Parking Ticket Mass Amnesty? ... Local authorities set to lose millions

Below is a staggering press release from Sunderland City Council. The implications for DPE across the country, even at this stage of the admission, are staggering. By effectively creating a mass amnesty due to the fact that PCNs without 'Date of Issue' will not be pursued it means that tens of millions of fines cannot now be pursued.
However, those who have paid believing the PCNs to be legal are told 'tough, you are not getting a bean back.'
This has about as much chance of surviving a legal challenge as Sunderland AFC has of avoiding relegation.
My comments are in red, the content of the press release is in blue.

City of Sunderland
ST 117
For Immediate Release

Penalty Charge Notices

FOLLOWING a case involving Bury Council, Sunderland City Council, like many other local authorities, will not pursue payment of outstanding unpaid Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) which do not display a date of issue.
The most recent case was Moses v Barnet (25th Feb 06) which agreed with the Bury decision.
The Council were told they must obey the law and that clearly states PCNs must have a date of issue.

All PCNs carry the date of the contravention, which in almost every case is the same as the issue date. The City Council has corrected this technicality and all PCNs now bear the date of issue as well as the date of the contravention.
Sunderland Council began DPE on 3rd February 2003. It is not a technicality ... it is a legal requirement.

The City Council's legal advice confirms that all PCNs which have been issued without an issue date, but were not appealed against and paid at the time, remain valid and therefore no refunds will be made in these circumstances.
These fines were paid on the assumption that the documents, on which the council relied, were lawful. Monies raised by Councils using unlawful documentation must be classed as unlawfully derived income in the accounts and this then becomes a matter for investigation by the District Auditor.

A small number (46) of PCNs for which payment had been made after legal advice was received on November 25th 2005, are being reimbursed.
Legal advice was received on 14th June 2005. It came from the Assistant City Solicitor to the Head of Transport and Engineering and stated that 'the PCN be changed to include the date of issue, without delay.'
It appears, the advice, to have simply been confirmed by Counsel (Stephen Sauvain QC) on 25th November 2005. It wasn't new advice.
The question has to be asked as to why it then took 5 months to change the PCNs ... and there was also an explicit instruction to NCP by e-mail on 16th June 2005 to change the electronic version of the PCN.
Handwritten PCNs were changed on 4th November 2005
Electronic PCNs were changed on 30th November 2005.

Any payments outstanding for PCNs which bear the date of issue as well as the date of the contravention, will continue to be pursued.
The Council misled the Department for Transport in their DPE application (told them all the
lines / signs /TROs would be correct by 3rd Feb 03 when DPE would begin) and therefore the
Secretary of State granted the Special Parking Area based on a falsehood. As this was approved by Parliament via a Statutory Instrument then Parliament has been misled into granting DPE powers to Sunderland. The Department for Transport have stood idly by despite being offered all the evidence.
The Transport Committee refused to call me to give oral evidence to the hearings in the Commons on 7th and 14th December yet heard evidence from NPAS.
NPAS has heard over 150 Sunderland appeals ... all with PCNs which bore no date of issue. The complaint calling their competence into question is being prepared.
Tie this in with the fact that now it is revealed that 62,936 PCNs were issued without the date of issue but before they knew they were unlawful and 12,761 were issued after they knew they were unlawful, it doesn't bode well for Sunderland City Council and NCP.

Another point to bear in mind is the fact that NCP were aware nationally of the NPAS MacArthur v Bury decision yet appear to have chosen not to change the PCNs in other local authority areas under their control...Westminster being the big one, their PCNs only being changed recently...an absolute case of corporate negligence or corporate complicity?

Ends

07/03/2006
Issued by:
Rose Peacock,
Tel: 0191-553 1136
Fax: 0191 553 1138
Email: rose.peacock@sunderland.gov.uk

Barrie Segal of AppealNow.com is quoted as saying,
"Neil...WELL DONE!!"
"Sunderland’s dramatic climb down on the “date of issue” on their parking tickets is another victory for the motorist. However Sunderland’s failure to refund motorists who have paid these illegally issued parking tickets demonstrates a breathtaking arrogance. Those councils in London and elsewhere that have had their parking tickets declared illegal by the parking adjudicator would do well to consider their position and behave responsibly and fairly.
Barrie Segal, founder of www.AppealNow.com™"