Parking for Profit

An 79-year-old lady, the Senior Warden of her church, arrives at her church one Tuesday morning at 10:30 to help the mothers and toddlers group who use one of the church halls. She does this every Tuesday morning.

All the roads in the area have a parking restriction which operates between 10:00am and noon because they are close to the local railway station. The yellow lines were Bexley Council's answer to the problem caused by commuters who parked their cars all day while they went to their jobs in London. But that stopped house-owners parking outside their own homes unless they hired one of the bays subsequently installed by the council. The charge for this privilege? Ł25 per annum - a nice little earner for the council. Yet nowhere near the bounty produced by hiring Vinci Park (formerly Sureway Parking) to patrol the borough and swoop on anyone who disobeyed the diktat's new anti-parking regulations.

Naturally, the council insist their parking wardens do not swoop on people - they are merely employed to keep the traffic flowing. What rubbish! I have watched them in action (see the article on illegal parking bay withdrawal) - they hide in doorways until owners have left their vehicles, then they pounce.

And so it was with our old lady. Every other Tuesday morning it wouldn't be a problem because the church has its own off-road car park. This particular Tuesday, one of the mothers had completely blocked access to the car park by leaving her 4x4 in the entrance instead of putting it in a bay. (There's something about female 4x4 drivers - they never seem to be the most considerate, or even intelligent, people on the planet). However, this is a problem that can be quickly resolved by locating the vehicle's owner and asking her to move her car.

With no other roads in the area free of this council-imposed parking restriction, our old lady leaves her car for a second and nips across the car park to call for help to get the car moved. At the same time, two traffic wardens appear and ticket her car. The PCN confirms that the time between observation and penalty was just one minute so there was no grace period allowed to check if the driver was loading or collecting a passenger.

But that's irrelevant to employees of profit motivated companies like VinciPark. The wardens have done their dirty deed by the time the old lady gets back to her car. If, as the council say, their purpose is to keep traffic flowing, they could have said something the minute our lady got out of her car. But no, they hid in their car until the victim was out of sight and then they pounced. It's their standard modus operandi in Bexley Borough.

But our lady explains the circumstances and states that she had no other choice. In a non-authoritarian climate, a reasonable enforcement officer would understand the circumstances and rip up the ticket. But here we have two problems: once the ticket has been written, it cannot be torn up (according to the wardens); secondly, traffic wardens can never be compared with reasonable people. They are trained to issue as many tickets as they possibly can, using whatever devious techniques they can employ, just so that the council (and VinciPark, in this case) can makes lots of extra dosh.

But, there is a small ray of light. It appears the traffic warden may possess just a glimmer of humanity. She says she will make a note of the circumstances in her pocket book so that the PCN can be rescinded when our lady makes her appeal. [Remember this - it becomes important later in the story]

This can only mean one of two things: either the warden lied when she said the ticket would be rescinded on appeal and didn't make an exception report in her notebook, or her report was ignored by the person who adjudicated.

The notice of rejection was followed up by a very angry email to the Parking Manager, Mrs Tina Brooks, requesting that the adjudicator's name and job title be revealed as the signature on the rejection notice was undecipherable. Without proof of authority, the notice could have been issued by a junior clerk in the traffic office with no experience of adjudication procedures. The request was ignored.

All email correspondence was also copied to Mrs Brooks' superior, Graham Ward - who operates under the grandiose title of Head of Technical and Customer Services. He let Brooks deal with most of the queries but he did answer some questions about staffing levels and competence levels. These alone were quite interesting:

Two further emails were sent to Brooks and Ward asking for the traffic warden and the adjudicator to be identified, and to state if the warden actually submitted a circumstantial report and, if so, why it was ignored by the adjudicator. Both emails were were ignored.

Eventually a Notice to Owner was issued and the remaining options were to pay the fine or make a formal representation. The seven valid reasons for lodging an appeal did not include situations where ...

So the form of representation had to be used to request that the appeal be sent straight to the independent adjudicator appointed by the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service.

Latest news ...

You are allowed 28 days to make the formal representation and this one was submitted with 25 days to spare. The next communication from the council was a Charge Certificate issued on the grounds that no formal representation had been received by the council. How strange that a form that had been returned well within the prescribed time limits in a pre-printed envelope supplied by the council did not reach them. Makes you wonder how many similar envelopes Royal Mail fail to deliver, doesn't it? Or could it be that Bexley Council's work is so much simpler if they can dispense with the due processes of law?

So a pretty hot email was fired off to let the council know their action was considered as a very cheap trick. Attached was a scanned copy of the representation they claimed not to have received but apparently this was not acceptable as the submission did not fall within the seven allowable parameters. The council conveniently overlooked the fact that you are allowed to appeal on other grounds by law and they are obliged to take your evidence into consideration.

Again the council outlined the options available at this stage: pay the inflated fine, wait for them to obtain an Order for Recovery, or write a letter containing the representations. The latter option was chosen and the letter was written immediately and sent by recorded delivery. A scanned copy was also sent by email.

The very next day, our lady received the Notice of Rejection of Formal Representation together with a copy of the parking attendant's notebook and photocopies of the photographs the attendant took at the 'crime' scene. The notes had no reference to the conversations that actually took place - just a comment supposedly made by our lady. Incredibly this contained a double-negative, quote: "I can't deal with no more." Our lady never ever speaks like that!

One of the photographs was extremely useful because it clearly showed that the yellow line was not continuous as it should be by law. The other photograph showed that the parking attendant was not wearing her uniform hat - another breach of the regulations. An email from the Parking Manager also revealed that the original adjudication had been done by a Parking Assistant - the lowest level in the parking hierarchy. But the person's identity was not revealed. Why not? Are the council running some sort of covert operation?

Although the yellow lines in question were repainted some time after the alleged infringement, further investigation shows that many of the yellow lines in the borough do not meet the prescribed regulations. In some cases, they have not been repainted two years after roads have been dug up and resurfaced; in others, lines are not terminated with a T-bar, T-bars are missing where double and single lines meet, and in many cases it is impossible to tell whether the lines are supposed to be singles or doubles. Given that huge revenue is generated from parking fines, it is clear that little of this money is ploughed back into ensuring that the road markings are clear and legal.

But the greater implication is that many, many motorists have been fined for parking in areas where the illegality of the road markings may invalidate the Special Parking Area Order granted to the borough by the government. If this is so, many victims have been fraudulently fined and the council should repay all monies they extracted.

Bexley Council have been challenged in writing on all these counts and further developments are awaited ...

Update

Bexley Council refused to communicate on these issues so the appeal has been taken to the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service for independent adjudication. We now await a hearing date and will report back later.

However, the matter was put before two local councillors before the appeal was submitted. The one who answered - Councillor Windle - tried to opt out (a) because the confidentiality flag was set inadvertently on my email message and (b) because councillors are not allowed by law to intervene in parking infringements. When I pointed out that the whole point of raising the issue was not to seek help to overturn the ticket but to ask him to investigate the deeper issues of illegally punishing motorists purely to increase revenue, he passed the matter to Bexley's cabinet member for transport - Councillor Peter Craske.

Craske already knew about this website and made it clear he didn't like our attempts to expose devious council practises though he preferred to refer to it "as making insulting comments about council employees." How strange that council employees find it insulting if someone tries to make them accountable. They want to snoop and interfere in almost every aspect of our lives but they don't like to hear the truth about themselves. Amazing!!

Craske also went on to make other wild accusations and incorrect assumptions and totally failed to concede or explain the council's shortcomings or those of the parking attendants whose word is always to be believed over the motorist. He refused to supply any of the major information I had requested and, though Cllr Windle passed my request under the Freedom of Information Act to Bexley's Communications Officer, Mr John Ferry, there has been no acknowledgement or response from him.

I did reply to Craske's email but it was too late - he'd already taken his bat and ball home! It's beginning to prove my point that Bexley's Tory councillors are no better than their labour predecessors.

Editorial comment:

Traffic wardens, parking attendants, civil enforcement officers (or whatever they want to call themselves) are actually used by some local authorities to keep the traffic flowing smoothly. They watch for possible breaches and try to prevent infringements by warning the motorists and giving them a chance to avoid a penalty notice.

Bexley Borough is not one of these caring authorities! Their enforcers use covert methods like hiding in shop doorways to ensure that the scam is perpetuated, even when their actions are illegal - (you must read the article on illegal parking bay withdrawal.)

As for Mr Ward's claim that parking staff are trained to City and Guilds standards, I have to ask, in what subject? In practice, some of the wardens I've spoken to would be lucky to pass the 11-plus when they are over 21. But then why would any intelligent person want to join the ranks of the most despised body in the land?

The staffing hierarchy is also a bit worrying. In the last job I had before retirement, one manager and three supervisors were responsible for 40-plus in-house staff and 50 or 60 contractors. That's one supervisor for every 25 subordinates and they coped admirably. But Bexley Council have 17 supervisors for 25 'foot soldiers'! That's one and a bit each. No wonder council taxes are so high.

Meanwhile, if Bexley residents or visitors come across a parking attendant with the designation of BL343, don't believe a word she says. The BL obviously stands for 'Bl**dy Liar'!

Top Tip

Wherever you live or work, if you've been trapped by a sneaky Civil Enforcement Officer (aka Traffic Warden) and been forced to donate to your local authority's ill-gotten gains check first that the parking restriction was valid. All the information you need can be found at http://www.parkingappeals.co.uk. More information is shown on our links page.

The BBC are on the case

Anyone who has watched BBC Breakfast TV during the last two days (29/30th May 2008) will have seen reports from all around the UK showing that many councils are fining motorists illegally for "infringements" spotted in parking zones that are, in fact, illegal themselves. This, of course, proves once again that parking restrictions have nothing whatsoever to do with improved traffic flow or safety - they are designed solely to provide millions of pounds of additional revenue; another form of "highway robbery"!

And this illicit enrichment plan is likely to get worse under the new CCTV regulations if councils adopt the same dirty tricks as the London Borough of Lambeth. They are manipulating CCTV recordings to make the circumstances seem worse than they actually are - in other words, they are deliberately fabricating evidence!

One motorist - Jonathan Greatorex - has appealed successfully against a PCN and has been awarded costs, though Lambeth Council have so-far failed to pay up in the specified time. Read the story for yourself on http://www.greatorex.org/lambethparking. Be sure to read all the content because one page - http://www.greatorex.org/lambethparking/the_stakeout.htm - is really amusing. Jonathan's photographic evidence shows how Lambeth's parking attendants earn their money. They sit in camera cars reading the newspaper!!!

Visitors' Comments

Editorial Note: The first comment, from Tony of Gravesend, was received at 10:45pm on 7th May, 2005. He searched on Google for 'parking bexley' and obviously didn't like our report. However, we have published his comment verbatim as everyone is entitled to an opinion ...

"Having read the above letter it is quite obvious this man doesn't know what hes talking about. As a car driver of 40 years I have never had a ticket or a bad experience with traffic wardens anywhere including bexley. I don't park illegally and don't sympathise with people that do whether for one minute or ten. this man obvioulsly doesn't realise what yellow lines are for they are for ambulances and fire engines etc and are to keep the roads flowing.

The T bars and whether the warden wears a hat or not is irrelevant it is clear from your statement the old lady knew she had parked on a yellow line broken or otherwise.

As you stated the woman in the 4x4 caused this problem perhaps she should pay the ticket that's why we need wardens otherwise the roads would be blocked solid.

You should be ashamed of yourself and so should the old lady for not paying the fine and you should support local enforcement of the law because one day you may need help and the emergency service might not get through." Tony (Car Driver), Gravesend

Editorial Comment: And we thought nobody liked traffic wardens, except other traffic wardens! Unfortunately Tony has missed the point. We fully agree that the law should be enforced so long as the people who enforce it are not breaking the law themselves. If yellow lines do not adhere to the very stringent specifications laid down in the regulations they are illegal. And they have nothing to do with ambulances and fire engines in this case; they were supposedly laid down to stop commuters parking but are really nothing more than a fund raising scheme for the local authority and their contractor, VinciPark.

25 minutes later Tony lapsed into totally illiterate mode and sent us another comment about our article on illegal parking bay suspension. Again we have published it verbatim...

"what is the matter with you, you seem hell bent on blocking up owe roads just for your satisfaction if you park eligerly than you should be booked if you cant read a sigen than you should not be driving as you are a danger to othere road users and should not be driving you seam to whant it all your own way and not a thought to othere road users are you an old person with nothing else to do its a pittiy you cant put as much work in surporting owe roads to keep them clear to drive on as you do to rubbish the good work some people are doing you are what people call a monne old git but may be thats what you want people to think of you have some comman sens and try and help keep owe roads open for people to drive on safferly and not calles conjestrone im not a yougster but in my late fiftes and i can see you are a fall when it comes to using the roads if your coments mach your driving than may be you should give up driving for yours and owe safte befor you hert some one and you all so nead a lessone in car parking be cause you clearly dont have a clue as for me after 40 years of drving and not a ticket or a fine i fill you are in bad need of a retest"

Editorial Comment: Contrary to what Tony may think, I passed the Institute of Advance Motorists test in 1978 and also the League of Safe Drivers test. I was a member of the Association of Industrial Road Safety Officers for many years and organised many safe driving events for HGV drivers. I also mastered English at school.

So, Tony, I speak from a qualified position. But as you are so defensive about traffic wardens perhaps you are one yourself?

Great article and great web site. I find it all most informative. Thank you very much. HB, Sheffield

Editorial: Thanks for balancing the vote, HB. I was beginning to worry that there were perhaps more visitors like Tony who actually like traffic wardens. Ed.

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