2½ million drivers pay penalty in the parking tickets lottery

By Jill Sherman, The Times, Whitehall Editor

THE number of parking tickets handed out by local councils in England and Wales has shot up to nearly 2.5 million in a year, according to figures released yesterday.

A report from the National Parking Adjudication Service (NPAS), which monitors appeals forwarded by local councils, says that 300,000 more penalty notices were issued last year than in 2002. But the adjudicator received slightly fewer appeals during the same period. The 2003 figures show that councils issued 2.45 million tickets as against 2.13 million in 2002. There were 9,205 appeals against the notices, 0.2 per cent less than the previous year.

The document, which covers the 83 councils in England and Wales which are in the decriminalised parking enforcement scheme, shows big variations between different authorities. London is excluded from the report because it is covered by a different scheme. Some 66 per cent of appeals were upheld, including the two in five appeals not contested by councils.
But Caroline Sheppard, chief adjudicator for England and Wales, said that councils should be far more open with their parking ticket policy. “There is an urgent need for more transparency and accountability in the councils’ activities and it would be more informative for the public to have the whole picture,” she said.

“We believe the Government should require this information to be published each year, along with the councils’ parking accounts,” Ms Sheppard added. The data should include the number of penalty charges issued each year, the number paid at reduced penalty, the number of notices to owner issued, the number of representations received and accepted, the number of appeals lodged and the outcome of appeals and referrals to county courts.

Ms Sheppard suggested that this information should also be audited annually by the Audit Commission. “The Traffic Management Act proposes that high-performing councils should be able to widen the ring fence of their parking accounts to enable surpluses to be used for other council projects,” she said. “We believe that before this happens there should be standards set for civil traffic enforcement and that councils should achieve beacon status in these departments before the ring fence is widened to other projects.”

The report suggests that councils vary widely in their approach to mitigating circumstances. “Over the past ten years there has been consistent concern about councils’ approach to dealing with issues of discretion,” it says. In many ways councils could not be criticised in cases of compelling mitigation because they often did not possess the full facts. But the NPAS suggests that the new Traffic Management Act should include a clause allowing adjudicators the power to refer appropriate cases back to councils for reconsideration.

WHO ISSUED THE MOST
1. Birmingham 175,925
2. Brighton and Hove 160,546
3. Manchester 131,374
4. Liverpool 114,268
5. Nottingham 95,116
6. Reading 69,014
7. Northampton 65,580
8. Oxfordshire (Oxford) 56,970
9. Milton Keynes 56,150
10. Stoke-on-Trent 53,307
11. Medway 53,205
12. Sefton 51,378
13. Bristol 50,630
14. Plymouth 49,803
15. Southend-on-Sea 49,281
16. Portsmouth 49,169
17. Southampton 46,298
18. Luton 44,698
19. Bolton 42,592
20. Sandwell 42,043