Probe into parking tickets blunder

Sunderland Echo
Tuesday 13th September 2005

AN INVESTIGATION has been ordered by council bosses into the blunder that saw them refund hundreds of parking tickets issued illegally.

Sunderland City Council has admitted that about 700 tickets were wrongly put on cars parked in taxi ranks in the city.

Traffic wardens slapped the tickets on cars parked in the city's 14 taxi ranks – but they did not have legal powers to do so.

An internal investigation is now under way at the civic centre into how the mess came about. It followed the decriminalisation of parking in the city two-and-a-half years ago, which took the issue out of police hands. The investigation's findings are to be reported to the city's environment scrutiny committee. Its chairman, Coun David Tate, said today: "The refund is a big issue and we want to know how we got into this in the first place.

"It is not just highways officers but also legal officers at the council that will be part of this scrutiny.

"It is not known how many of the 700 tickets were paid for at the £30 rate or at a higher rate but the total sum has been estimated at no less than £21,000. The council has urged anyone who paid to contact staff.

"The problem came to light as part of a dispute over parking charges in the city mounted by motorists and campaigner Neil Herron. They have claimed proper legal orders on parking were not written up by the council.Mr Herron said: "It is not just a simple matter of putting the traffic orders in place, but when the council wrote to the Government that all traffic orders were in place they clearly misled the Secretary of State.

"Mr Herron claimed some people were finding it difficult to get refunds from the council and said it had signed off its accounts when they weren't proper and correct. He added: "There a lot of unanswered questions over Sunderland Council's parking regime."

13 September 2005

Next »
Page 1 of