Ticket to ride
The scourge of council parking tickets, and what to do if you receive one…
The picking up of motoring fines in and around our cities, towns and villages is something we’ve come to accept over recent years, though the true extent to which many of our local councils are using the charges as a revenue generation tool is mindboggling, as recently released government figures have shown, with the London Borough of Newham issuing 239,000 parking tickets in a year, which generated revenue of over £10million.
If you’ve landed a parking ticket, here are five quick pieces of advice that may help you avoid having to dig deep:
1. Appealing
If you wish to appeal, do it straight away, and don’t pay the fine (since doing this admits liability). Remember, the timeframe you have to do this, whilst restricting the fine to a 50% reduction, is usually only 14 days (21 if you’ve been caught via CCTV).Appealing won’t lose you then right to pay at the discounted rate, but failing to appeal will.
2. Gather evidence
The classic get-outs for people looking to appeal tickets are poor signage, an error on the part of the traffic warden, a mis-stated contravention code on the ticket, insufficient road markings or errant traffic rules that were being enforced, so check these elements.
3. Appealing to better nature
There may be perfectly legitimate and sometimes extenuating circumstances by which your vehicle ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps it was broken down, maybe there was a medical emergency, you were too ill to move the car, or it could have been that the ticket fell off the window.
You may even claim human error and hope that a fair-minded person judging your appeal lets you off – stranger things have happened.
4. A refusal to cancel is not the end
If you are informed that your appeal has been unsuccessful, it’s not necessarily the end of the road.Once you have received a Notice to Owner (NTO), you can challenge the ticket in front of an independent tribunal. While this has lost you the opportunity to pay at the reduced rate, it does advance the situation, for free, and creates extra work for the council, which they may not welcome, and could lead to a second claim for penance working in your favour.
5. Keep organised… and calm
Keep all paperwork together, abide by any deadlines and dates, and try as best you can to maintain a clear, unemotional stance. Your best route to justice is by staying calm and following the process through with a calm persona.
“here’s what to do if you get one”