Barnet Council fights back ... but they lost and it will cost

Barnet & Potters Bar Times
By Alex Galbinski

Barnet Council has hit back at claims that it may be forced to refund all parking fines after an independent parking appeal body ruled that two of the local authority's tickets were invalid'.

A fortnight ago, an independent adjudicator from the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service (PATAS) ruled that two tickets given to motorist Hugh Moses in Golders Green last year were not issued in line with Section 66 of the Road Traffic Act 1991.

This states that the date of issue should be on the penalty charge notice (PCN). Only the date of contravention is currently stated.

Barnet Council is asking for a review of the adjudicator's decision, saying its notices do state the date, but admitted it is looking at the wording of its PCNs.
Similar decisions have been made by parking adjudicators in Lambeth and Tower Hamlets in recent weeks, prompting Lambeth Council to issue a new PCN which includes a date of notice'.

A Barnet Council spokeswoman said: "The parking adjudicator did not rule that all Barnet's parking tickets are invalid.
"An adjudicator's role is to assess each parking appeal individually on its merits.
"When people have paid their parking ticket without challenging it, they have accepted responsibility for the parking contravention and have understood the information the parking ticket conveyed to them and are therefore unable to claim a refund at a later date.
"We also want to resolve these technical issues that have arisen over the correct wording for PCNs."

However parking campaigner Barrie Segal of AppealNow.com, who represented Mr Moses, said Barnet Council was scared.

He said that anyone who had paid a parking fine in the past was owed' money by Barnet Council, and that all new tickets handed out were invalid.
"The implications are stupendous, both for London and for the whole of the UK," he said.

He advised people to appeal against their ticket to Barnet Council in the first instance and then to PATAS if the appeal was rejected.

He admitted that parking adjudicators were not bound by previous rulings, but that no adjudicator had ever contradicted another.

Mr Segal said that those who wanted their fine reimbursed should write to the council, but would have to go through the courts to pursue the claim further if the council refused to give their money back.

11:30am Thursday 2nd March 2006