Select Committee on Transport Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280 - 299)

WEDNESDAY 14 DECEMBER 2005

MS CAROLINE SHEPPARD AND MR MARTIN WOOD

  Q280  Chairman: Excellent idea.

  Mr Wood: I think everyone recognises that parking control is an important and valuable function and a very necessary one. Reading yesterday in The Times about the situation in Paris where perhaps things are not enforced as they are here, one can appreciate why it is important that we do have parking controls. I think one has to see this, particularly when one gets to the enforcement stage, as not just about parking, but it is actually about law enforcement and it is about the power of the state to impose a penalty on the citizen and, therefore, it must be done right. Now, there is a debate about the extent to which it is not done right and, from our perspective and our position, we are not in a position to quantify that, but our concern really is about quality. The adjudicators do continue to see some issues that do concern them and I think there are two really key issues that need to be highlighted. The first is that local authorities' enforcement processes need to be legally compliant, they need to be carried out in the way that the law says they should be carried out and there are occasions when that is not the case.

  Q281  Chairman: Why?

  Mr Wood: Well, why would be a question you would have to put to the local authorities, but, as an example, we have an instance which has come to our attention recently where a local authority has been issuing what is called the `charge certificate' and that is a document which says, "You have no further right to contest this penalty which has now gone up by a further 50%", and this local authority has been issuing some of these documents at a time when an appeal has been pending before the adjudicators.

  Q282  Chairman: Wait a minute, let me get the order right. They get the original charge, they then appeal against it and you are saying that a local authority that you know of is issuing this prohibition, when, at what stage—before the appeal is heard?

  Mr Wood: Before the appeal has been decided, whereas it should not be issued until the appeal has been decided, so that is an example. The other issue that I think needs to be highlighted is that training has been mentioned and it seems to the adjudicators that that is absolutely central to getting the enforcement process dealt with correctly, and that relates both to parking attendants and, equally importantly, to the in-house staff who deal with the representations that are received. I think those are the key issues from the adjudicators' point of view.

  Q283  Chairman: That is very helpful. Do you think that the Parking Adjudication Service could be seen, or is seen, as truly independent when it is funded and governed by the same councils whose decisions it is asked to review?

  Mr Wood: Certainly that is a question that some appellants put to the adjudicators, but, as we always reassure appellants, we are judicial appointments and we are appointed with the consent of the Lord Chancellor. Whether they win or lose their appeal makes absolutely no difference to us and we are entirely impartial and have no stake in the outcome and act quite independently.

  Q284  Chairman: So it would not be affected by your being funded by some other source?

  Mr Wood: No, the fact that we are funded effectively by the local authority does not affect our independence at all.

  Q285  Chairman: Do you think that the fact that the Association of London Government runs the London Parking Adjudication Service is an appropriate level of independence?

  Mr Wood: Certainly there could well be an argument in terms of the perception of independence for the appeal service to be operated by somebody else, but certainly, as far as the actuality of independence is concerned, people can be assured that we are acting entirely independently.

  Q286  Chairman: Can I ask you, Ms Sheppard, how do you ensure consistency in the outcome of appeals across the country and over a period of time?

  Ms Sheppard: I think consistency is regarded as a problem, although I think there are two different views on what consistency actually is. For example, the councils perceive our decisions nationally as being inconsistent and they talk quite a lot about this amongst themselves, but recently, prior to a conference I was having of all our adjudicators, I got our Tribunal Manager to write to all the councils and ask them to produce examples from 2005 of the decisions they regarded as inconsistent, also of a helpful decision that they had lost and a helpful decision that they had won. Only 40% of them availed themselves of the opportunity to actually raise this more specifically with us and of the ones that did come back to us, and a lot of them were very helpful, in at least 60% of the examples that were produced to us as being inconsistent, we did not think they were because it was about the difference of the burden of proof of the evidence. The council had simply seen it, for example, as a ticket not being on display in a car and then, for example, we might have heard oral evidence in one case from the appellant which we accepted, whereas in perhaps another one there was much weaker evidence, or possibly we did not believe the appellant. Therefore, they would have different outcomes, although the councils were producing these examples as ones that they regarded as inconsistent. There is certainly work to be done in trying to explain to the councils how we reach our decisions and that is undoubtedly clear, but I think perhaps the perception of consistency is not as clear as the councils would think.

  Q287  Mrs Ellman: The Freight Association suggested that over-zealousness was a characteristic in London only. Would you accept that?

  Ms Sheppard: Well, one of the things I was going to say at the beginning is obviously we have heard talked about good and bad councils and some of the councils outside London are, I think, outstanding in what they are doing and certainly in our annual reports we try to focus on different types of statistics. We look at how many cases they win, what percentage of PCNs issued are appealed, we also look at the percentage they do not contest, and I can say without any hesitation in our recent annual report that is about to be published that Harrogate, Sefton, Herefordshire and Winchester all have outstanding records across the board in that and I think there are a lot of very good councils outside London. Having said that, I think there are also ones where certainly we hear about over-zealousness. I think one of the problems with over-zealousness again is that it is actually misunderstood, if I may say, because I think in many ways the parking attendants are probably just doing as they have been told to do and I feel quite strongly that a lot of this is not necessarily down to the individuals on the street in their uniforms who are walking around issuing tickets. I think a lot of them are acting on instructions. I think a lot of the problem arises thereafter when people write in and explain what may have happened and I think that one of again the misconceptions about the nature of the scheme is that councils feel that the only question that they have to ask themselves is: was the parking attendant correct to issue the ticket? If the answer to that is yes, then it stands, whereas of course there may well be other explanations. You have heard about loading and unloading already, and quite often there may be no criticism whatsoever to a parking attendant issuing a ticket to a car on a yellow line, but subsequently somebody might write in and say, "I was actually delivering a washing machine to a second-floor flat", which they are entitled to do, that is a lawful activity, it is a legal exemption, and the councils do not necessarily perceive it as such.

  Q288  Mrs Ellman: Does that mean then that you do not accept the view that over-zealousness applies just to London?

  Ms Sheppard: I think there are some examples and certainly we hear accusations of it. It is very difficult for us actually to make any true findings about that.

  Mr Wood: It depends what one means by "over-zealousness". I think one has to distinguish between cases. There is talk of bad tickets. Now, to my mind, a bad ticket would be one which was unlawfully issued. When one talks about over-zealousness I think one may be talking in the context of, "I only over-stayed by three or four minutes. Why did I have to get a ticket for that?" One can take different views about whether it is over-zealous or not to issue a ticket for over-staying for such a short time, but it is not unlawful to issue one in that situation. I think one needs to distinguish between lawfulness and matters of policy and zealousness, which are matters of policy.

  Q289  Mrs Ellman: There could be two adjoining boroughs, one operating decriminalised parking and one not and that means the appeals process would be different in those two instances. Do you think that presents a problem?

  Ms Sheppard: I think it is a matter of enormous concern. I think it is totally inappropriate in this country that on one side of the road you are treated as a criminal, you go through the courts and obviously the sanction for not paying is imprisonment, and yet if you do exactly the same thing on the other side of the road it is a civil contravention. I think it is uncomfortable, but it is obviously a pragmatic approach that has been adopted by the Government. I am not sure they could do anything else about it at that stage.

  Q290  Mrs Ellman: Would you want to see parking matters decriminalised everywhere?

  Ms Sheppard: Obviously you have been hearing about public information from previous witnesses. If there was a unified scheme now it would make this whole issue of public information much easier because in that way obviously the same process of enforcement would be applied across the country.

  Mr Wood: A major difference between the two systems is that in the decriminalised system you have a fixed penalty which you do not have in the criminal system, the penalty is in the discretion of the magistrate.

  Q291  Mrs Ellman: Do you think everything should be decriminalised?

  Mr Wood: I think it is desirable to have a single scheme across the country. The move is certainly towards decriminalisation.

  Ms Sheppard: Having said that, the magistrates have a terrific power that the adjudicators do not, and that is that they can give an absolute or a conditional discharge. Their system is more responsive to this area of proportionality, which is what I think we have been talking about with over-zealousness. Obviously Mr Wood has clarified it helpfully. For example, if somebody comes to us and says, "I was the only car in the car park. I was parked slightly outside the bay because there was a tree and my dog was in the car and it was a sunny day. There are photographs that show that the car park was virtually empty and yet because it had two wheels over the bay it received a penalty charge," we do not have the power to mitigate the penalty in those circumstances if the council are insisting on pursuing that penalty, but the magistrates do have that power.

  Q292  Mrs Ellman: Who should be responsible for motorists knowing more clearly the processes that are involved and what their rights of representation are? Should the Adjudication Service be doing more?

  Mr Wood: The point at which motorists need to know what their rights are is the point at which this whole process starts and that is where they get a penalty charge notice. There are legal requirements for a penalty charge notice to state what the motorist's rights are. They could be stated more fully, particularly in drawing attention to the fact that at the end of the day the motorist will have a right of appeal to an adjudicator and, similarly, to draw attention to the fact that the motorist can make informal representations to the council at an early stage. So certainly the rights need to be stated more clearly. The appropriate place is on the penalty charge notice which is what starts the whole process going.

  Q293  Mrs Ellman: How should that be achieved, by statutory guidance or some other means?

  Ms Sheppard: At present the requirement to inform the public is a bit like a board game, ie it is only when you are on the square before that you can see what is on the next square; it is a bit like Alice in Wonderland. The penalty charge notice says that you can write in informing or that you will get a notice but it does not set out the statutory grounds. Nobody has a clue what they may or may not say. At that stage people do write in and say what they want to be considered. People need to have a more general understanding of the scheme. Loads and loads of people do not know that Martin Wood and I exist. They do not know that there are two tribunals that are available if they disagree with things.

  Q294  Chairman: So we should have a little publicity campaign about you both.

  Ms Sheppard: Not necessarily.

  Q295  Chairman: Perhaps some talking heads!

  Ms Sheppard: It is not well known what the scheme is.

  Q296  Mrs Ellman: Who is responsible for that?

  Ms Sheppard: Ultimately the Department for Transport has a role to play in this in terms of public information. Some councils have websites and some do not; some put their policies on the websites and some do not. A copy of the Traffic Regulation Orders in terms of where you can load and unload, for example, is not available in many councils. If you could look on a website and see when you were allowed to load or unload then it would be their responsibility.

  Q297  Mrs Ellman: Who should be responsible for making sure that is the case?

  Ms Sheppard: Each council must be responsible for their own council, but there needs to be general advice about the process. The councils need to explain their regulations and their policies and there has to be more general information about the whole citizen's right in terms of the process.

  Q298  Mrs Ellman: Should a longer time be allowed for rebates on fines so that people can make representations properly?

  Mr Wood: Are you talking about the 14-day period?

  Q299  Mrs Ellman: Yes.

  Mr Wood: There is clearly a case for having an incentive to pay early and have the matter over and done with. One can debate the 14-day period, one could say it could be 21 or 28 days, but at the end of the day it is a little bit of an arbitrary period. One does not want it to be too extended, one wants to get the process moving. I would not have any strong views about the 14-day period.

  Ms Sheppard: It does cause a lot of problems because in many cases, if people have not found the penalty charge notice on their car, the first time they hear about it is when they get a notice to owner 28 days later or possibly, as in some cases, five months later, saying that the penalty charge notice was issued. Regrettably, there are a few councils who take the view that "We stuck it on the car and so it's tough luck". Many councils are more reasonable about that and do say "Well, alright" and re-offer the discount. We have a lot of very disgruntled people because it is not a trivial amount of money. This is thought to be small beer and quick and easy justice, but to a lot of people £30 or £50 is a lot of money and I just do not think we should ignore that.

  Mr Wood: Indeed £100.


 
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