The battle lines are being drawn ...

... and councils are fully aware that they have been 'unjustly enriched' from unlawful restrictions on the highway. If only they had followed the law themselves they would not be in the situation where it is likely that £hundreds of millions is going to have to be refunded.
However, the fact that council officers KNEW the restrictions were unlawful is likely to lead to claims for damages and costs in addition to refunds ... and a queue at the jobcentre for highways engineers and parking managers who decided that their council was above the law.

'Council should repay victims of parking bay'
Aug 27 2009
By Michael Russell

AN ANGRY motorist says the council has effectively admitted it was wrong by repainting incorrect parking bay markings and should repay those caught in them before the change.
The town hall admitted there was a technical problem with the white lines in August last year which Nazma Begum says led to it pulling out of an appeal hearing over her ticket.

She said the lines at either ends of many stretches of residents' bays, which are not marked out individually, did not follow regulations set put by the Department for Transport as a double line rather than a single one is painted at each end.

At the time the council said it would be too costly to change them and the changes would reduce parking capacity - but they have since painted over the mistake.

Miss Begum, a Thames Valley University student, said: "They don't care about mitigating circumstances, we have to follow the regulations to the letter so they should too."

The 22-year-old was given a ticket last year after she mistook a residents' bay for a pay and display space in Warwick Road, Ealing.

A visit to the website www.ticketfighter.co.uk enlightened her to the council's mistake and armed with the new information she says she forced the council to back down.
She then submitted a freedom of information request and discovered 27 people had paid tickets after parking in the same bay from August 8 2008 and January 25 while the markings were still incorrect.
And that the council had received more than £4.3m in fines from motorists parking in residents' bays in the past five years.

Miss Begum, of Brent, added: "The council are greedy, they just want to take money off you, they don't care who you are. Are they going to repay motorists who parked in wrongly-marked bays and if there was no problem with them then why have they changed them?"

The owner of the ticketfighter website added that in recent months a number of motorists had won appeals against other councils on the grounds bays were incorrectly marked.

An Ealing Council spokeswoman said: "The bays have always been clearly marked and enforced. As part of a rolling road markings programme our contractor repaints worn away lines. It has been removing some markings in order to maintain a consistent approach with other parking bays across the borough.
"This has been done as part of the ongoing programme over recent months and at no additional cost to the council."