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Index to sections... £6.5 Million pound Penalty Charge Notice cancellation link to The Herald or the same article below. Herts Council Bolton News

Edinburgh The £6.5m parking gaffe as tickets are cancelled BRIAN DONNELLY February 15 2007 Millions of pounds worth of parking fines are to be waived following a legal blunder by one of Scotland's largest councils. Transport executives at Edinburgh council have admitted parking fines totalling around £6.5m have now been cancelled, as the tickets issued by wardens since 1998 were not legally binding. Now executives at the council, which issues 250,000 parking tickets worth £7m each year, are bracing themselves for a potentially severe financial problem as they face up to the possibility of refunding millions of pounds worth of paid fines. Campaigners urged people to mount legal challenges to win back their cash, which has already been done successfully in England. It is unclear whether other Scottish councils might be open to challenges. The legality of the tickets in Edinburgh first came into question in June as they did not bear both the date of issue and date of offence as required by UK law. Tickets issued from June 2006 were amended in accordance with the law but it emerged yesterday that all debt owed prior to that date has now been wiped clean. Sheriff officers are being told to stop chasing all outstanding offences dating back to decriminalisation in 1998, understood to total about 70,000. The council has also abandoned pursuing 4327 fines it had not yet passed to sheriff officers. A spokesman for the council said: "We have taken external legal advice, which has forced us to write off a number of unpaid tickets issued before June 1 last year." The more immediate issue for the council is what will happen if the law-abiding people who paid their fines demand their money back. Councils in England have had to cancel outstanding tickets for the same reason, and one family in London has won back all the money paid out in fines after mounting a legal challenge. Campbell Deane, of the Scottish legal firm Bannatyne Kirkwood France, believes the most likely scenario in Edinburgh would see the council choosing not to contest any claims - given the relatively low cost of a refund - although he thought many residents would be put off starting a legal fight over just £30. Edinburgh parking executives do not believe motorists who paid their tickets are due any cash back because they have effectively accepted their guilt, although the legal position remains unclear. © All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/transport/display.var.1193530.0.the_6_5m_parking_gaffe_as_tickets_are_cancelled.php Reproduced with the permission of The Herald (Glasgow) © Newsquest (Herald & Times) Ltd. Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:52:42 -0000 From: "Catherine Watson" <Catherine.Watson@theherald.co.uk>

East Herts http://www.herts-essex-news.co.uk/news/mercury/hertfordshire_mercury/2007/07/19/council%20cancels%203000%20parking%20fines.lpf East Herts Council cancels 3,000 parking fines Council cancels 3,000 parking fines MORE than 3,000 parking fines issued by East Herts Council have been ‘written off’. The decision taken on Tuesday has potentially cost the authority £190,380 in lost revenue, although there was little hope of ever recovering the money. Of the 37,097 penalty charge notices (PCNs) issued from the start of decriminalisation in January 2005 to March last year, 3,173 remain “live” as they have not been paid. A PCN is £60 unless the person issued with the fine pays within two weeks, in which case it is reduced to £30. A judicial review ruled in September 2006 that PCNs are not valid unless they contain both a date of issue and date of alleged contravention. In June 2005, aware of the parking adjudicator’s decision that led to the judicial review, the council instructed enforcement contractor Central Parking System to include the date of issue separately on PCNs. However, a report to the executive on Tuesday stated that the instruction was not complied with until March last year. The contractor was defaulted, but the council claimed for and received only £8,190. The report states: “This number is clearly somewhat lower than the number of PCNs identified. In the great majority of these cases, the penalty charge would still have been non-recoverable for other reasons outside of the council’s control.” Those reasons include the reliance of data from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s (DVLA) records, which are used to obtain a vehicle owner’s name and address. The records may be inaccurate or vehicle owners may not notify the DVLA of a change of address, in which case the PCN would not reach the offending motorist. The report goes on: “While the population of East Herts is more stable (and doubtless more law-abiding) than it may be in some of our cities, there will always be a small percentage of vehicles and their owners who are simply untraceable. “A lot of effort can be put into trying to trace them. However, this can be an invalid use of officer tim e – hours spent trying to track down one motorist could mean dozens of other PCNs slipping through the net.”

BOLTON News. My Friend John Bowling, Bowling Engineering Ltd, Bolton UK, sent me this. Another non compliant signage may be of interest to some readers. Parked in a bay the sign does NOT say, must be parked 'WHOLLY' in the bay. here is the phrase: It said vehicles "must park within a parking space" - but did not explicitly state they must be "wholly" within an allotted bay. http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/search/display.var.1517513.0.traceys_landmark_parking_ticket_victory.php By Paul Keaveny Tracey's victory is revealed in The Bolton News A driver is celebrating after winning a landmark parking victory in Bolton. And Tracey Pilkington's triumph could mean thousands of other parking fines are invalid, a campaigner for motorists claimed yesterday Miss Pilkington argued a ticket, slapped on her car because it was parked over the line of a parking bay, was invalid because a sign at the car park was worded incorrectly. It said vehicles "must park within a parking space" - but did not explicitly state they must be "wholly" within an allotted bay. Miss Pilkington, aged 40, took her appeal to the National Parking Adjudication Service and won. She was represented by her father-in-law, Barry Moss, who is a self-taught expert in parking laws and appeals. Mr Moss, a 60-year-old retired roofer, said: "This decision not only has implications in Bolton, but the rest of the country. I believe the council is now duty-bound to pay back all fines of this nature that it has issued." advertisement Miss Pilkington parked her car, a Vauxhall Tigra, at the Topp Way car park in Bolton on December 20 last year. She was given a ticket because her front wheel was around five inches over the parking space line. She appealed against the fine, but was told by Bolton Council she must pay-up. Mr Moss stepped in and launched the appeal. Giving his verdict, parking adjudicator Stephen Knapp said that cars must park within the lines of a bay to "impose some discipline in the parking of vehicles to ensure maximum use of the parking spaces within the parking place." But he added there was insufficient indication on signs of the requirement for every wheel of the vehicle to be parked wholly within the bay. He upheld Miss Pilkiington's appeal. Miss Pilkington, a mother of four from Park Road, Westhoughton, said: "I couldn't understand why I had been given a ticket. I had paid my fee and was back in time, so I was annoyed and confused "When Barry looked into it, it emerged it was because I had parked over the line. "If I had known it would lead to a ticket I would have been a bit more careful, but the car park was pretty empty and I wasn't obstructing anyone." Mr Moss, of Hindley Road, Daisy Hill, now believes a majority, if not all signs at off-street car parks in Bolton are "non compliant" with the law and that Bolton Council is not legally permitted to fine motorists until they are changed. He also believes there are hundreds of motorists who have been illegally fined and is urging them to mount retrospective challenges. Bolton Council has said it will review the car park signs as a result of the appeal decision, but it says the adjudication does not mean past or future tickets issued are illegal. A spokesman said: "This adjudication does not make parking enforcement in Bolton illegal and there is certainly no reference to this anywhere in the decision. "It is the council's view that each case is judged on its own facts and the council has been successful on a previous occasion when parking outside the bay was adjudicated upon." In 2005 over eight million parking tickets, worth a collective £1.16 billion were issued in the UK, according to the Financial Times. But despite the statistics, nationally only one per cent of issued tickets were challenged. In Bolton, parking wardens earned more than £1 million for the council by issuing nearly 45,000 tickets between April, 2006, and May, 2007 The £60 fines are reduced to £30 if paid within two weeks. 8:32am Wednesday 4th July 2007