Unfair parking fine? How to call council’s bluff…
My friend Helen recently managed to get out of paying a parking fine imposed by her local council. She felt it was unfair (it often is) and wrote a letter to explain why.
The response she received was less than helpful so she wrote again, and then again. Finally she took it to London Tribunals, which covers council parking fines in the capital, and she won. In fact, the adjudicator said he was impressed by how calm and friendly her side of the correspondence had been.
Helen’s not the only one to overturn a parking fine at a tribunal. Just last year 35,000 complaints from drivers went to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal — the adjudicators for council parking fines in England and Wales — and two-thirds were awarded in favour of the drivers.
But it’s still a drop in the ocean when you look at the number of parking tickets issued each year. According to Churchill Motor Insurance, almost 20,000 parking
fines were given out every day by UK councils last year and an estimated 30,000 fines were issued by private companies every day between April and June last year, up 50 per cent from the same period in 2021.
Read Jasmine’s column in full here
