Motorist from Somerset appeals against parking chargeParking fines are £30 and rise to £60 if they are not paid within 14 days.
South Somerset District Council has defended its policy of imposing a non-returnable £5 fee even if motorists win an appeal against a parking fine.
Dave Gill and his wife had bought and displayed a ticket in their car but were handed a parking fine in Yeovil.
After challenging the decision they discovered the £5 fee would not be refunded even if they were successful.
The council said this covers the cost of processing the appeal and does not reflect the true, much higher, cost.
Parking fines issued at council-owned car parks are £30 but increase to £60 if they are not paid within 14 days from the issuing the notice.
Dave Gill, who is still waiting for a decision on his parking fine, said: "If you appeal against a £60 parking ticket you still ending paying £5 for that appeal, which to me is the rub if you like... the point is really not the money but it's about the principle... it takes five minutes to write that ticket out."
A spokesman for South Somerset District Council said: "We could, within our rights, say that the penalty has to stand.
"However we state in the appeals process that is issued with each penalty that if a valid ticket can be produced, or season ticket, residents permit, disabled badge for example, that if they haven't displayed correctly then we may cancel the fine for a £5 administration charge.
"We are very reasonable and when we can see people have accidentally not displayed a ticket we do usually let people off the full fine but we do need to gather minimal costs to cover the time spent sorting out the appeal, which includes the time spent by our staff, logging it, sending out correspondence, etc.
"We would advise that drivers do a quick check to make sure it hasn't slipped or blown away.
"The £5 is usually accepted as a fair compromise by our residents as they can see that it wasn't correctly displayed and time and resources had to be spent to make sure the appeal was considered and approved."
4 comments:
this is just the start of a very long line charges that the council are dreaming up as we speak to try to claw back the millions they lost in icesave and other scheme,s that they used for their inflation proof pensions the next one will be no rubbish collections at all you will have to bring your bins down to the yard and they will weigh them and then charge you by the kilo ,of course if you are diabled you can get a 20p per load at the end of the year
somerset highways,its been 18 months now since i contacted this dept about 2 rutts out side our property we have the main a37 outside our place with a road junction a jaycent
the 2 ruts have have gas/water/electric /traffic light cables/and water ,and drainage under them and when a large truck hit the ruts the vibration can be felt in the property,along with a loud noise ,dispite variouse promises nothing has been done i even phoned the enviromental dept and dispite informing them of the risks of an accident let alone the vibration and noise they said [ther is nothing we can do ]and then asked if ther was anything else they could do ? in the end we got the local mp to write a letter to them ,they promised to get it done,and in their reply to his letter they said that they had a meeting with me on[ site ]and discussed it ,which was news to me because that never happened !
so in the end the council did not do the job ,the inviromental dept did not want to know ,they lied about the meeting ,and the ruts get deeper .
suport your council i dont think so:
leave a comment but if if it shows the council in a bad light you cant post it =verification type in the characters and you get [the characters dont match =do it again and all of your work disapears:
come to somerset and get out on your bike ,dont take the car ,be green,
and be dead the roads are so dangerous with the pot holes you will end up under a truck or a car
anybody who thinks they can have any cycle events in this county will have to think again as the roads would not pass a risk assessment test
and the organisers would get the required insurance.
as the council put pensions before anything else, until they get their pension pot sorted everything else is going to pot:
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