Another Parking Ticket Victory...Another Front Page

Lancashire Evening Telegraph
Saturday 24th September
Parking tickets blunder

DOZENS of motorists have been illegally issued with tickets after council bosses failed to update old parking laws.
Blackburn with Darwen council chiefs are facing the prospect of having to repay £3,180 in fines which have been issued incorrectly since last October.

The authority only realised it was breaching a ruling made by the National Parking Adjudication Service (NPAS) in April 2003 after being informed by the Lancashire Evening Telegraph.
It has now admitted that 53 Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) issued to motorists for parking in Hackney Carriage bays in the last year were illegal.

Now an opposition councillor has demanded that the council repays the £60 fines and reviews all its Traffic Regulation Orders to ensure no other parking fines have been collected illegally.
Decriminalised parking enforcement, which was introduced in the borough in October 2004, is administered in Blackburn and Darwen by Capita, the private firm which runs dozens of the council's administrative services.

However, the council continued to use a Traffic Regulation Order under the Local Government Act 1976 instead of re-issuing it under the Road Traffic Act 1991.

Campaigner Neil Herron, who successfully got thousands of parking fines overturned when he discovered a legal blunder in Sunderland's parking bylaws, said the cases may be the tip of the iceberg across the UK.
But the council today said it was confident that all its other parking regulations were correctly issued.

Mr Herron said: "This throws into question the whole legality of Blackburn with Darwen's council's parking regime.
"They have taken £3,180 that they shouldn't have and this is not the way for a council to be running the borough.
"They are displaying an utter arrogance and must realise that they have a duty to give that money back.
"That money is an item of unlawful income and if it has entered their accounts, they could be guilty of false accounting.
"How many more motorists would have received illegally issued tickets had the Lancashire Evening Telegraph not highlighted this issue?
"What has been unleashed across the country with private companies running parking regimes for profit is just resentment from city traders, businesses and members of the public."

Earlier this month MPs on the Commons Transport Committee announced that they would be looking into the "legitimacy" of parking schemes this autumn.

A third of all councils operate decriminalised parking schemes and the total sum raised from parking fines in 2004 was over £1billion.

Coun Andy Kay, executive member for regeneration, said: "As soon as we were aware of the NPAS ruling we stopped enforcing on Hackney Carriage bays.
"In the meantime, whilst we are now in the process of changing the traffic orders to allow us to enforce in future we will take into account the NPAS ruling should we receive an appeal from anyone penalised under this code."
Conservative councillor for Wensley Fold, Paul McGurty, said: "It comes as no surprise that we yet again see this council making a complete hash of the parking scheme.
"It beggars belief that Coun Kay refuses to go over records in order to return money taken from drivers illegally -- even though he knows that 53 have been issued and therefore must know the details of the drivers.
"It is simply not good enough to say if someone appeals we will refund their money and we must review the whole system to ensure this does not happen again."

o The National Parking Adjudication Service is an independent tribunal which considers appeals by motorists whose vehicles have been issued with council Penalty Charge Notices. It ruled against Thanet District Council over a ticket given to a motorist on a taxi stand.