Parking hell: The parking industry investigated, continued (page 4) ...
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUED FROM HERE . . .
Thursday, 10.51am: In a tribunal room just off Trafalgar Square, one floor up from the backpackers awaiting visas at New Zealand House, Mrs Byrne from South London is finally nearing the end of an eight-month ordeal. Mrs Byrne, wearing a leopardskin-print jacket and heavy gold earrings, was awake for much of the night preparing her case before the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service, which considers challenges to the London councils’ parking tickets; yesterday, she tells the adjudicator, she was busy taking her elderly brother to hospital. As the adjudicator familiarises himself with her case on his computer, Mrs Byrne flips open a well-thumbed folder of papers, annotated in pink highlighter and separated by 15 yellow Post-it Notes.
“It was a Saturday, but the bay they say was suspended just operated Monday to Friday,” she explains in fast sentences laden with frustration. “Then they say the suspension sign was outside Number 8, but I was parked outside Number 102.” She throws up her arms in disbelief. “I asked Westminster Council on four occasions for more details, but they just don’t respond.”
The adjudicator, a patient, grey-haired lawyer in a pinstriped suit and buffed black leather shoes, pushes his gold-rimmed glasses further back on his nose as he scrolls through digitised pages of council evidence. “It does appear,” he says eventually, “that some of the original ticket details differ from those presented by the parking attendant. The date is different, the location… Hmm, these discrepancies certainly cast doubt on the accuracy of the local authority’s evidence.” There is suspicion now in his voice. “I’m going to allow your appeal, Mrs Byrne,” he says finally, to a weary nod from his witness. “The evidence is that there were no suspension signs where you parked.”
It has taken 27 minutes to hear just one of the 10,000 or so appeals held each year against tickets from Westminster alone. There are 76 cases scheduled for today, and most, like Mrs Byrne’s, go the driver’s way. Nationally, two-thirds of appeals are successful, yet just one in a hundred drivers bothers to take their case this far. Some are doubtless discouraged by the time required; others by the menacing warnings of prosecution included in local-authority correspondence. Could this inertia perhaps be encouraging the less scrupulous parking attendants to play the system?
Repeatedly while The Times sat in, drivers had their tickets cancelled over what adjudicators scornfully dismissed as "unreliable" local-authority evidence. Mr Nsangu, a quietly spoken postman, vigorously disputed having received the penalty charge notice in question; it took just eight minutes for the adjudicator reject the "contradictory" notes provided by the PA, and thus the ticket. The bailiffs had already made a 6am call at the home of Mr Klein, an Orthodox Jew from Stamford Hill, who seemed bemused by the process; in a withering put-down, the adjudicator noted that Haringey Council's evidence failed to tally with the PA's on such basic matters as the time, supposed location, even the ticket number.
Are some PAs simply taking calculated risks that motorists will just pay up rather than question an unlawfully issued ticket? “Certainly, I’ve seen cases where tickets have been fabricated,” says Martin Wood, the chief parking adjudicator. “But one has to be careful about concluding that the entire system is corrupt. There’s obviously a danger in providing an incentive linked to the number of tickets a PA issues - either one that earns them more money, or lets them keep their job. But then, if PAs were not to issue tickets where there were grounds to – well, that might be equally unsatisfactory.”
++++
The fundamental injustice, as the Association of British Drivers sees it, is the councils’ direct financial gain from laws that they themselves enforce. Inevitably, the association believes, this results in “a systematic and flagrant abuse of power”.
“It’s like giving each council a large printing press producing £50 notes,” complains Mark McArthur-Christie, an ABD spokesman. “The councils are legislature, judge and jury. It’s simply money-spinning.” He draws attention to the sums raised in individual streets, such as Atlantic Avenue, Brixton, in South London, where Lambeth issued fines worth a remarkable £3,112,400 in the year to last April. Similar injustices, he suggests, are resulting from speed-camera fines.
“There’s a growing view that councils are remote, unaccountable and uninterested in anything but money,” McArthur-Christie continues, exasperated. “I know that’s not true – I sit on lots of transport committees – but there’s an increasing tendency for the public to think, to hell with the lot of you. There’s been a bad deal here, which can only be sorted out by a government-empowered parking regulator with big, sharp teeth.”
Needless to say, that’s not quite how the councils see things. “There are enough people out there desperately searching for the smoking gun,” sighs Nick Lester, director of transport for the Association of London Government, which speaks for the capital’s 33 councils. “If they found it, they’d go immediately to the High Court to stop any council unlawfully operating their parking enforcement policy on the basis of raising revenue. It’s irresponsible to make serious allegations of wholesale conspiracy and unlawfulness with no evidence.”
Most complaints about ticketing, Lester suggests, owe more to drivers' aversion to obeying the rules. "A significant minority who have become used to parking more or less where they want are now finding a tougher enforcement regime affecting their ability to do so," he says flatly. "If they can't park legally, they park illegallly - and then get offended when enforcement action is taken."
There are, Lester acknowledges, “communications issues” that councils need to address. There could also be better PA training. “But the system is delivering less congestion, better journey times and more parking spaces. And don’t forget, parking can influence the vote in local elections. If people were unhappy, councils would back off.”
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .
Thursday, 10.51am: In a tribunal room just off Trafalgar Square, one floor up from the backpackers awaiting visas at New Zealand House, Mrs Byrne from South London is finally nearing the end of an eight-month ordeal. Mrs Byrne, wearing a leopardskin-print jacket and heavy gold earrings, was awake for much of the night preparing her case before the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service, which considers challenges to the London councils’ parking tickets; yesterday, she tells the adjudicator, she was busy taking her elderly brother to hospital. As the adjudicator familiarises himself with her case on his computer, Mrs Byrne flips open a well-thumbed folder of papers, annotated in pink highlighter and separated by 15 yellow Post-it Notes.
“It was a Saturday, but the bay they say was suspended just operated Monday to Friday,” she explains in fast sentences laden with frustration. “Then they say the suspension sign was outside Number 8, but I was parked outside Number 102.” She throws up her arms in disbelief. “I asked Westminster Council on four occasions for more details, but they just don’t respond.”
The adjudicator, a patient, grey-haired lawyer in a pinstriped suit and buffed black leather shoes, pushes his gold-rimmed glasses further back on his nose as he scrolls through digitised pages of council evidence. “It does appear,” he says eventually, “that some of the original ticket details differ from those presented by the parking attendant. The date is different, the location… Hmm, these discrepancies certainly cast doubt on the accuracy of the local authority’s evidence.” There is suspicion now in his voice. “I’m going to allow your appeal, Mrs Byrne,” he says finally, to a weary nod from his witness. “The evidence is that there were no suspension signs where you parked.”
It has taken 27 minutes to hear just one of the 10,000 or so appeals held each year against tickets from Westminster alone. There are 76 cases scheduled for today, and most, like Mrs Byrne’s, go the driver’s way. Nationally, two-thirds of appeals are successful, yet just one in a hundred drivers bothers to take their case this far. Some are doubtless discouraged by the time required; others by the menacing warnings of prosecution included in local-authority correspondence. Could this inertia perhaps be encouraging the less scrupulous parking attendants to play the system?
Repeatedly while The Times sat in, drivers had their tickets cancelled over what adjudicators scornfully dismissed as "unreliable" local-authority evidence. Mr Nsangu, a quietly spoken postman, vigorously disputed having received the penalty charge notice in question; it took just eight minutes for the adjudicator reject the "contradictory" notes provided by the PA, and thus the ticket. The bailiffs had already made a 6am call at the home of Mr Klein, an Orthodox Jew from Stamford Hill, who seemed bemused by the process; in a withering put-down, the adjudicator noted that Haringey Council's evidence failed to tally with the PA's on such basic matters as the time, supposed location, even the ticket number.
Are some PAs simply taking calculated risks that motorists will just pay up rather than question an unlawfully issued ticket? “Certainly, I’ve seen cases where tickets have been fabricated,” says Martin Wood, the chief parking adjudicator. “But one has to be careful about concluding that the entire system is corrupt. There’s obviously a danger in providing an incentive linked to the number of tickets a PA issues - either one that earns them more money, or lets them keep their job. But then, if PAs were not to issue tickets where there were grounds to – well, that might be equally unsatisfactory.”
++++
The fundamental injustice, as the Association of British Drivers sees it, is the councils’ direct financial gain from laws that they themselves enforce. Inevitably, the association believes, this results in “a systematic and flagrant abuse of power”.
“It’s like giving each council a large printing press producing £50 notes,” complains Mark McArthur-Christie, an ABD spokesman. “The councils are legislature, judge and jury. It’s simply money-spinning.” He draws attention to the sums raised in individual streets, such as Atlantic Avenue, Brixton, in South London, where Lambeth issued fines worth a remarkable £3,112,400 in the year to last April. Similar injustices, he suggests, are resulting from speed-camera fines.
“There’s a growing view that councils are remote, unaccountable and uninterested in anything but money,” McArthur-Christie continues, exasperated. “I know that’s not true – I sit on lots of transport committees – but there’s an increasing tendency for the public to think, to hell with the lot of you. There’s been a bad deal here, which can only be sorted out by a government-empowered parking regulator with big, sharp teeth.”
Needless to say, that’s not quite how the councils see things. “There are enough people out there desperately searching for the smoking gun,” sighs Nick Lester, director of transport for the Association of London Government, which speaks for the capital’s 33 councils. “If they found it, they’d go immediately to the High Court to stop any council unlawfully operating their parking enforcement policy on the basis of raising revenue. It’s irresponsible to make serious allegations of wholesale conspiracy and unlawfulness with no evidence.”
Most complaints about ticketing, Lester suggests, owe more to drivers' aversion to obeying the rules. "A significant minority who have become used to parking more or less where they want are now finding a tougher enforcement regime affecting their ability to do so," he says flatly. "If they can't park legally, they park illegallly - and then get offended when enforcement action is taken."
There are, Lester acknowledges, “communications issues” that councils need to address. There could also be better PA training. “But the system is delivering less congestion, better journey times and more parking spaces. And don’t forget, parking can influence the vote in local elections. If people were unhappy, councils would back off.”
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, January 31, 2001
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