No justice in parking 'court'

Christopher Booker's notebook
Sunday Telegraph (Filed: 11/09/2005)

No justice in parking 'court'

No justice in parking 'court'

Neil Herron is the campaigner who has shown that councils are illegally raising millions of pounds from motorists by failing to follow the correct procedures in setting up "decriminalised" parking regimes under the 1991 Road Traffic Act. When his own council, Sunderland, grudgingly admitted that it had continued to impose fines even after being formally told these were illegal, Mr Herron sought action.

Who better to ensure that the law was being observed, he thought, than the National Parking Adjudication Service (NPAS). But when he telephoned them he was puzzled to find that he was getting nowhere (not least when, thanks to an NPAS official failing to close off his mobile phone, Mr Herron overheard himself being described as "mad" - for which he later received an apology).

Mr Herron therefore investigated NPAS further. Although it presents itself as a wholly "independent" body, it turns out to be financed by 60p on every parking ticket issued by councils operating "decriminalised" regimes.

On its website, the NPAS sternly instructs the public to tell the truth because it is a "court of law". When challenged as to why it seems to act as judge and jury in its own interest, however, it cheerfully insists that it is "not a court of law" after all.

Thus, when local authorities are found to be in breach of the law on parking penalties, the public's only recourse is to a "court of law" which is not a court of law; which represents the very people who are breaking the law in the first place; and which is funded by money some of which itself has been raised illegally.