Sections 20-39
3 NOVEMBER 2005
20. That is the six-month time limit?
(Mr Cooper) That
is six-month time limit. Again, this is a significant problem.
Across London, as a whole, we estimate about 30,000 recalled payments
a year and, for example, Enfield had 660 last year; Transport
for London reported 1,768; Lambeth 1,113 and that was an increase
from 507 in 2003. In Waltham Forest there were 45 chargebacks
specifically related to release from a clamp or a pound. So, a
person gets the car back and then they stop the money so they
have got their benefit without having to pay the appropriate penalty
charges and at that point there is very little the authorities
can do because they are out of time. Clauses 7 and 8 would close
those loopholes.
21. Yes, pausing for breath there on a broader
point. Do any of these cause problems if you are in Hertfordshire
or Surrey, as we were told yesterday, when you come into London?
Are these any different or significantly different? Do they cause
any problem?
(Mr Cooper) I think
it is worth remembering that at present there are three different
enforcement regimes and if you were a resident of Surrey, you
would find that locally to where you live the enforcement regime
for parking is probably the old criminal regime and there are
no particular plans for that to be changed. If you were to move
across the border into Kent the enforcement regime would be the
strict 1991 Road Traffic Act regime, and if you were just across
the border to your nearest big shopping centre in Croydon, the
enforcement regime is the decriminalised regime amended by the
various London Local Authority Acts to take account of practical
experience in dealing with the issues. There are three separate
regimes at the moment we are not aware of any problems that having
those separate regimes causes and particularly the use of private
legislation in the past and we have introduced legislation on
four separate occasions to amend the Road Traffic Act to close
loopholes and in some cases to make the operation fairer and in
some cases make it more effective, it has made the system work
better in London. The fact that it is different from that which
pertains in Kent has not been a problem in the past. Indeed, all
the amendments we have made to the 1991 Act had been incorporated
by the Government in Traffic Management Act and so it demonstrates
that London has been a very effective pilot scheme for improvements
to the legislation in the past.
22. We can hopefully breeze through 9 because
nobody has objected to it. Explain it in a couple of sentences,
no more than that.
23. CHAIRMAN: I am sorry, on 7, I can
see there is clearly a problem of people reporting to pay and
then cancelling the payment before it becomes effective. How does
that interact with the six-month rule which is what the clause
is trying to change?
(Mr Lester) It
can be that the payment can be made quite late in the day. It
can go through a series of processes, the payment can be made
at the time, for example, that the penalty is registered in the
county court as a debt or when the bailiffs visit and the bailiffs
can get paid and then the cheque can be stopped or the credit
card payment stopped at that point and at that point you are often
well beyond the six-month deadline.
24. If we are talking about getting a car that
means the car has to be clamped for six months before this ---
have I missed something?
(Mr Lester) In
the case where the car has been clamped or the cheque is stopped,
at that point then you can restart the process, but at that point
it is also impossible to restart recovery of the release deeds.
25. How will this help?
(Mr Lester) This
will help by just relaxing the time, particularly on the notice
to owner stage, it will not help on the release fees, but it will
help on the notice to owner issues where the payment is stopped
late in the day. It will ensure that we are not caught within
the time limits or caught outside the time limits.
26. CHAIRMAN: Yes.
27. MR CLARKSON: If I could elucidate
that. Have there been problems of being caught outside the time
limit?
(Mr Lester) Absolutely,
they are some of the points I have raised already.
28. CHAIRMAN: There are some 3,600 cases
a year of people trying to postpone payment of 5 months 28 days?
(Mr Lester) I do
not think all of those are cases where they have been postponed
for 5 months 28 days. There are a significant proportion of those
where time limits do come in. I mention those figures as total
numbers of payments that have been stopped.
29. Thank you very much.
30. MR CLARKSON: Thank you. Parking
on footways and footpaths is non-contentious from any direction.
A quick explanation?
(Mr Lester) This
clause does two things. There is a current restriction on parking
on the footways within London. The way the legislation is worded
at present you need to have at least one wheel on the footway.
There has been a ruling by an adjudicator in the case of a motorcycle
that had a tripod stand so that no wheels were actually touching
the footway, not resting on the footway, and therefore that restriction
did not apply and Sub-clause 2 corrects that to make it absolutely
clear. You cannot put a piece of paper underneath your wheel and
escape the penalty in that way. Sub-clause 3 also makes it clear
that this prohibition applies to footpaths, footpaths away from
the road, as well as footways because there are occasions where
footpaths may have bollards or fences or gates, but they are down
the path a little bit and people can park, and do park, to block
the entrance to the footpath.
31. We are going to jump over parking of commercial
vehicles because there is another witness to speak on that. Eleven,
please, and if we take Tab 11 of the black bundle, we can understand
what the issue is. There is the view taken by the Government that
Clause 11 is unnecessary as there are already adequate legislative
provisions for it.
(Mr Lester) Clause
11 deals with obscured registration plates where these are covered
over, typically motorbikes but also in some cases cars. It is
a criminal offence to keep a vehicle on the highway without displaying
the number plate. However, the enforcement of this is limited,
it has to be undertaken by the police. There is ambiguity about
whether parking attendants may be liable for any damage caused
by lifting a cover in order to ascertain the registration number,
and Clause 11 clarifies the law to make it clear that they can
lift a cover up just to see the number plate. There are certainly
occasions where covers are quite deliberately placed on motorbikes
and cars just to avoid enforcement. It is obviously fairly easy
with a motorbike, it is less easy than with a car.
32. Is there any other legislative provision
that would allow that to be done?
(Mr Lester) Not
for the local authority officers. It is, of course, possible for
a police officer to do this.
33. Next, 12 is non-contentious. Summarise,
please?
(Mr Lester) Twelve
deals with cases where people are driving on the footway. It is
a criminal offence to drive on the footway, but, as with a number
of other provisions - and I mentioned yesterday, for example,
parking on a pedestrian crossing - the level of enforcement by
the police is limited and we find on a number of quite serious
occasions that people do drive along footway to find a parking
space, particularly in a private forecourt, even though the authority
may have placed bollards on the edge of the footway to prevent
people from driving up and over it and they then drive along the
footway to gain access and that is clearly dangerous.
34. I am going to interrupt you, I have misled
the Committee. It was not mentioned yesterday, but the Government
report does oppose Clause 12 the powers already contained in Section
72 of the 1835 Act, which was, of course, raised yesterday.
(Mr Lester) The
more worrying thing I am concerned about in the Government's report
is they say the powers are also in Sections 14, and 16 in the
London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act. In fact
those sections do quite different things. Section 14 makes it
an offence for people to park alongside a dropped kerb where they
would block access to premises. It is nothing to do with driving
on the footway. Section 16 deals with unauthorised crossovers
of the footway, allowing the highway authority to put bollards
in place to prevent that. This clause, if you like, is a further
extension of that where people avoid the bollards by driving along
the footway in what must be a potentially dangerous manner and
it allows the local authorities to add the enforcement resource
that they have and, as with the other areas where there is dual
enforcement responsibility with the police, there is part of this
clause which avoids double jeopardy by giving the police enforcement
priority where that takes place.
35. CHAIRMAN: For clarification, one
of my colleagues yesterday highlighted the antiquity of the 1835
Act. Am I correct in deducing that it has been much amended since
1835?
(Mr Lester) I think
it has been considerably amended since 1835.
36. MR CLARKSON: Can I bring up a headnote
to it, it says: "It is a penalty on persons riding on footpaths,
tethering animals, injuring or obstructing the road, damaging
bank or causeway post, direction of posts or milestones, playing
football, pitching tents, making fires, bating bulls, laying timber,
suffering filth to run obstructing highway." A different
world.
37. CHAIRMAN: You have no proposals
about bating bulls?
38. MR CLARKSON: Not yet. Cycling on
footways and Clause 13 to 14 have been looked at yesterday, we
need not go there. Removal of abandoned apparatus, I do not believe
that is at issue. Just explain it.
(Mr Lester) This
concerns a peculiar problem that arose in connection with telephone
kiosks. The Committee may recall that some years ago a company
called New World set up a whole series of telephone kiosks in
London and some other cities. New World subsequently went bankrupt
and disappeared. The authorities have got powers where they could
remove the kiosks which were not maintained and just left, but
they had no powers to remove the apparatus and nobody else had
any responsibility for it either. There was certainly one case
on Victoria Street, not far from here, where the kiosks had gone
but the old defunct telephone was still there. That caused a potential
hazard for pedestrians, particularly blind or partially sighted
pedestrians, because it was just sitting up there in the middle
of the road. This clause gives the authorities powers to remove
that, but only after making sufficient inquiries with all possible
owners of the apparatus, if they are still extant and can be contacted,
to ensure they have the responsibility, but it is a residue to
deal with the New World and other things that may occur.
39. Clause 16 in Part 4 is another, we do not
need to go into that again. Part 5 I am going to summarise, that
is a regularisation, is it not, of film making in London with
the support of the film industry, so that permits filming on streets
in London with the consequential requirements?
(Mr Lester) That
is right. Filming is an increasingly important part of London's
economy and at present, authorities have no powers to regulate
traffic or close roads in connection with filming. That gives
some powers to achieve that.
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