The following story made front page of Saturday's Newcastle Journal. The implications are enormous. Sunderland City Council have created a parking regime for the city centre without legislative authority. This means that NCP are enforcing a regime and issuing tickets unlawfully. The Council's accounts cannot be signed off if there are unlawful items of income, and the District Auditor will be forced to investigate.
Traders in the city whose businesses have been seriously affected by the Draconian enforcement regime may have a case for a class action, or could withold their business rates. This could be replicated across the country.
What we are witnessing with all of these de-criminalised regimes is the arrogance of office and a regime created simply to raise revenue...most of which goes as profit for private companies. Revenue is not reinvested in the towns and cities to create more, or upgrade parking facilities.
This is the beginning of the people fighting back.
PARKING TICKETS 'COULD BE ILLEGAL'
Campaigner says he has found a loophole
By Ross Smith
PARKING tickets issued in the North's biggest city could be illegal,
according to investigations by a prominent political campaigner.
Activist Neil Herron believes he has found a loophole which will invalidate
all fines in Sunderland city centre.
He is gambling more than £1,000 of his own money to prove his case, by
refusing to pay for 27 tickets dating back to March. It could mean that
parking tickets dating back as far as 2003 in the city are illegal.
Mr Herron came across the potential anomaly in the city's parking regime
while investigating the judgment against him in the Metric Martyrs case.
Sunderland Council has set up a Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) around the
city centre. It means road signs are placed on the perimeter warning
motorists they are entering the zone, and explaining the waiting
restrictions within it.
But the council has never put in place a Controlled Parking Zone Order to
enact the zone - which Mr Herron believes renders it, and all parking
tickets within it, invalid.
The council insists that is not the case, and that other legal orders make
the zone effective.
A letter to Mr Herron from Sunderland City solicitor Bob Rayner said: "Your
premise that there should have been an order declaring a CPZ is incorrect."
But the Department for Transport last night appeared to contradict Mr
Rayner.
A spokeswoman told The Journal: "We wouldn't comment on an individual case.
Parking restrictions are a matter for local authorities.
"But the general policy is that to introduce a Controlled Parking Zone,
local authorities need a Controlled Parking Zone Order, as set out in the
Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984."
Mr Herron said: "I'm not going to pay the fines because I do believe
Sunderland Council haven't got the necessary traffic regulations in place
to implement its regime.
"If they're that confident of the ground they're on, then I invite them to
come after me.
"But I have 27 tickets and haven't heard from them yet."
A Sunderland Council spokesman said: "Waiting restrictions are introduced
with powers contained within the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. A
restricted area is commonly known as a Controlled Parking Zone. This,
however, is an engineering, not legal term and describes an area in which
all roads are subject to waiting restrictions introduced by various traffic
regulation orders in the interests of road safety and reducing congestion."
'Martyr' who found a new cause
By Ross Smith
NEIL Herron began campaigning against car park tickets as a result of the
judgment in the so-called Metric Martyrs case, in which he and a group of
Sunderland traders were prosecuted for using imperial weights and measures.
The ruling said that certain acts of Parliament - including the 1689 Bill
of Rights -had primacy over other legislation, unless its measures were
specifically repealed.
The Bill of Rights says citizens cannot be fined without being convicted -
but parking fines administered by councils offer no option to go to court.
Mr Herron began collecting parking tickets in a bid to prove his case.
It was during the course of his investigations that Mr Herron found that a
specific CPZ Order was not in place in Sunderland.
The zone covers an area from Silksworth Road in the north-west of the city
centre, to Sans Street in the north-east, West Lawrence Street in the
south-east and the Park Lane interchange in the south-west.
Signs explaining to motorists that they are entering a CPZ and that waiting
is prohibited between 8am and 6pm on Mondays to Saturdays are displayed on
its perimeter.
The council says it has linked various localised parking regulations
through a consolidated order, made in 2003. But Mr Herron claims that,
without a specific order declaring a CPZ, individual signs must be placed
on each street where there are parking restrictions. Without them, fines
are not valid, he believes.
Ross Smith
Regional Affairs Correspondent
The Journal
10 comments:
Ho Ho Ho
Go get 'em tiger.
Shadows of Magna Carta, a blow for the common man.
Winston Churchill was well aware of the significance of Magna Carta and as a historian with a deep understanding of unchanging human nature wrote this warning and reassurance to future generations;
"The facts embodied in it and the circumstances giving rise to them were buried or misunderstood. The underlying idea of the sovereignty of the law, long existent in feudal custom, was raised by it into a doctrine for the national State. And when in subsequent ages the State, swollen with its own authority, has attempted to ride roughshod over the rights or liberties of the subject it is to this doctrine that appeal has again and again been made, and never as yet, without success."
Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples (1956) Vol. 1, 201-202
why not let the ncp wardens do there job as its the council that you have a huge problem with however i think they are doing a good job, if they don't do it somebody else will i believe you are right about your case and good luck but if these people didnt park on yellow lines then the wardens would not have to put on any tickets i have witnessed numerous wardens being physical and mentally abused because they are doing there job. give these guys a brake let them get on with it.
This looks like something that belongs with an item posted on the Garbagegate website back in February.
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/garbagegate/archive5/penalty2.htm
Good luck on your mission against the Council.
Here is another issue that really annoys me and it happens in every town!
The Council after consulting the Police make an order restricting parking on a particular road. The Council must have a good reason and this is usually, either to maintain the free flow of traffic, or for road safety reasons.
All well and good,but after the order is in force and the yellow lines down, able bodied drivers are fined but disabled drivers are not.
Now, I have every sympathy for genuine disabled people, but it cannot be that road safety is compromised when the able bodied park but not so if the disabled park. Likewise with the free flow of traffic. It seems to me there is something legally amiss here.
Lots of parking/CPZ/traffic calming measures are introduced with minimal or mickey-mouse 'consultation'.
We had a case recently where 'traffic calming' road humps were proposed (and passed) following dodgy consultation.
You're right, democracy is NOT a spectator support but too often Govt and local councils try to sidestep it and make it one.
http://my.opera.com/saragforum/forums/topic.dml?id=147252&t=1151885960&page=1#comment1634131
I wonder if you could comment on Section 22 of the Road Traffic Act 1998 22. If a person in charge of a vehicle causes or permits the vehicle or a trailer drawn by it to remain at rest on a road in such a position or in such condition or in such circumstances as to be likely to cause danger to other persons using the road, he is guilty of an offence.
and if you could comment if you feel you think this is a reasonable request under the act to adheret to?
Hi...with all these parking ticket comments I guess I'm in the right place...this concerns Middlesbrough though...I've parked next to the UGC cinema (on yellow lines) since it was built (10 years) receiuing no tickets, I assumed it wasn't adopted by the council and so couldn't issue a ticket. A couple of months ago I received a ticket. After making enquiries I found out it only came under "traffic regulation order" (for double yellows) May 2009. No signs or notices have been placed informing that tickets could/would now be issued...
My question is...do I have any legal standpoint for contesting the ticket ? Or does the fact the lines have always been there (although unenforcable) cover the council ?
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