock clearly displayed. Both times I received a ticket with no attendant in sight to question why. When I appealed, I was told that Lewisham did not allow disabled parking in residents' bays and that it stated so in the book issued with disabled badges. Is this fair? Shouldn't exceptions to the rule be clearly sign posted? Has anyone had the same thing happen to them and won their appeal?

[Richard Prior]

Having commuted by car to the city for 15 years fromm the Kent Coast - The City of London's persecution of motorists drove me to a radical decision - Emigration. From Romania the next Ireland!

[Diane Teague]

I am disabled, Having a bad day and in a lot of pain had to get out to buy some painkillers, I parked in a parking bay, displayed my disabled badge correctly on the dashboard then struggling with the car door in the gale force winds I managed to get my painkillers and when I got back to my car-a ticket...

My badge must have blown down as I opened the door "still clearly visible on the seat"

I felt so ill had to go home but the next day went to find the parking attendant to ask about appealing, there is no address how to appeal on the ticket only how to pay. The parking attendants attitude was horrendous he said the bailiffs were coming to take my television away if I didn't pay then he gave me the wrong address to appeal to.

Finally wrote off again still no response and National clamps are just sending me bigger and bigger fines all the time.

Any advise please????

[Baz]

We will never solve the problem of wrongly and maliciously issued tickets until Local Authorities (LA) are made accountable for their (or their contractor's) actions.

At the moment they can issue tickets with impunity. The motorist then has to bear the cost and inconvenience of appealing to the LA and/or the Parking Adjudicator. Often when cases reach the Parking Adjudicator the LA fail to attend to defend or justify their actions. OK, the motorist wins, but at a cost and expense. The LA has no sanctions or costs awarded against it.

In my opinion, if it is shown that a ticket was issued incorrectly and the LA have failed to deal with it correctly at the first opportunity (when you appeal to them) then they should be obliged to pay some sort of restitution to the motorist. A nominal £50 - £100 would be sufficient. LA's if faced with such a burden would then think twice about the inadequate, poorly trained and often illiterate and ignorant parking attendants operating on their behalf!!!

At the moment there is no sanction against LA's continued persecution of the motorist, often without cause or justification.

[SutCol]

I forget which town it was recently that lost it's only traffic warden and couldn't find a replacement. Everyone thought it was great for about 2 days. Then the inconsiderate morons decided that they could park wherever they liked and the whole town ground to a halt.

London probably does have too many traffic wardens. Could the rest of us have some of them please?

[JP]

So, in the first instance the warden had as much trouble interpreting the markings as you did because some moron had painted them on wrong. You pointed this out and got a refund (btw clamping deters inconsiderate people from parking in the wrong place & so makes parking easier for the rest of us in the long run).

On another occasion you parked illegally and your car was towed.

On a final occasion, you disagreed with a warden about whether or not your ticket had expired and, funnily enough, he took the view that, well, you would say that. Harsh, to be sure (a few minutes grace after an otherwise perfectly valid ticket wouldn't go amiss), but far a from a blatant breach of ethics.

Some of your later points are certainly valid, and there are problems in the system which need addressing. However, your personal experiences are far from convincing.

[Romolo Costantini]

I don't live in the UK anymore thank God. Apart from the weather, the misery of owning and driving a car is probably my worst memory. In most other countries parking meters are prone to "accidental damage".

[Gavin]

There are some things about current parking systems which annoy me immensely. The first is that they demand cash which I don't normally carry and I don't believe I'm alone in this. The second is that you have to guess how long you're going to be somewhere and you inveriably have to be overpay or risk getting a penalty. If you do have cash you have to pay £1.10 or £2.30 or some other stupid combination requiring at least two coins, maximising their chance of catching you short.
Why can't they upgrade the systems to use cards, charge for the actual parking time and get rid of all the wardens. I believe that most drivers are ticketed due to complex or inadequately sign-posted rules or because of the antiquated parking technology used by councils, not because they're inherently dishonest.

[MG Felton]

Beware Leeds and Newcastle-under-Lyne. These are areas in which a company called UKCPS operates. They resort to the usual bully-boy tactics. Should you have the misfortune to fall foul of one of "their" parking areas - often the public highway - refuse to pay. Instead, challenge them to appear in Court. They won't dare because they know that their activities will be condemned.

[Dan]

I live in Gravesend, pay for a resident's permit and struggle to park outside my own home. The reasons for this include that the spaces are big enough to park two cars in, leaving insufficient spaces to service the number of permits, which is then compounded by the fact that the self-same spaces are also made available for pay & display. What am I paying for?

Also, if you get back to your car and a warden is in the process of issuing a ticket, get in and drive off without a word. A ticket is not served until it touches the car, so whilst he was taking two minutes to argue and complete the ticket you could have driven off without a care in the world.

[Vic Taylor]

On New Years day ( a bank holiday ), I mistakenly parked & paid for a disabled bay in a retail car park at The Peel Centre, Stockport. Nearly all the shops were closed and the car park was virtually empty. Unfortuately I received a £40 parking fine. I appealed against it on the grounds that I had made a genuine mistake, that the car park was empty and I was not inconveniencing other users. My appeal has been rejected. Do other car park users think that some fines are unreasonable and disproportionate to the offence? I think it is time that a national campaign against unfair parking fines be initiated by the media.

[Allan Osborne]

Southwark council provide thier staff with vehicles to travel from building to building - pool cars. Council tenants have to display a permit to park outside thier own flat/house, visitors have to pay each time they visit the estate - Aylesbury - by a ticket. Tfl say we should use public transport. Southwark council staff drive to work, do not pay for parking as the traffic warders ignore thier cars. Even when they are parked in residents bays. When asked why they are parking there, a Southwark council employee said "No-one will do anything about it, so why not?" Pure arrogance at being able to abuse public office? Pure arrogance at being above the law.

[Liz Brennan]

I parked in a disabled spot at my local Sainsbury store in Wigan, displayed my badge and did not overstay my time. When I returned to my car I had been issued with a £60 ticket by the company contracted by Sainsbury to 'manage' the carpark - Parksafe. I have a very severely disabled 17 month old child, hence the badge, and am 8 months pregnant. The ticket insisted the fine had to be paid even if an appeal was to be made otherwise the fine would increase in steps. Apparently all appeals would be dealt with sympathetically and within 28 days. 28 days later, after sending a cheque with an appeal letter, as instructed, asking for the ticket to be cancelled the cheque has been cashed and I have not received a reply. So much for 'managing' the carpark and I will never go to Sainsbury's again. I urge others to follow suite.

[Ali Caliskan]

Hi everyon, I am fed-up with warden fines, it was just weekend I went to the local library, and i have had 3 hrs ticket to be displayed on the car. What the warden did to my car is gave me penalty charge of £40 where i had valid display ticket at that time, I have taken ticket to the ticket office and asked them to clear, and showed my valid display ticket.

You get fines either you are rigth or wrong, doesn't matter. they are allways rigth. I believe best thing to do is not to drive at all. is that what they want?

[Arthur Dicken]

I went on holiday in February, and missed the required payment date for a balance of £871 on my Nat West VISA card by three days. As a result of they charged me a fee of £12 for late payment and an interest charge of £29-18, a total penalty of £41-18 .

These charges together represent a punitive 4.7% of the outstanding balance, or an annual rate of 57% per annum based on a calendar month, or when the rate is calculated on the 3 days by which the payment was late, represents an annual interest rate of 575%.

I wrote to reclaim the penalty charge because payment was only 3 days late, I always pay the total in time and I believed the sum taken was punitive rather than representative of the scale of the problem or costs incurred.

The reply from NatWest was that these were the rules and no refund was offered.

Arthur Dicken
Macclesfield, Cheshire

[lauren]

Most irritating is when the first pay and display machine is broken and you spend 5 mins running around trying to find a working machine, then get back to your car where there is now a ticket. No chance to appeal to the warden who has now disappeared.

Ticket falling off your window, put in the wrong part of the car, upside down etc, all irritating when you have paid.

It is no way to live when you cannot park for 3 mins to buy a paper or some stamps. In the old days the wardens gave you a few mins grace. Sadly no longer, it is a money making machine.

[Breda Gajsek]

I parked my car on Priory Road NW6 on the evening of the 8th February, where I am entitled to do so. Upon my return the following day, I was rather surprised to find I had received a parking penalty, even though I had parked legally.

I have written to Camden council enclosing photographs of the bay where I had parked showing that a suspended parking notice did not come into force until days after the date my of parking 'offence'.
I therefore concluded that the issuing attendant has mistakenly read the sign and the council would cancel the ticket. My appeal was rejected. Now I shall appeal against the decision, yet again

[Paul Gaynor]

The most effective retaliation is to boycott London. I shall certainly not be driving into London, as I have done many times before for the weekend. A single weekends boycott would cost "London" millions in lost tourist cash. Motorists should boycott towns which are motorist unfriendly. This can best be done via an internet site. Note, on a similar subject, the fact that North Wales is currently viciously persuing motorists with stealth tax cameras. I am currently avoiding North Wales. I have been there many times for a weekend, but is it worth loosing your license and your job for. Bottom line, you have to make them loose more money than they make via such tactics.