First signs of madness for parking cash cow

Open and transparent parking policy?

Press and public are not allowed to see the first stages of BSE as the parking cash cow starts its descent into madness.

Press excluded from parking talks
Bucks Free Press
Wednesday 27th January 2010

THE Bucks Free Press was last night ejected from a High Wycombe Town Committee meeting as councillors discussed on-street parking tariffs.
The committee held its first meeting of the New Year at Wycombe District Council's offices in Queen Victoria Road on Tuesday night.
But members of the public and the press were excluded from the meeting under Paragraph three, Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972 as committee members discussed parking in private.
Item 15 on the agenda was a "review of on-street parking tariffs".

"It's a new stealth tax"

A 'victim's levy now for parking offences! This is nothing more than another stealth tax.
"Oh no it isn't"insist the Government in a claim worthy of the worst pantomime and a claim few would believe.
2010 is when Britain's motorists will finally reach tipping point and begin the fightback.


Motorists face new £15 'victims levy'
BBC News 2nd January 2010
Motorists in England and Wales fined for minor offences face having to pay bigger penalties under a government scheme to compensate victims of crime.
Since 2007, a £15 surcharge has been added to the fines of all people convicted of a crime, to raise money for support services for crime victims.
Now ministers want to extend the scheme to on-the-spot fines and fixed penalty notices for a range of offences.
They say the offences that could be targeted are not victimless crimes.
Under the current scheme, anyone fined by the courts pays an extra £15.

'Stealth tax denial'
However, ministers believe the amount raised could be significantly increased if it was extended to include people issued with on-the-spot fines or fixed penalty notices.
This could include motorists caught speeding or flouting parking restrictions and those guilty of disorder offences such as shoplifting, writing graffiti or being drunk and disorderly.
Under the plans, a fine of £60 for speeding, using a mobile phone while driving or not wearing a seatbelt would be increased to £75.
Government officials deny the move amounts to a stealth tax.

They argue that such offences are not "victimless crimes", saying thousands are killed or injured on Britain's roads every year and others have their lives ruined by anti-social behaviour.
The current levy, which was introduced in England and Wales as part of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, works in conjunction with the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme that pays compensation to the victims of violent crime.

Prior to its launch, the Home Office - which was responsible for the initiative at the time - said the surcharge was part of a series of moves to "rebalance" the criminal justice system in favour of victims.

Will 2010 be the end of the offensive parking stealth tax?

News set to break in the New Year will send shockwaves through town halls who have spent the last 15 years collectively using parking fines to fill black holes in council budgets.
We have evidence of malpractice in every one of the councils listed below.
The High Court case detailed at www.motoristslegalchallenge.co.uk will create the focus.
Other matters will come into the public domain in a matter of weeks.

GREEDY councils are exploiting motorists by raking in almost £2 BILLION a year in parking fees and fines.
Tom Latchem
News of the World
20th December 2009

Last year drivers paid a record £1.9bn to town halls in England - 8 per cent up on the previous year and TREBLE the £638m for 1997/98 when Labour came to power.

That means around £60 a year is going straight from the pocket of every motorist into town hall coffers. Experts fear councils are ripping off car owners to plug gaps in their finances as the squeeze on public spending tightens.

The revenue bonanza is biggest in areas like central London and Brighton where parking is scarcest - and many town halls are believed to make most of their money in fines.
Figures released by the Department of Communities and Local Government do not differentiate between meter charges and penalties.

But a spokesman said: "Parking charges are a tool to manage demand for road use and should not be used for raising revenue.
Jennifer Dunn of the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "Motorists are being treated like cash cows. Too often we see unscrupulous and target-driven enforcement of parking."

Top ten revenue earners in London:
1. Westminster £180m
2. Camden £80m
3. Kensington & Chelsea £77m
4. Islington £55m
5. Wandsworth £51m
6. Hammersmith & Fulham £47m
7. Lambeth £40m
9. Ealing £30m
10. Hackney £29m.

Top ten elsewhere:
1. Brighton & Hove £38m
2. Birmingham £24m
3. Manchester £20m
4. Leeds £19m
5. Milton Keynes £16m
6. Newcastle upon Tyne £15m
7. Kent £15m
8. Bristol £14m
9. Liverpool £14m
10. City of Nottingham £13m.

"Another Fine Mess" ... Parking Chaos starts today

In a calamity worthy of the slapstick comedy heroes the new Traffic Management Act comes into force today ... ill-thought out, ill-conceived, unregulated and guaranteed to create "another fine mess."

The difference is however, that this one isn't funny.
There will be nothing amusing when you get a parking ticket issued through the post alleging a contravention some weeks earlier. I struggle to recollect events from the day before, but trying to retrace my footsteps (or my vehicle's tyre steps) from weeks earlier will be an impossible task.

Add to that the fact that as the Registered Keeper of a vehicle yo will be responsible for paying the Penalty Charge Notice ... and therefore responsible for tracing other persons steps ( ie. any other legal user of the vehicle).


Penalties will range from £40 to as high as £120 – rising to £180 for late payers – simply according to where in the country you park.

Two tier penalties will be introduced with higher penalties for more serious contraventions ... but no need for the call to the rocket scientist for a quote ... you guessed it, most of the contraventions (the most common) fall into the higher bracket thereby increaing the revenue for councls.

CCTV will be rolled out across the country to harvest revenue in the most profitable areas. Amusingly Wigan Council claimed that they would only be siting CCTV cameras where it was too dangerous for Parking Attendants (now renamed Civil Enforcement Officers under the new legislation) ... I personally do not want to live in a country where it is too dangerous for ANYONE to go and the priority under the Crime and Disorder Act is for the Police and Councils to reduce crime (and the fear of crime) in such areas ... not put up CCTV to harvest fine revenue.

This legislation is going to result in chaos and abuse of the belegured motorist who is going to become even more of a stealth tax victim.

Read what the Daily Express thinks here

Parking enforcement ... the new stealth tax in Cambridge

Wardens accused of ticketing a 'stealth tax'
Cambridge Evening News
raymond.brown@cambridge-news.co.uk

THE favourite haunts of traffic wardens in Cambridge can now be revealed by the News.

Parking fine blackspots have been pinpointed street by street using information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The top 10 places where city motorists are more likely to be ticketed can now be revealed.

Since parking fines were taken out of the hands of police in October 2004 the number of fines issued has quadrupled. Campaigners have accused the council of using its powers as a "stealth tax".

More than 120,000 fines have been dished out by wardens, but just 10,000 tickets were issued by police the year before they handed the role over to Cambridge City Council. Since then the authority has raked in a massive £3.6m - more than enough to cover the £2m to pay for 100 extra officers Chief Constable Julie Spence says she needs to tackle an influx of migrants since the EU expanded in 2004.

Now we have identified the streets where wardens have been firing on all cylinders. And you can find out what's happening with wardens in your street on Cambridge News online.

A total of 40,000 tickets were issued from February 2007 to January 2008. In the same period the previous year, 42,000 were doled out.More than 41,000 parking fines were slapped on cars in the previous year and 6,700 from November 2004 to January 2005.

Neil Herron, of Parking Appeals, a campaign helping people fight parking fines, has accused the council of revenue-raising and believes it has made no difference to traffic woes.

He said: "There won't be a difference in traffic flow in Cambridge after decriminalisation. The only difference will be that the money raised by police went to a central pot but the money made by the council goes to the council."
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that this has everything to do with revenue-raising. It is a stealth tax on motorists and has hit local businesses."

Cambridge City councillor Rob Dryden believes people are less likely to park illegally - but called for common sense from wardens.

He said: "I think that now people are not so willing to stop on double yellow lines to nip to the shop and it may have stopped people parking in disabled bays. But there must be common sense from wardens."

Those who have fallen foul of wardens include a circus, a coach carrying children to a pantomime, a disabled man's mobility scooter and a coach taking pensioners on a mayoral outing. Moscow State Circus manager Paul Archer was shocked when his lorry was delivering to Cambridge Corn Exchange, where the big show was performing.

And a parking ticket was slapped on a coach as the driver waited to collect primary school pupils after a pantomime.John Turnock, owner of Anglian Travel, based in Haddenham, had sent one of his coaches to help pick up 350 children from the Arts Theatre, but the driver received a ticket as he waited for them.

Emergency EDF electricians also fell foul of wardens. They returned to find tickets on their vans in Peas Hill - number nine in the top 10 - after they had fixed a major fault at the Arts Theatre.

Even a disabled man's mobility vehicle was ticketed while it was parked in a designated area after his permit was stolen.

Raphael Piran, 36, of Radegund Road, Cambridge is wheelchair bound. The disabled parking badge he kept stuck inside his windscreen was stolen and wardens gave him a ticket while parked outside the Arts Theatre - which was later thrown out on appeal last year.

And dozens of Cambridge pensioners nearly missed out on the Mayor's trip to the seaside - after one of the city council's own parking attendants slapped a ticket on their coach.Red-faced councillors on the trip later apologised for the blunder.