APPENDIX 17
Memorandum submitted by The London Motorists
Action Group
1. INTRODUCTION
The London Motorists Action Group Limited has
been formed recently by a group of professional people, see annex.
We welcome the Committee's inquiry into the effectiveness of parking
provision and enforcement policy. Although we wholeheartedly support
effective traffic management and commonsense and considerate enforcement
of parking regulations, we are concerned both as individual motorists
and as businessmen at the way in which parking enforcement is
operated by some London Boroughs as the uncompromising enforcement
of trivial rulesthe martinet approach to enforcementand
in significant measure as a revenue raising activity; traffic
enforcement has become tax farming. This approach results in penalties
that are often disproportionate and in many cases clamping and
towing that entirely unwarranted and does not achieve the objectives
of the legislation. We support the recommendation in the report
by the former Transport Committee that there should be proportionality
in enforcement. Three of our directors have been visited by bailiffs
(which is the ultimate unpleasantry in the current approach to
parking enforcement), and have been forced to pay exorbitant (and
possibly fraudulent) charges, an issue we discuss below.
We focus on London because 80% by value of Parking
Charge Notices (PCNs) and 75% by value of parking account surpluses
are in London[1].
Much of our evidence relates to the London Borough of Camden because
several of us live and/or work in the borough, and we have extensive,
expensive, and time consuming experience of its unpleasant behaviour.
We are, however, aware that similar practices are employed in
a number of other boroughs.
2. THE LEGAL
BACKGROUND AND
SECRETARY OF
STATE'S
GUIDANCE REGARDING
CONTROLLED PARKING
ZONES AND
PARKING ENFORCEMENT
The legal basis of controlled parking zones
and parking enforcement is the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984.
Section 122 subsection (1) as amended sets out the purposes of
the powers provided in the Act as "to secure the expeditious,
convenient and safe movement of vehicular and other traffic (including
pedestrians) and the provision of suitable and adequate parking
facilities on and off the highway . . .".
The introduction of decriminalised parking was
accompanied by "streamlining" the procedure to collect
fines. Although the penalty was increased to £100, councils
were allowed to offer a discount to £50 for prompt payment
and to charge a further increase to £150 for very slow payment.
While recourse to the court was eliminated, the Parking and Traffic
Appeals Service (PATAS) was created and motorists could appeal
on seven narrowly defined grounds. There are shortcomings in these
arrangements:
appealing to PATAS loses the £50
discount, which discourages many people from appealing;
the allowed grounds of appeal are
too narrow;
the adjudicators and staff of PATAS
are appointed and paid for by the London Boroughs[2],
a practice which breaches the fundamental principle of independence
that should underly their role;
we are concerned that PATAS offers
two standards of service. There is a high standard for the illustrative
cases that are on their website, and are well thought out and
address all of the arguments. And a cursory standard for many
others;
the approach adopted by adjudicators
to appeals is to uphold the letter of law however trivial the
contravention, and not to exercise the spirit of the law. In a
recent judicial review of a congestion charge appeal won by one
of our directors, Baroness Joan Walmsley, Mr. Justice Burnton
said that the adjudicator had misdirected himself in believing
that he had no discretion[3],[4].
This decision is at odds with another High Court decision on parking
appeals which held that PATAS had no discretion[5];
the lack of court check has allowed
abuses by bailiffs, see below:
We are campaigning for:
legislation to constitute PATAS as
a proper tribunal and requiring fully reasoned deliveries;
motorists not having to pay to appeal
to PATAS;
legislation that parking appeals
to PATAS should not be limited to seven grounds, and adjudicators
should be required to exercise proportionality, commonsense and
consideration in determining parking appeals. The touchstone in
determining parking appeals should be whether or not they achieve
the objectives of the 1984 Act, not whether there are trivial
contraventions of the parking regulations; and
motorists should be able to appeal
to a court if a council proposes to send in bailiffs.
Part II of the Road Traffic Act 1991 deals with
traffic management in London. Sections 51 and 63 empower the Secretary
of State to issue guidance to London authorities with respect
to the management of traffic. Para 2.23 of "Traffic Management
and Parking Guidance for London" (February 1998) states that:
"The level of parking charges must be set
for traffic management reasons . . . rather than to maximise revenue.
This is because section 122 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act
1984 does not include the maximisation of revenue from parking
charges as one of the relevant considerations to be taken into
account in securing safe, expeditious and convenient movement
of traffic".
Mr. Justice McCullough[6]
observed (at p23) "the 1984 Act is not a fiscal measure.
It contains no provision which suggests that Parliament intended
to authorise a council to raise income by using its powers to
designate parking places on the highway and to charge for their
use . . . the fact is that the 1984 Act is not a revenue raising
Act. Where there is ambiguity the citizen is not to be taxed unless
the language of the legislation clearly imposes the obligation"
(at p34).
3. CAMDEN'S
PARKING ACCOUNT
Camden's parking account for 2003-04 made a
surplus of £18.8m[7].
Its projection for 2004-05 and draft budget for 2005-06 forecasts
a surplus of £17.5 million and £17.7 million respectively.
Camden is not only planning for a continuing surplus, it is budgeting
how to spend it[8].
No organisation makes a surplus (which has been increasing steadily
for a decade) of £18 million as an oversight. The surplus
is a direct consequence of policies which the council adopts,
namely setting:
high charges for pay and display
parkinganecdotal examples suggests Camden's pay and display
charges can be higher than Westminster's for less up-market streets;
high charges for residents parking
permitsat £90 pa. Camden's permits are the third highest
in London; neighbouring Haringey charges £25 pa;
high targets for clamping and towing.
In 2003-04 Camden clamped the second greatest number (29,554),
and towed the third greatest number (9,454) of vehicles compared
to the other boroughs. (15 boroughs neither clamp nor tow). The
reason it clamps and tows so many vehicles is that it sets targets[9]
that are financially incentivised for its contractor. The Guidance
states (Annex para 9.6) regarding clamping that "The charges
should reflect the cost to the local authority of providing the
service". Camden made a surplus of £717,570 in 2004-04
from clamping and towing;
Camden sets high targets for PCNs,
which are the big revenue generator. Camden ranks second among
all boroughs and collected £20.6 million from PCNs to generate
a surplus of £17 million in 2004-05. Camden sets targets
for contractors who win the concession to tax farm the borough
(the new contract for the north of the borough has a target of
180,000 valid PCNs pa). The targets are not related to traffic
management objectives[10],
but to the scope for identifying "contraventions of the parking
regulations" for which the objective is compliance[11].
4. CAMDEN'S
POLICY ON
DISCRETION
Camden's policy is to allow no discretion because,
according to the Executive Member for Environment[12]:
"The Council are obliged to administer
the Road Traffic Act 1991 in a uniform and consistent manner.
Not to do so could leave the Council open to legal challenge for
being selective".
The latter statement has no legal validity.
In reality the contractor has no incentive for parking attendants
to exercise discretionthe contractor wants PCNsand
the council's back-office is reluctant to exercise discretion[13]
because 1) to do so could create conflict with the contractor's
targets, and 2) the council wants to generate revenue. The council's
approach runs directly counter to the advice of the former Transport
Committee which advised proper discretion in applying measures,
and to other official guidance including in 2004 by the Local
Government Ombudsman[14],
who noted that "The Parking Adjudicators for England &
Wales advised:
". . . we would stress again .
. . the importance of a council recognising the existence of its
discretion and considering whether or not to exercise it outside
of the statutory grounds. If it fails to do either, then it does
not act with fairness towards an owner."
Clearly if Camden exercised discretion to ensure
that motorists only paid PCNs when they contravened the purpose
of the Act, rather than the technicalities of the parking
regulations, it could reduce its surplus.
We are campaigning that parking attendants and
council back offices should exercise discretion and considerate
enforcement in accordance with the objectives of the Act, rather
than compliance for the sake of compliance.
5. CLAMPING AND
TOWING IN
PRACTICE
The Code states in para 4.5:
". . . each authority should consider
which offences might result in vehicles being clamped or removed
as part of its enforcement strategy. For example, clamping and
removal might be reserved for persistent contravention, safety
reasons, relieving congestion, removing obstruction of crossovers,
controlling parking generated by special events, controlling parking
during busy seasonal shopping periods, and deterring commuter
parking".
The effect of giving contractors indiscriminate
targets for towing and clamping is that they go out to seek for
"business" regardless of the circumstances. Thus to
give examples from our personal experience:
towed from a parking bay three minutes
after being ticketed by a warden[15];
clamped at 8pm for parking by mistake
in a residents parking bay;
clamped in a side road on a Saturday
morning at 10.45 when displaying a visitors permit in a pay and
display space while visiting a Member of Parliament for 50 minutes;
in Dartmouth Park[16]
clamped in a residents parking bay while displaying a valid residents
permit; three vehicles clamped in Dartmouth Park when there was
ample space around (in one case, the vehicle was clamped in a
cul-de-sac with 20 vacant residents parking spaces).
In no way does indiscriminate clamping further
the objectives of section 122 subsection (1) of the 1984 Actindeed
it achieves the contrary objective by ensuring that a vehicle
remains in a parking bay for a hour or so longer than necessary.
Indiscriminate clamping is merely an unpleasant method for the
council to generate revenue from "contraventions of the parking
regulations"[17].
It is noteworthy that Glasgow City Council never
clamped, nor has Lancashire County Council. Mr Andrew Vaughan,
Head of Street Management of Manchester City Council, states the
council has "Ceased clamping as a means of an enforcementwhy
do it?"[18].
Islington has stopped clamping, and following a review of practices
Westminster has removed targets from its contracts and deferred
clamping for an hour. In consequence the number of clampings in
June, July and August reduced by 60% from 12,900 in 2004 to 5400
in 2005[19],
which is a significant step in the right direction. Camden is
now comfortably top of the clamping league. We are campaigning
for an end to clamping.
Similar considerations apply to indiscriminate
towing based on arbitrary targetsone of us was towed from
a pay and display bay three minutes after being ticketed. Mr Vaughan
has observed[20]
that with targets "If the contractor could not find vehicles
for towing that were dangerously parked, it would remove vehicles
for other reasonsalthough these vehicles may not have been
causing an obstruction . . . Our new approach is based on the
mantra of being "reasonable and proportionate" in all
that we say and do . . . Towing is concentrated on vehicles that
are parked in dangerous places and those that are untaxedthe
number of vehicles towed halved".
We are campaigning that there should be no target
for towing, and towing should be limited to vehicles causing an
obstruction, untaxed vehicles, and those parked in residents'
parking bays for more than a day.
6. TICKETING
IN PRACTICE
Camden's ticketing enforcement is driven by
the financial incentive on the contractor to achieve a target,
which is passed on to the individual parking attendant. Though
Camden's contract with its contractor prohibits payment of a bonus
related to the number of PCNs a parking attendant issues, according
to a statement made by a former traffic warden[21],
the same result was achieved by favouring with overtime parking
attendants who issue more than an average number of tickets. The
statement also observed that wardens are encouraged to cheat motorists
by issuing "ghost tickets"[22]
in order to generate fines. National Car Parks Limited (which
now has the concession to tax farm all of the borough) offered
gifts from Argos if they help to "increase revenue"[23].
In "Dispatches: Confessions of a Parking
Attendant" shown on Channel 4 on Thursday 3 March 2005, a
reporter went undercover working as a parking attendant in Southwark
for APCOA. The programme reported:
"At his base in Southwark our
reporter sees a company circular . . . [which] shows there was
a target of fines drawn up last December. In other words enforcement
responds not to the actual number of offences committed but to
targets drawn up in advance".
"Our reporter is told the job
is about keeping the traffic moving, but his team leader leaves
him in doubt that it is about issuing tickets" . . . "As
a business the company needs tickets . . . The nature of the business
is tickets . . . At bottom the culture is about issuing tickets
. . . There is occasionally talk about keeping the traffic flowing
. . . But the first question you ask on meeting another parking
attendant is how many tickets have you issued".
The programme also gave several examples of
"dodgy" practices (ie stealing from motorists), and
films a parking attendant generating "ghost tickets".
The consequences of the financially driven targets
and lack of discretion in Camden are:
A high level of dodgy tickets, many
of which have no traffic management purposes:
two of us have had "ghost tickets";
one of us watched and waited as a parking
attendant started the ticketing process two minutes before the
time of a CPZ (09.00) on a Saturday morning when traffic was negligible;
a ticket was put on a car 1½ hours
out of time;
a ticket was put on a car because it
was supposedly in a suspended baythere was no sign around;
tickets were put on the cars of a couple
outside their house although they displayed residents' permits;
a resident was clamped outside her house
displaying a residents' parking permit;
a resident was ticketed outside his house
displaying a resident's permit. Although the council checked the
car had a valid permit, the appeal was rejected because the council
thought it likely that the permit had been lent to someone else;
having received a succession of tickets
which he paid to avoid the hassle and inconvenience of appealing,
one of us decided that enough was enough and decided to pursue
each ticket. Over 18 months he appealed nine tickets (one from
Westminster), including two that went to PATAS. Seven were successfully
overturned. In none of the cases did the local authority exercise
discretion other than at the end of multiple letter exchanges
when it became apparent that they were likely to lose at PATAS.
"Due mainly to increases in parking
income, there is likely to be an additional £3.1 million
available in the Environment department's budget in 2004-05. The
Executive on 25 February 2004 agreed that this be earmarked for
improvements to the quality of the physical environment. This
surplus is likely to be £2.6 million in 2005-06 and remain
at this level in future years. There is a degree of uncertainty
over the 2005-06 figures as the parking contracts will be re-tendered
and renewed in April 2005.
"the successful contractor
is expected to reach a clamp achievement level of 28,000 per annum.",
which generates an income of about £1.7 million per annum;
"the successful contractor
will be expected to reach a removal level of 7,000 p.a.",
which will generate an income of about £1.2 million per annum.
historic information of PCNs
issued;
levels of traffic and parking
stress within the borough;
the design of the CPZs and
the type of parking contraventions found within the CPZs;
the enforcement rules, for
enforcing each type of parking contravention".
The first, third, and probably fourth criteria
are circulara contractor has an incentive to beat the target,
which ups the ante next time round.
Motorists should not be put to the inconvenience
of spending their time dealing with the incompetence of parking
attendants driven to hand out tickets. We are campaigning that
councils compensate motorists £15 for each dodgy ticket.
Some examples where discretion should have beenbut
was notexercised:
A priest went to give the last rites
to someone in a hospital. The nearby bays were suspended; he parked
in one. Neither Islington nor PATAS allowed his appeal.
Despite advising a traffic warden
what he was doing, a father was ticketed for picking up his daughter
from a friend's house.
A mother was stopped briefly in a
suspended bay to drop off her three very small children at the
hairdresser. After doing that she returned to her car to see a
warden beginning to ticket. She explained what she was doing and
asked him to stop issuing the ticket. He lied and said he could
not stop.
A PCN was issued and upheld for not
displaying a renewed permit two days after the expiry date of
the old permit although the council had the necessary papers and
cheque before the expiry of the old permit[24]
This episode is nothing short of a scam, and clearly demonstrates
the revenue collecting agenda. PATAS refused the appeal[25].
A person was short of change, and
put the minimum amount in a meter while she went to get more change.
On her return she saw a parking attendant observing the carwhich
was the only one in the streetit was surrounded by empty
spaces. Not realizing that she was contravening the parking regulations,
she bought a ticket for the full amount of time that she intended
to stay. The attendant observed the whole process and said nothing.
Within a minute of her leaving the car, the attendant had issued
a PCN. The ticket was appealed and Camden was asked to exercise
discretion. The appeal was rejected by Camden.
A car broke down in the evening,
and was pushed to the side of the road and a sign placed prominently
in the window saying that it would be collected as soon as possible.
When the garage came to pick it up, it had been ticketed.
A consequence of the pursuit of trivial contraventions
to the parking regulations is that the importance of trivial hair
splitting distinctions become important[26].
Parking controls in Camden are enforced without
regard to the legitimate interests of retailers. Thus since the
implementation of the CPZ in Kentish Town in 1999 there has been
a catastrophic downward trend of business in a once lively and
vibrant high street which boasted a good mix of retail outlets.
Over 17 businesses have vanished, giving way to a melee of fast
food outlets, estate agents and charity shops. The audited accounts
of the business (established in 1949) of one of our directors
shows a 41% drop in turnover in the last six years. Another director
has run a business collecting from offices waste for recycling
using five vans. In two years he has received 107+ PCNs of which
88+ have been cancelled with 10 more in the system. Another director
runs a building business which renovates old quality houses in
Camden. He comments:
"It is impossible to run a building company
without using vehicles to load and unload materials. Some sites
do not have easy access and parking on a yellow line or at bus
stop is unavoidable. Permits for suspending a bus stop take 14
days to obtain, which is too far ahead to plan, and if the job
only takes an hour then the disruption to the buses is minimal.
The system is too unwieldy to work properly. Also permits have
to be queued for, thus wasting time. The council have recently
increased the price of the parking permits from £5 to £16,
and clients are complaining that they already have enough to pay
to the council in rates and parking fees.
The parking attendants target the vehicles which
are loading and unloading, making the builder write to the council
to prove with documentation each time. Most companies waste about
half a day a week doing this, and all because the parking attendants
are desperate to fulfill a quota. Since 2003 we have received
about 90 PCNs of which 80 have been cancelled".
Manchester City Council and Westminster have
abandoned setting targets for contactors. According to Mr Vaughan
using a "London type" contract with targets resulted
in conflict, and "Issuing PCNs was a technocratic approach
. . . Under the new contract (which has no targets) the wardens
are focused on traffic management and are expected to exercise
discretion to ensure a reasonable and proportionate response.
Our new approach is based on the mantra of being reasonable and
proportionate in all we say and do".
We are campaigning that:
The Government make it clear in its
promised revision to the Guidance that uncompromising martinet
enforcement is not intended by the Act. Rather councils should
be proportionate and exercise commonsense and considerate discretion,
and focus their parking enforcement on achieving the objectives
of the legislation.
To remove the financial incentive
that is driving uncompromising enforcement, legislation should
be introduced to prohibit councils making a surplus on their parking
account, and the promised guidance should ban target setting for
contractors.
Penalties should be graduatedthere
should be a grace period of 10 minutes; up to the first hour over
time should be charged £20; two hours and beyond should be
charged £40; late payment should increase in two stages to
£100.
As some councils are clearly abusing
their power, the number of tickets a council can issue be capped
on a monthly basisand that this cap be set very low. This
would force councils to "ration" their tickets to address
serious issues. Any application for more tickets would have to
be accompanied with evidence that they are achieving real objectives
with their current quota.
An independent audit be carried out
periodically on the issue of tickets to achieve certain traffic
management/environmental goals. The audit should show that definite
improvement has occurred through the issue of fines. The auditor
would be empowered to instruct a reduction in ticketing activity
if it was thought that the same could be achieved with less tickets.
7. EXPERIENCE
WITH THE
BAILIFF COMPANY
EQUITA
Three of us have had councils instruct Equita
to collect PCNs that reached £150. We all had similar experiences:
Neither the council nor Equita advised
us that a warrant had been issued.
The bailiffs arrived unannounced,
and in an intimidating manner demanded a large sum of money. Thus
in one case the bailiffs demanded £1,060 for two PCNs. The
Government's "National Standards for Enforcement Agents"
requires the bailiffs show their authorisation and "leave
a notice detailing the fees charged to date, including the one
for that visit". In no case was this information provided
on the door, while the process of extracting it was tedious and
garbled[27].
The fees of certified bailiffs are
set by a statutory instrument which allows £11.20 plus VAT
for sending a letter and for levying distress 28% of the amount
up to £200 and 5.5% of fines above £200. The fees charged
were well above that amount. The first challenge on the £1,060
resulted in repayment of £141.
Subsequent investigation by two of
us revealed that Equita justified the fees by claiming that it
had written initial bailiff's letters, and bailiffs had made earlier
visits and left letters. Neither of us received any such letters
through our letter box, and as we either work from home and/or
have partners who are often at home, we have no reason to believe
the visits were ever made. In the case cited Equita "charged
£222 plus VAT attendance charges for attending with a vehicle
to remove goods" for which sum one can hire a 7½ ton
pentechnicon for five hours. As the bailiffs appeared to have
come to collect money, we have no reason to believe that there
was a vehicle in attendance. On being challenged about this charge
Equita refunded the money in two days as "a gesture of goodwill"!
Of the £750 original charge,
Equita has returned £401.85we are now about to work
on that sum.
Equita's accounts filed at Companies House shows
that it made the extraordinary pre-tax profit of £5.46 million
on a turnover of £14.13 million, a margin of 40%; it made
a pre-tax return on £10.8 million capital employed of 50%[28].
We doubt that it made such returns by issuing bailiffs letters
for £11.20 each, nor indeed by collecting debts of £168.16
for £47.08 (excluding VAT), the amount it should charge for
a visit related to a PCN. Did it achieve such a return from small
recoveries by charging for multiple visits and vehicles, which
may be fraudulent behaviour?
One of us has issued court proceedings against
Equita, and a second has made a formal complaint to Camden seeking
redress with a view to referring the issue to the Local Government
Ombudsman. We have made a representation to the Office of Fair
Trading that Equita should lose its licence.
Many people would be frightened by burly bailiffs
appearing at their door demanding outrageous amounts of money,
and threatening if they do not receive immediate payment to return
with a warrant, break in, and take goods. And few would know how
to take bailiffs apart if their behaviour warrants such treatment.
But this is the inevitable outcome of decriminalised and uncompromising
parking enforcement which allows no recourse to the courts.
We are campaigning that motorists should have
the opportunity of recourse to the court before councils send
in bailiffs. Furthermore the Minister for Constitutional Affairs
should tighten the National Standards for Enforcement Agents and
it should be given statutory force.
The majority of motorists are law abiding citizens
who recognise the need for sensible traffic management control
and common sense and considerate enforcement. Too often, in some
boroughs motorists find they are caught out by irrelevant and
banal technicalities, and can become enmeshed in a Kafkaesque
world of petty minded triviality and little legislative trip wires
where council officers have the upper hand from their familiarity
with municipal rules and unfamiliar legislation that is divorced
from what many people regard as sensible and fair. There is no
proportionality, and some of the penalties may be in contravention
of the European Union principle that penalties should be "proportioned"[29],
an issue we will wish to explore.
The situation in some boroughs is verging on
war in the streets, with many motorists angry with what they regard
as quite unreasonable penalties for trivial offences and tax farming.
This is leading to verbal and physical abuse of parking attendants.
Many parking attendants are black, and so some councils are effectively
creating an institutionalised framework for racial abuse.
In some boroughs the means to traffic management
has become the endpenalties for "contraventions to
the parking regulations"to generating revenue. Some
woolly minded and blinkered councilors and their officers have
forgotten that the function of a borough is to help people, not
to discipline and harass them with bureaucratic trivialities,
still less to turn bailiffs on law abiding and ratepaying citizens.
1 Motoring Towards 2050 RAC Foundation. Back
2
Now the Environment and Transport Committee of the Association
of London Government. Back
3
Case No: CO/4960/2004, Royal Courts of Justice, 18 May 2005. Back
4
Transport for London is appealing the decision. Back
5
Case No: CO/505/2002, 22 May 2002. Back
6
Regina v Camden Borough Council ex parte Mark Dyson, Gordon Cram
and Others, High Courts of Justice, Wednesday 11 January 1995. Back
7
Source: The Parking Account, Alex Williams, Report to Parking
Scrutiny Panel, 23 February 2005, Camden Council. Back
8
Paras 1.1, 1.2 and 6.4 of the Report of the Director of Environment
dated 27 July 2004 read as follows: Back
9
The targets in the new contract commencing 1 April 2005 for the
north of the borough includes the following: Back
10
In response to the question "What was the basis for increasing
the target PCNs in the recent contract", the Manager of Parking
Solutions responded "Officers carry out detailed research
when setting out PCN estimates. This is based on: Back
11
The Assistant Director Environment has explained "Our objective
is compliance", "Parking Scrutiny-An introduction",
presentation given to Parking Scrutiny Panel meeting on 4 November
2004. Back
12
On 23 February 2003 in response to questions from members of
the Scrutiny Panel. Back
13
In using this term, we exclude as "exercising discretion"
cases were there is a clear mistake by the parking attendant. Back
14
"Special report: Parking enforcement by local authorities,
consideration of representations under the Road Traffic Act 1991,
Advice and guidance from The Local Government Ombudsman",
2004. Back
15
PCN numbers can be provided for all incidents cited. Back
16
There is an argument that some motorists might plan to leave
their vehicles in a pay and display bay for many hours, and it
would cost as much to pay a PCN as park for a day. Clamping provides
an additional penalty. We suspect there is no quantified evidence
demonstrating that this practice is a significant problem. This
argument obviously does not apply to the examples cited for Dartmouth
Park, which is a residential area next to the eastern boundary
of Hampstead Heath. The area hardly meets the criteria for Controlled
Parking Zones set out by the Secretary of State, and is only congested
on fine weekends and public holidays when the CPZ (which is in
force for two hours each weekday) does not apply. Back
17
Camden and some other councils cite as a justification for clamping
a 1984 research study on clamping in Central London by the Road
Research Laboratory "Effects of wheel clamping in Central
London". That study is not relevant today because the circumstances
are radically different. Central London now crawls with parking
attendants; in 1984 clamping was relatively infrequent, and then
there were no targets incentivising indiscriminate clamping. The
fact that this outdated research is still cited (we wonder how
many who cite it, have read it in full), illustrates the lack
of substance to the claim that clamping provides a disincentive
to contravening parking regulations. It is noteworthy that in
its recent (so called) Scrutiny of Parking Camden made no attempt
to factually analyse a sample of clamping incidents to ascertain
how, if at all, clamping might have achieved the objectives of
the 1984 Act-the Council prefers rhetoric to facts. Back
18
Presentation by Mr. Andy Vaughan provided to Camden's Parking
Scrutiny Panel, 22 September 2004. Back
19
Source: e-mail dated 26 September 2005 from Alastair Gilchrist,
Director of Parking, City of Westminster. Back
20
E-mail from A. Vaughan dated 15 April 2005. Back
21
Details provided separately to the Clerk to the Committee. Back
22
It is a requirement for a valid ticket that it is put on the
vehicle. A ghost ticket is one that is not put on a vehicle perhaps
because the driver drives away before the warden has finished
the ticketing process. The first the owner knows of the alleged
ticket is receipt of the Notice to Owner two weeks later, by when
the penalty has increased from £50 to £100. Back
23
Briefing Notes for Managers: The Values in Action Incentive Schemes-"The
Argos Scheme", National Car Parks, 11 December 2003. Back
24
Camden stated "the council is satisfied that at the time
of this contravention, the vehicle was not displaying a valid
resident permit"; Westminster allow 14 days of grace when
warnings are issued. Back
25
The adjudicator stated that (1) the seven grounds did not include
the situation; (2) the ruling by Mr Justice Burnton who stated
"I apprehend that it is not the purpose of the provision
of penalties to punish those who made an error in providing the
registration number of their vehicle" was not relevant to
parking; (3) the car did not have a valid permit, therefore it
contravened parking regulations; (4) he had no discretion. Back
26
One of us was ticketed for footway parking when his car was slightly
protruding from his driveway to allow workers to access the driveway
for some building work. The ticket was issued quietly while the
builders were working behind the car. The area outside his driveway
is separated from the footway by a raised curb, is shown as part
of the carriageway on ordinance survey maps, is regularly used
by vehicles to turn in the road and meets all statutory definitions
of the term "carriageway". PATAS have thus far ruled
that it is not part of the carriageway, but refuse to reveal the
logic of their reasoning and have refused to determine whether
it is part of the footway or, for that matter, what part of the
road it is if it is not part of the carriageway. Back
27
In response to one request Equita wrote "You refer to the
National Standards for Enforcement Agents with regard to details
of visits made. I would point out that at present this document
is only a guideline rather than a regulation". Back
28
Note this is undoubtedly a misleadingly low figure for the return
from bailiff activities because virtually all of the capital represents
investments in other businesses. Back
29
Article 49 section 3 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of
the European Union states "The severity of penalties must
not be disproportionate to the criminal offence". While this
applies to criminal acts, the same principle is applied in civil
proceedings. Thus the Draft Report on "Confiscation of automobiles
by the Greek authority" (2005/2005(IN), Committee Petitions
21 April 2005 refers on a number of occasions to "the community
principle of proportionality" and states in E.4 "Member
States must exercise that power [viz of imposing penalties] in
accordance with Community law and its general principles, and
consequently with the principle of proportionality". Back
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