On Sunday, as I often do on a Sunday and often have done over the years, I parked in a pay and display carpark near me.
When I got back to the car, there was a parking ticket.
???
It transpired (from talking to the parking warden) that 3/4 months ago the council decided to make it paying on Sundays as well as during the rest of the week. I must have parked there several times since the rules changed.
1. I cannot decide whether or not to forgive myself: Should I check every time I park in a familiar place that the rules have not changed.
2. I cannot decide whether or not to forgive the council. Any decent, honourable council would have big notices up "Sundays are paying too".
As the traffic warden could barely keep up writing tickets, and was dealing with a crowd of bewildered motorists, I was not the only one.
Grounds for appeal? (I'm not sure I can think of one!)
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Don't know about your car park but all of ours are clearly marked "payment required 24/7".
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Our town has no traffic wardens but does have car park officials. The streets are narrow being of medieval origin.
Many flaunt the double yellow lines and pedestrian only zones because the chances of a ticket are slim. The police have a purge once in a while but not on any regular basis.
I often take my son swimming on a Sunday morning at a public pool which adjoines a pay and display car park. We can walk there in about 15 minutes but if the weather is foul we take the car.
Many people just park on the double yellows nearby but I prefer not to and use the car park for which there is a charge even on Sundays. The other week I did that and realised that I didn't have the correct change. No problem I thought, I'll go and pay for the swimming and pop back out to buy a ticket when I have change.
Well, there was a bit of a queue and yes, you've guessed it..........parking ticket. The daft thing being that had I abandoned the car on the nearby pedestrian precinct or on a double yellow part blocking a narrow road, it would have cost nothing.
I know nothing can be said in my defence and I paid up but I did feel a bit miffed I must admit.
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 08/12/2008 at 09:26
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My local weekly throw away rag ran a very small article the other week about the privatisation
of the towns parking set up. One hour bays, now free, would be getting pay and display meters and the yellow lines would be enforced by a private company.
Is was to have come in to force before Christmas but they got cold feet and have decided to wait until Jan 2009.
Now I have mentioned this new scheme to dozens of colleagues yet nobody knew about it.
Nor did they know that the present set up of around 4 traffic wardens would be turned in to a group of 30, working shifts.
They didn't know that the parking restrictions would become a 24/7 issue either.
Now with out giving too much away, this small Northern town center goes dead at 6 pm with every shop shutting. All that is open are the usual bars and clubs and take away food outlets. It's not like Manchester or Leeds with it's late opening stores. It's center is completely pedestrianised and the surrounding streets are not the sort that get blocked with all day parkers because the place only has a few shops and there are no large office complexes in the center of town.
Greed, thy name is a small time council.
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If its a small town, then why not walk? Where I live is a "samll" town, its a mile walk into the centre and thats what I do, if I am bringing something big and heavy back, then its the car, but most of the time... I just can't understand why people have to use the car all the time for such journeys... lazyness, I suppose...
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Don't suppose anything. The locals walk in to town but they will suffer as the rules that allow them to park outside their terraced streets will lead to friends and visitors being ticketed in great numbers.
The town has been doing all it can to attract visitors and shoppers from further a field. Now we see why. They have been laying a trap to bring more motorists in to the area to feed the ticket hungry wardens. Interestingly, of the towns 3 major car parks, only a small one will remain open 24 hours at night. The off street spaces only offer up to 2 hours so that would seem to signal the beginning of the end the eating and drinking trade who rely on people spending a fuller evening in their premises.
I think I know the difference between a congested town with hard to access roads due to badly parked vehicles and one which has seen the glint of coin and the chance to make a few bob with out soiling its own hands, hence the ' private parking " enforcers.
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Ok, Mr X so what are you doing about it, other than moaning to us? I'd suggest that you get on to your neighbours and go and see your local council member in force and start getting things changed...
Its fine having a good rant, I've nothing against that, but things can be changed if people make enough noise, more so in local councils than national gov...
So go for it, kiddo!!
(Oh, and I think that you are reading far too much into things, I can hardly see a local council managing to think up such a scheme, let alone implement it! Sounds like they've just been a little more successful in their scheme to get tourists/visitors in and have now reaped the consequences of that... no doubt they hadn't even thought of what would happen if they were successful!)
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Drum being beaten as we speak.
They didn't have to think very hard, those Private Parking Enforcement Companies roll up and pitch the new dream, promising them a cut of the fines and all for doing nothing. They offer to chip in with the cost of the pay and display machines and of course the promise that the wardens will be self funding from the fines as well.
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Its still the council who set the regulations (times, prices, etc), so all the wardens are doing is enforcing them... I don't think its fair to blame them (just because they are a private company?) when all they are doing is enforcing what your council has set...
For the record since the council has taken on parking enforcement round here finding a parking space has been a lot easier with no-one trying to stay all day (or morning) in 1 hour bays like they used to...
Unlike you I have seen it as a big plus to what we used to have.... two sides, as usual!
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....Unlike you I have seen it as a big plus to what we used to have.... two sides as usual!....
Speaking selfishly (is there any other way?) civil enforcement has been a plus where I work, too.
As someone who sticks roughly to the rules, I was losing out to those that did not.
Proper enforcement mean spaces now easier to find and my regular bus journey is quicker because the route is no longer clogged by the 'just a minute' double yellow parkers.
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Should've gone to Specsavers!
;-)
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I live five minute walk from town centre and opposite our house is a bus stop;I can walk into town,shop and walk back and there will be people waiting at the bus stop that were there when I went out and I'm not talking the elderly.Our local council parking enforcement office regularly has people arguing that 24/7 does not include Sunday.My previous next door neighbour-healthy woman in her thirties-used a car to collect her children from the local school-two hundred yards!!!We have "resident parking"-excellent-our road was full of commuters by 7am..
Edited by jc2 on 08/12/2008 at 11:31
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You won't get much sympathy on here, Mapmaker. It appears nobody is allowed to make mistakes or have lapses of memory any more.
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There's a car park I use when going to my favourite curry house. Free after 5.30pm. Last time I used it I saw a notice on the entrance. An "after 5.30pm" fee is to be introduced, so now I check everytime to make sure I don't have to pay.
Even though it is still currently free after 5.30pm there are always people happily putting money in the machine to get a ticket so it appears very few drivers actually check charging periods.
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I sympathise- same happened to me in Reading's Civic Centre car park a few years ago when they decided to start charging on Sundays (three quid fixed charge).
There is still one free Sunday (and after 6pm) car park, the Cattle Market one, and I now use that if I need to take the car in. Because it's more than 100 yards from the shops, there's usually plenty of spaces :-)
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Thanks for at least alerting me to the possibility of this!
In Durham the council outsource on street parking to the evil ncp lot. Its free on Sundays now, but only a matter of time before the potential profit is realised. Of course as ncp aren't traffic wardens I could simply park on a double yellow with no fear of being caught!
No wonder people are shopping online so much. I certainly wouldn't pay to park and then spend money shopping. I either use free parking (Sundays/supermarkets etc) or online delivery.
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I've seen machines-usually near the sea-clearly marked that they are not in operation"October to April" but they are there and people happily feed money into them.
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If the Council earlier allowed Sunday Parking free then their signage would show this.
Now that they have started to charge for a Sunday has their signage been changed to reflect this. If not then grounds for appeal.
dvd
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Rule changes can certainly catch the careless. I used to drive across Europe every 2 or 3 of years. The first time I went, I read up on the regulations.
Thereafter, I just assumed that the regulations had not changed.
But one of them did. Austria made it compulsory to purchase a vignette (sticker) for driving on motorways. I never noticed any signs telling me this the next time I entered the country. In fact, I didn't discover it until after I was safely home. I was lucky.
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As ever, my advice is to go to the Pepipoo website - specifically, the forum on Parking and Decriminalised Notices. A quick Google should turn it up.
Post a scan or pic of the ticket up on that forum, councils are excellent at making basic mistakes in the wording which will render the ticket invalid, and the contributors there are excellent at finding these mistakes. Also post photos of the signs at the location, if possible. They must adhere to various rules and regulations.
Seems petty in many cases, especially where someone has clearly parked where they shouldn't, but I see it as throwing their own inflexible attitude to the rules back at them.
Private parking charges issued by various companies subcontracted in retail estates and the like are even better - they are almost certainly impossible to enforce in court.
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2. I cannot decide whether or not to forgive the council. Any decent honourable council would have big notices up "Sundays are paying too".
It is reasonable for the council to assume that people will expect the rules today to be the same as the rules yesterday since, for the overwhelming majority of the time, that is the case. Therefore, when the council does something to break assumption, they have a moral obligation to make that change very obvious, otherwise they risk catching well-intentioned honest citizens whose only mistake was to fall foul of a perfectly reasonable assumption with a rule that is actually intended for deliberate evaders.
I imagine they updated the sign next to the pay and display machine with the new tariff but nobody who is used to parking being free that day is going to read that. Putting up a big, obvious sign or two like you suggest is hardly difficult so there is really no excuse not to.
As the traffic warden could barely keep up writing tickets and was dealing with a crowd of bewildered motorists I was not the only one.
That rather suggests that the disingenuous council didn't bother with their moral obligation. It's disappointing that it's so easy to believe that could happen.
Grounds for appeal? (I'm not sure I can think of one!)
Sadly I doubt it. Grounds for complaint to the appropriate level of local politician that the functionaries they oversee are not taking their responsibilities seriously.
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The change in shop opening hours has brought about this paying for parking on a Sunday as this once special day has become just another ordinary shopping day. Now I can understand the need to regulate parking during the day ( movement of traffic and giving people a fair crack of the whip re short stay parking ) but could some one please explain why my new wardens will be operating past 11 pm at night when most buses have finished running and the amount of people parking will be quite small ?
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You are certainly a prolific poster Mr X
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1. I am an unemployed bum with too much time on my hands
or
2. I am a motorist who relies on a vehicle to keep my business going and I am sick of being
squeezed until the pips squeak by the anti motorist lobby.
You decide.
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I would think that is down to whoever runs them, be they the local council (in our case) or a private company (in your case)... in your case it may also be stipulated in the contract that the private firm has with your council?
It also depends on the town... there is a town near us where the main street is one way but narrow and I could understand parking regulations being needed even late at night just to keep traffic from gumming up... however there will be places where its not needed...
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>>but could some one please explain why my new wardens will be operating past 11 pm atnight when most buses have finished running and the amount of people parking will be quite small ?
Because just like speed limits yellow lines are enforceable 24/7.
Contrary to your belief that there are few cars at this time I've seen wardens in Leeds after 11pm and they gave more than enough tickets to cover their wages for the shift.
Lazy motorists=easy money. If it means the lazy motorists are subsidising my Council Tax I'm all for it.
Edited by daveyjp on 08/12/2008 at 20:48
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I understand why we have short stay parking bays with fines for people who over stay them during normal shopping hours. It's to give every one a chance of parking there. I don't understand why the same rules are applied to these bays at 11 pm at night when there are a fraction of the number of people wanting to use them and more than enough to satisfy the needs of a small town with a few bars and eateries.
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Income generation Mr X - that's all. My local council runs a small profit on parking enforcement, staff are self funding.
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Nail hit squarely on the head their pugugly.
I have enough years behind the wheel and a good enough grasp of politics to understand when parking regulations are there to assist the flow of traffic, for safety reasons and to provide everybody with an equal chance of finding a parking place .Thus I also know a money making scam when I see one and in my councils case, this is what they have in mind. Of course there are those who will point out if you don't infringe the regulations, you will never be fined. They of course have never had a ticket drop off the windscreen on to the dash, never paid for an hour and been delayed by 3 minutes due to a queue at the till or been stopped unexpectedly by an old friend as they head back to the car.. What it must be like to have your life so perfectly in order.
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Income generation
Only if people park where they shouldn't... I have some sympathy with the changes to car park regulations, having nearly been caught out myself, but at the end of the day the signs are there, its your choice not to read them... and if people can't be bothered to park a bit further away and walk I have no sympathy...
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1) i would certainly forgive you, your post has made me realise that, although in a "new" car park, i scrutinise the tariff board, in a familiar car park, i don't. My local town centre car park is currently, and has been for years, 50p for two hours or less, it's a "pay on exit", and i regularly park there with only the required 50p in my pocket, so ... there but for the grace of....
2) don't forgive the council, ( a] on principle :-) ) and b] because how hard can it be to put one great big notice saying "new sunday tariff applies" at the entrance to the car park?, there are still signs around here indicating "new speed limits" or "junction priorities changed" two years or more after the said changes were made, so where's the logic?
"grounds for appeal?", ... re-arrange the following, " be so should lucky you " (i regret to say), you have my sympathy, and my gratitude for the warning.
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Single yellow lines after 6.30 are all right in lots of areas of London where parking in resident bays is banned until much later. It's counter-intuitive and must catch a lot of people out. You have to read the stuff on posts which aren't always conveniently placed.
There's a busy back street in Kensington where people collecting nippers from the church school next to the police station can park on double yellows at school chucking-out time. You have to put a chit saying what you are doing on the speedometer cowl. My wife says people have been nicked doing it, but I never have, and my car almost stands out in a street full of Priuses and Maseratis and stuff...
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My son in law got a PCN whilst he was going to get change for the pay and display.He was in my car. I told him not to pay the £60 charge as the demand would come to me.
9 months later I got a demand for £100 from the parking company. I ignored it. 2 weeks later a final demand and threat of court action. That was well worth ignoring as well. Fact is, it was a shopping centre car park and they can only take the person parking the car to the County Court for breachof contract. The maximum they can claim is what they have lost...eg. £1 and they cannot force the car owner to tell them who parked the car or communicate with them in any way.
These firms make their money from the fear of those who just pay up. Usually those who can least afford it.
Ted
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Indeed - parking tickets from private companies generally fall under contract law, and it's immensely difficult for them to prove that any such contract exists, or that its terms are fair.
The lengths they go to in order to appear as official and serious as council/police tickets is often beyond the pale, and in some cases, possibly illegal.
The best advice, as given on Pepipoo, is to just ignore them, the letters will eventually stop.
Note this does not apply to council tickets, though.
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Our local council decided to bring in charges for the beach car parks - which have always been free. They insisted it was to introduce new toilet facilities etc - which had actually been done 3 years earlier! Residents objected and forced the council to carry out a poll. Not only did residents object but also lots of visitors who regularly use the beaches for picnics, sailboarding windsurfing etc. Charges have been dropped!
Result!
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No one has used the word "retrospective" yet.
It is the new word to describe changes in the regulations that you don't like.
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I learnt my lesson about single yellow lines (and reading the signs) in about 1967 in Leicester square. I parked in a gap in a line of cars, but when I returned my car and most of the others had gone, towed away. The reason - the space I parked in was the gap between the words 'taxi' & 'rank' painted on the road, and obscured by the other parked cars.
As a hard up student, not cheap even then. I am still very careful to read the signs.
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I've just nearly spat my lunch over the screen after reading a letter from an irate motorist who received a parking ticket for parking in an incorrect bay.
Her defence when appealing was that she thought M/C meant "Mother and Child" and didn't realise it actually meant "Motorcycle".
Needless to say she had to pay up!
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>>Her defence when appealing was that she thought M/C meant "Mother and Child" and didn't realise it actually meant "Motorcycle".
Nice try!
She must have noticed that the spaces were rather narrower than those normally provided for 4X4 mothers. Another give away would be that all the others were carrying their brats on motorbikes.
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She also states the bay is wider - not unexpected as one bay often takes a few motorbikes. I've never seen individual bike parking bays marked out.
I think it's great how in these PC times she makes no link that dads may sometimes be in a car with their children, or did the car park have F/C bays too?
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I heard an interesting snippet on the radio today about this very subject. It appears that only 1% of parking tickets are challenged. Of these, a high percentage are challenged successfully. Go for it on the grounds that you used to park there regularly and did not know about the change. Nothing to lose by asking.
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Another point, it is sensible when challenging and pay a little extra for recorded delivery.
I did this some weeks ago with the ticket I got from the warden who said my blue badge was forged. I had no response to my letter of complaint but last week got a 'notice to owner'. I spent some time searching for the
recorded delivery details with no luck. The point of this post is that I sent a copy of the letter and another one today and was given a ' printed out till reciept' at the post office. I had been searching for the old red one that we all know. I must have chucked the original along with other similar looking receipts....watch out in future.
Ted
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Amazing. In their hurry to grab as much as they can off the motorist every time they allow their car to draw up at the kerb, they don't even follow the letter of the law. Must be all those pound signs, blinding them to their moral obligations to follow the letter of the law.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/7775326.stm
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Amazing. In their hurry to grab as much as they can off the motorist every time they allow their car to draw up at the kerb they don't even follow the letter of the law. [snip] news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/7775326.stm
Those who paid the fines were paying a voluntary tax for antisocial parking. It doesn't apply "every time they allow their car to draw up at the kerb ", as Mr X hyperbolically claims; it only applies when to those who selfishly cause disruption.
This is an old town, with narrow streets, where parking out of place can cause serious congestion. That's precisely the sort of situation where parking enforcement is needed, for everyone's benefit.
Sure, if the technicalities weren't right, then the fines must be refunded, but there doesn't appear to be any suggestion that drivers were not properly warned by yellow lines and the appropriate signs.
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I must say NW I have seldom seen illegal parking causing any kind of obstruction. I know that is the standard justification for parking fines, but it's nearly always complete and utter cobblers. Paris parking on every available spot including shop doorsteps and pedestrian crossings never seemed to stop the traffic.
Anti-social indeed. Rubbish.
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Amazing.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/7775326.stm
It was an unfortunate mistake on the part of the council, and you know it. The motorists were merely technically innocent because the relevant traffic order hadn't been updated when it should have.
There was nothing devious or immoral about it whatsoever. When the council realised their error they took the necessary steps to ensure that the motorists were reimbursed, for which I applaud the council.
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As a motorist, I'm expected to know the laws relating to motoring inside out. As most finable offences are what as known as ' absolute " their is no defence that I can offer against them.
I would therefor expect those charged with putting those laws in to effect to also know them inside out.
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