D'Oh! Council blunder has major financial implications ...

When it comes to parking enforcement it is essential that those taking money from motorists ensure that THEY first comply fully with the law.

When they do it using Smartcar CCTV enforcement there is an even bigger responsibility due to the fact that the equipment MUST be approved by the Secretary of State.

When councils get it wrong then there first responsibility is to address the issue of those motorists fined unlawfully and then look at why highly paid council officers cannot follow simple guidelines and clear legislation.

Motorists Legal Challenge Fund Newsletter

Our Big Day In Court

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week (18th & 19th May) sees Neil Herron's case in the High Court. It has taken almost 3 years to get this case before a Judge, but we are finally there. What is at stake is the correct and legal definition of a Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ).
CPZs were originally designed for small areas of 12 streets or less, but local councils have abused them so much that they can now cover areas of 12 square miles or more, encompassing hundreds of streets.

The entry signs in some places have become so large and complicated that they are impossible to read - let alone remember - when travelling past at 30 mph (or even 20 mph). As a result, motorists are often not adequately informed about when and where they can lawfully park, which increases the risk of their receiving a parking ticket.

The Department for Transport has been concerned for some time about the misuse of CPZs by some councils, and the difficulties and unfairness it causes for drivers. Indeed, they even researched and fully understood the issues way back in 2005. More recently, the DfT along with the Institute of Highways Engineers have effectively declared CPZs as "not fit for purpose", but nothing has been done to clarify the situation.

Neil's case could do just that.

There is nothing private or secret about the courts, they are open to the public. If you want to witness the law in action and see how your donation money is being spent to try to bring justice for the motoring public, then turn up at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Are We Doing the Right Thing?
Why should it have become necessary for a single member of the public to bring a case at great financial cost against a local authority? After all, we have just been through an election to choose national and local representatives who are supposed to be responsible for holding civil servants and council officers to account.

The present system is not perfect and, if we have reason to believe that local authorities are breaking the law, as a last resort they can be held to account through the process of judicial review in the High Court as Neil is now doing.
Support for this process comes from a group of academics at the University of Essex who recently wrote a report entitled "Judicial Review Litigation as an Incentive to Change in Local Authority Public Services in England & Wales". (click here)

Don't be put off by the long title; it confirms that we are doing the right thing in supporting Neil’s case in the High Court, and their "research indicated that judicial review may actually help authorities to improve." They also make the point that "there are strong associations between the values of public service and fidelity to law, and both are intimately connected with the responsibility of local authorities to serve the public interest."
Put into our context, if local authorities fail to comply with national law, as too many of them don’t, then what possible right do they have to punish motorists who do not comply with their own local law?

For more information and to support the Motorists Legal Challenge click here

The motorists fightback begins ...

Who is going to speak up for the exploited motorist?
Why aren't politicians taking more notice of the increasingly angry motorist who feels powerless to do anything about our unjust parking laws, asks Philip Johnston.
By Philip Johnston
Daily Telegraph
26 Feb 2010

Near where I live in south London is a facility as rare as hen's teeth: a road right by a railway station where it has been possible to park – for free. For years, commuters in the know happily parked there and travelled into the City, leaving their cars all day, hardly able to believe their luck.

Until last week, that is, when meters were installed by the local council, even though the street is a cul-de-sac far from the town centre. Since there is no through traffic, there is no congestion and so no earthly reason why there should be a charge for parking – other than to raise money for the council coffers, which we are constantly told does not happen.

The powers on which local authorities rely are contained in the 1984 Road Traffic Regulation Act, which makes it clear that charges must not be levied to raise revenue, but only to make appropriate traffic-management provision. My council has ignored this and attempted to cash in. Ironically, because the time limits make it impossible to leave the car all day, nobody parks on the road by the station any more. So thousands of pounds have been wasted on installing the meters and painting the lines.

Parking laws in this country are not only unjust but are often incompetently administered. Yet does anyone speak up for the harassed, frustrated and increasingly angry motorist who feels powerless to do anything about it? You will look in vain for any of the political parties to raise the standard of revolt.

This week, however, a coalition of motoring organisations has published its own Manifesto on the Reform of Parking and Traffic Enforcement. It is calling for the parties to commit to tightening the regulations and so ensuring that parking charges and penalties are properly and legally applied.

In the 52 years since the first parking meters appeared in London, a vast industry has spread across the country, employing an army of nearly 200,000 wardens, administrators, managers, camera operators, line painters, sign makers, wheel clampers and the rest, all of whom have to be paid for from the billions of pounds raised by what is, in essence, a tax.

Parking restrictions were supposed to be solely and exclusively about traffic management and congestion relief, not about raising money. Yet, according to the Local Government Finance Statistics 2009, councils last year made £1.3 billion from on- and off-street parking and spent about £820 million on maintaining and enforcing the regime. So the surplus revenue from parking was more than £500 million, a phenomenal amount of money. Last year, more than nine million parking tickets were issued – up from 5.7 million in six years.

The decriminalisation of parking, which began in London in 1991 and allowed local authorities to take over parking enforcement, has added to the sense of grievance among those fined for infractions because the penalties are often out of all proportion to the offence and there is no means of pursuing justice through the courts.

Parking restrictions are certainly needed in town centres to avoid congestion. But greedy councils with their rows of meters often kill off businesses by making it too expensive for people to stop to shop; instead, they go to the free car park attached to the out-of-town superstore, thereby hastening the decline of the town centre while adding to traffic pollution.

In truth, the mainstream political parties have a vested interest in the system because they all run councils that benefit mightily from keeping things as they are.

Yet if one of them had the sense to adopt the motorists' manifesto – or even acknowledge that there is a problem that needs to be addressed – they might even sweep the country.

Parking: How Town Hall ‘steals’ motorists’ money

Respect goes to Councillor Knight for being the only elected member of any London Council to turn up to the launch of the Manifesto in the House of Lords. Would have been nice to have seen Councillor Chalkley there to speak on Westminster's behalf.


Camden New Journal
25 February 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

CAMDEN has been named and shamed as one of the worst areas in the country for unfair parking by campaigners who launched a weighty new manifesto at the House of Lords on Tuesday.

Examples from the borough’s kerbsides litter a thick investigative report which concludes that there needs to be a “root and branch” change to the way parking penalties are dealt with.
The Motorists Legal Challenge Fund group, authors of the report, are asking MPs to consider the issue in the run-up to the general election and have recommended a new independent adjudicator to deal with grievances about tickets and wardens is set up.

None of its members are standing for election but the new group brings together the London Motorists Action Group – of which Hampstead actor Tom Conti is a trustee – and The ­Drivers’ Alliance as a unified pressure group.

Group secretary Alex Henney said in his experience parking enforcement in Camden in the past had amounted to “stealing” money through fines. One of the main claims of the group is that when local authorities realise they have made an error, they still often quibble over repaying fees.

Mr Henney said the idea of a new adjudicator came about because “there was nowhere else for people to go”.“What are you supposed to do?” said Mr Henney, who lives in Highgate. “We’ve been to appeals. We’ve been to the councillors. We’ve been to court. We’ve been to the police in some cases. We’ve been told we can’t go to a local ombudsmen anymore with our complaints – so the fact is there is nowhere else for us to go apart from expensive judicial reviews – over an £80 parking ticket.”

Other members of the group include Lord Ralph Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall, who chaired the meeting, and long-term campaigner Neil Herron.

“If local authorities want to make a success of the law enforcement powers they have been granted then they need to earn the respect of the general public very quickly” said Lord Lucas.

The group want more “common sense” on the street, including more discretion for drivers who are just a couple of minutes late back to a meter. Another thrust of the manifesto is the familiar claim that local authorities see penalising “trivial” errors through fines as a way to raise money.

Camden’s unwanted namechecks in the full report include the sudden jump in the cost of builders’ permits from £5 per day to £33 last year and the introduction of a credit card surcharge for payments which is currently being challenged in the courts and could lead to large amounts of refunds.

Driving lessons – ‘We’re getting better’

ENVIRONMENT chief Councillor Chris Knight revealed his own car has been towed away in the past two weeks, costing him more than £250 in penalty fine cash.
But, as he admitted to having clocked up his fair share of parking tickets in the past, Cllr Knight said: “I deserved it. If you are parked in a silly place, wrongly, then you will get a fine.”
Cllr Knight, a Tory, was the only executive member from a local authority to attend Tuesday’s press briefing and to digest the Motorists Challenge Fund report in full.

He said: “I always say that learning is 95 per cent listening and 5 per cent making mistakes. I am prepared to listen to what these guys have to say and try to take onboard any points they have.

If you want to use the analogy: Tony Blair went to talk to the IRA.

It’s been ­hostile in the past over parking but I have actually listened to what’s been said, some of the things that maybe haven’t worked so well, and we are changing. I think ­people are seeing that.

“I think people can see it has got fairer and with the new contracts and new training that is coming in, I think there will be even better results in the next year or so.”

In the 2006 local elections, the man then sitting in Cllr Knight’s position was Labour councillor John Thane. In a protest at parking policies, he was singled out in the campaign with leaflets distributed in his Highgate ward urging voters to drive him out of the Town Hall.

Motorists posed in John Thane pirate masks in the months before his eventual defeat. Cllr Knight has yet to face the same venom as parking supremo.
“If you look at what these guys are saying today, they are saying Camden has got better and that I have been more gracious,” he said.

Westminster's Parking Plan 'illegal'

More sterling efforts from LMAG (London Motorists Action Group)
member Paul Pearson who has been splashed over the press and media with this latest revelation. The parking 'industry' is set to come under very close scrutiny in the next few months with three cases listed for the High Court and a 'gathering of the clans' taking place with LMAG teaming up with the Drivers Alliance and the Taxpayers Alliance to support the Motorists Legal Challenge Fund which aims to secure justice for Britain's motorists who are ready to 'Rage Against the Parking Machine.'

At will be the fivers and tenners from across the country that will ensure that justice is seen to be done in the most public of fashions and this offensive stealth tax forced to revert back to proper parking enforcement for the right reasons.

To donate to the fighting fund click here

London council 'misleading' over 'illegal parking plan'
Ed Davey BBC News, London

Westminster already makes more from parking than any London borough
A council has been accused of a "potentially illegal" attempt to use parking charge rises to raise revenue after BBC London obtained a document described as a "smoking gun".

The news comes after Westminster Council, which has a £22m overspend on its books, set out a series of proposals that include raising parking charges.
They would involve a 60p-per-hour pay-and-display increase and extending the period in which people are charged to park, from 6.30pm until midnight.

Councillor Danny Chalkley, cabinet member for city management, insisted the changes were solely an attempt to tackle congestion.
Asked whether the changes were proposed to plug the gap in Westminster's finances, Mr

Chalkley said: "It's not correct that we are doing this to revenue raise, we are doing this to keep streets running freely."
It appears on the strength of the evidence that Westminster have a case to answer
Mark Cran QC

However, BBC London has seen an internal council briefing, dated 12 January, which makes it clear the "key drivers" for this year's budget include an attempt to address the overspend.

The report continues: "Officers were asked to go away and look more closely at parking and community safety to find reductions or additional income.
"The areas of parking and community safety have been earmarked to contribute the majority of the £14m [the sum Westminster says it needs to find]."

Responding to the document, parking campaigner Barrie Segal accused Mr Chalkley of being "disingenuous".
"This report is the smoking gun", he said. "The briefing document flatly contradicts [Mr Chalkley's] public statements."

Councillor Chalkley claims the changes are not to raise money

In 1995, a High Court judge ruled against neighbouring Camden Council, saying it could not use parking to raise revenue.
Mark Cran QC, the barrister who successfully brought the 1995 case against Camden Council, told BBC London: "It sounds as though the evidence is stronger in this instance than it was in the Camden case.

"It appears on the strength of the evidence that Westminster may have a case to answer." Mark Cran QC

Council's own analysis of the case reads: "The High Court was very clear that [it] did not allow the council in setting the charges for parking to take account of extraneous financial matters.
"Westminster therefore cannot increase charges with the motive of generating income, though the generation of income is legitimate if incidental to the setting of charges for other reasons such as traffic restraint."

Mr Segal said: "I find it truly astonishing that Westminster would set down in writing that it knows revenue can only be raised from parking if it is 'incidental'.
"Then cynically, nudge-nudge wink-wink, they come out with a load of extra charges and say it is because of congestion."

Paul Pearson, another parking campaigner, said: "Parking can not be used for revenue generating - and that is exactly what they are doing here. This report proves it."

Charges 'reinvested'
Westminster Council makes more from parking than any other London council and recorded a £35m profit from the account last year.
Referring to the latest proposals, a spokesman said: "These are just options and the council's cabinet will make a final decision in due course.
"This is not about generating profit for the council, which would be illegal, it is about dealing with the increasing pressures on our roads.
"Every single penny of surplus income collected from parking is reinvested straight back into major transport projects."

The spokesman accepted however, the 12 January briefing had been written by the council.