The One Show - Carstoppers car park at Howarth

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BBC One Show's Dan Donnelly confronts a Carstoppers parking attendant in Yorkshire, who drivers claim is unfairly targeting them.

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Soldier is hit by hotel car park drop-off fine

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A SOLDIER was shocked to be handed a £100 parking fine despite only being on a hotel car park for a matter of seconds.

Staff sergeant Rick Boys, of St John’s, Worcester, had driven into the Fownes Hotel car park on City Walls Road, Worcester, to drop off his wife Karen for a training day and returned later to pick her up.

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BBC - Parking Mad

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Observational documentary about people who fight their parking tickets.

In 2012, more parking tickets are issued in the UK than ever before and new technologies to catch motorists continue to be deployed across the country. This film follows the stories of both the council parking enforcement departments who issue tickets - and the motorists who have decided to fight back against the system.

Aside from the stories of the ordinary motorists fighting their individual tickets, the film also follows 'parking campaigners', dedicated amateurs who insist that the councils are unjustly punishing motorists and using parking as a way to raise revenues. These individuals are passionate about pointing out the injustices of the system, battling the councils and saving other motorists from receiving 'unjust tickets'. Their methods are extremely varied. Some get tickets deliberately to prove their point, others take their parking tickets to the High Court, whilst one group have even formed a masked motorcycle gang to take their fight to the streets.

The film also hears from the other side of the issue - the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, the legally-binding national body that has the final say on whether motorists must pay their parking tickets or not.

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Grandmother fined £70 for going to car park twice

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Grandmother Heather Taw was given a £70 parking charge for using a supermarket in the morning – and then dropping her sister off there in the evening.

The 62-year-old visited Aldi on West Street, Fareham, on Thursday, December 17.

Mrs Taw, a care home chef, had popped in to the supermarket to go shopping in the morning and left around half an hour later.

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Parking ticket crusader faces selling his home after losing £40,000 legal fight against council over bays and signs

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A grandfather could be forced to sell his home to pay £40,000 in legal costs after losing a High Court battle over parking tickets.

Barry Moss launched a one-man crusade against his local council and successfully appealed against dozens of tickets for friends, family – and even strangers.

The retired roofer argued that Bolton Council’s parking bays and signage did not comply with Department for Transport regulations. But when he took the council’s auditors, KPMG, to the High Court to claim some of the authority’s income had therefore been obtained illegally, he lost the case.

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‘Parking mad’ Barry set to be star on TV

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A PENSIONER who once described himself as a “thorn in the side” of Bolton Council’s parking department is set to star in a BBC documentary.

Parking Mad airs on BBC 1 tomorrow and features the story of Barry Moss, from Westhoughton.

He waged an unsuccessful High Court case against Bolton Council’s auditors KPMG in 2010, after he claimed the authority had gained money from issuing “unlawful” tickets.

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Porsche driver who has spent £10,000 waging one-man war against parking fines by contesting scores of tickets is finally forced to pay up

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A Porsche driver who has avoided paying a staggering 35 parking fines over the last two years has been slapped with an £800 penalty after failing to buy a 60p parking ticket.

Jason MacLeod, 34, has avoided £2,000 of fines by appealing every parking ticket he has been issued with since 2010, at a cost of £10,000.

The software developer says he disagrees with the 'principle' of the fines, claiming they are 'disproportionate.' 

Instead of just 'rolling over' like most drivers, he has researched legal technicalities, written extensive letters of explanation and contested his fines at tribunals.

He has even brawled on the floor with a burly parking boss he confronted over his car being clamped.

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Spot the sign for pay and display: Picture that helped driver win David and Goliath legal battle with council over a £1 parking charge

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A motorist has won a six-month legal battle after he was fined over a £1 parking fee.

John Samuels, 56, parked by a Tesco Metro store but was unaware he was liable to pay the £1 charge because the sign was obscured by a pillar.

After returning to his vehicle to find a £50 penalty notice, he scoured the car park and eventually saw a blue sign on a wall at ground level, reading: ‘This is a pay and display car park.’

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Couple with disabled boy slapped with £70 parking ticket as they carried him to their car outside their home

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Parents who parked outside their home as they carried their seriously disabled boy to their car were shocked to see they had been given a ticket.

Karl Wade, 37, briefly left his Nissan Note people carrier in front of his house as he and his partner Rebecca Harbourne, 28, strapped splints to the legs of four-year-old Devon, who has cerebral palsy and cannot walk.

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Private parking companies suspended for misleading motorists

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More than a fifth of private parking enforcement companies have been suspended as fears grow over powers to allow them to dish out fines of up to £100.

The suspensions, by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, have taken place within weeks of the Government banning clamping on private land.

Motoring organisations fear at least another 500,000 private tickets will be issued on top of the current two million fines already handed out a year by enforcement companies, as they seek to fill in the void created by the clamping ban.

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Motorist's ticket fell off windscreen at Changegate car park

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A motorist is celebrating after beating Haworth’s notorious car clampers in court.

Adam Bolam-Peel, from Oxenhope, won back the £90 he had to pay for a clamp to be removed from his vehicle in the Changegate car park.

Mr Bolam-Peel, who appeared last year on TV reality show Come Dine With Me, said he was also awarded his court costs.

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'I'm not paying unfair Purley parking fine'

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COUNCIL parking chiefs have performed a U-turn after a carpenter threatened to take them to court.

John Meliniotis had pledged to "fight tooth and nail", over the Purley High Street tickets which had accumulated a cost of nearly £400 after the council sent them to the wrong address.

Mr Meliniotis first heard of the fines when a summons from a court in Northampton landed on his doormat last month, after the case was escalated to the courts.

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Suspension for security firm boss

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A DIRECTOR of a Cornish security firm has been suspended.

It follows a series of complaints levelled against Armtrac Security Services, which have been revealed by the West Briton.

The firm is also being investigated by the security business regulator, British Parking Association (BPA) and has been brought to the attention of the transport minister.

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Pictured: The moment traffic warden slaps parking tickets on two minibuses carrying disabled children after they sang at charity carol concert

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This is the moment a traffic warden slapped £70 parking tickets on two minibuses carrying disabled children after they raised hundreds of pounds for a homeless charity by singing in a carol concert.

The youngsters, many in wheelchairs, were being lifted into two specially-adapted ambulances in Nottingham when the enforcement officer wrote out two penalty notices before walking away.

The twelve children from Oak Field School and Sports College in Bilborough, Nottinghamshire, were returning from the concert on Monday afternoon which raised £370 when they were hit with the fines.

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We’re taken for £1.3bn park & ride

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MOTORISTS were stung for a record £1.3billion in parking 

charges by town halls last year — £160,000 AN HOUR.

An estimated 10,000 tickets were dished out a day by councils, 

despite warnings from the Government not to treat drivers as “cash 

cows”.

The official figures do not even include charges in privately-run car 

parks — meaning the full toll will be even higher.

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Firm refuses to refund tickets to Hyndburn residents

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A COUNCIL has slammed town centre car park operators for refusing to refund ‘unfair’ tickets.

Hyndburn Council, and the borough’s MP intervened after hundreds of tickets were issued on Accrington’s Eastgate car park.

The tickets were issued when time limits were changed from three hours to ninety minutes.

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Record-breaking driver racks up 88 parking tickets in just two years

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The driver of a luxury 4x4 has racked up an astonishing 88 parking tickets in the city centre in just two years, making the vehicle the most ticketed in Cambridge.

On average, more than one ticket every 10 days has been slapped on the Audi Q7 – which is worth about £45,000 – for flouting city centre parking rules since November 2010.

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Council trial new number plate recognition at car park

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Bedford Borough Council is trialling new camera technology at one of its car parks that scans drivers’ number plates.

St Peter’s Street car park is the first in Bedford Borough to be fitted with the function. The council says it won’t cost any extra to run.

The system is called Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and records vehicles in and out of the car park, 24-hours-a-day.

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‘Parking officers in Grantham are using their power in the wrong way’

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Civil parking enforcement (CPE) in Grantham is coming under fire as residents - and even a doctors’ surgery - are being hit by what they believe are unfair fines.

Parking officers have been out in force in the town centre since CPE came into play at the start of the month.

The Journal has received a number of reports of instances of rude officers and unjust fines.

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Parking fines issued in Falmouth 'without permission'

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PEOPLE hit with parking fines in one Falmouth car park are being urged not to pay – by its owner.

Discovery Quay Car Park is at the centre of a row between its owner, New Cornwall Development, and Armtrac Security Services.

New Cornwall Development claims Armtrac has been issuing £60 fines to drivers without permission for more than a month.

Motorists initially complained about being fined by Armtrac while the ticketing machine was broken.

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