Leading the fight on behalf of Britain's motorists. www.nmag.co.uk
Showing posts with label parking fines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parking fines. Show all posts
Monday, 14 January 2013
The One Show - Carstoppers car park at Howarth
BBC One Show's Dan Donnelly confronts a Carstoppers parking attendant in Yorkshire, who drivers claim is unfairly targeting them.
Watch more videos on NMAGTV
Friday, 11 January 2013
Barry’s parking ticket bid caught on camera
A PARKING campaigner was seen on a TV documentary deliberately getting a parking ticket in Bury.
Parking Mad aired on BBC 1 on Tuesday night and featured Barry Moss, a pensioner from Westhoughton, who had waged an unsuccessful High Court case against Bolton Council’s auditors KPMG in 2010.
Read the full article here
Exeter parking charges could rise as income hits £3.1m
Exeter City Council said it planned to raise charges in some car parks in a bid to make the system "simpler"
Read the full article here
Car clamper ordered to pay back £3 million - or face ten years in jail
A fraudster who ran a notorious Birmingham car clamping company has been ordered to pay back almost £3million – or face ten years in jail.
Steven Ryan, 56, was given six months to find the money after a judge ruled he had benefited by £2,837,349 from his business, Car Clamping Securities.
Read the full article here
Councils rake in record profits from parking
Councils in England have raked in record profits from parking with one town hall boosting its income by more than 50 per cent in a year, official figures have shown.
Local authorities, who have seen their profit from parking increase 14.9 per cent in a year to £411 million, have admitted they are using the cash to plug gaps in their spending because of budget cuts.
The Local Government Association admitted, for the first time, that it has been able to use the cash from parking to make good losses such as the £442 million in their highways budget.
Read the full article here
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
BBC - Parking Mad
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.
Watch more videos on NMAGTV here
Councils accused of treating drivers like cash cows after parking fee profits soar by 15% in a year
Councils have been accused of treating drivers as 'cash cows' after profits on parking charges soared by 15 per cent in a year
while spending on road maintenance dropped.
Income from pay and display tickets, parking permits and fines rose by £50million to £411million in the year to the end of March 2012, figures yesterday showed.
For some local authorities the increase was far higher than the national average of 15 per cent.
Read the full article here
Grandmother fined £70 for going to car park twice
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.
read the full article here
Rail firms accused of 'ripping off' passengers by increasing car parking charges at stations
Rail firms have been accused of “ripping off” passengers by increasing car parking charges at stations just days after train fares rose by an inflation-busting average of 4.2%.
The Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA) said charges for parking at railway stations had also gone up by more than the rate of inflation in many parts of the country.
Read the full article here
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Traffic policing or highway robbery? Car users hit back
With their plastic masks, high-visibility jackets and flags streaming from their motorbikes, they look like a cross between superheroes and vigilantes.
The gang, known as the No To Mob, roam through city centres hunting for closed-circuit television enforcement vehicles, or “spy cars”, which they trail to warn motorists of the risk of an impending fine.
Read the full article here
Parking ticket crusader faces selling his home after losing £40,000 legal fight against council over bays and signs
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.
Read the full article here
‘Parking mad’ Barry set to be star on TV
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.
Read the full article here
‘Cash cow’ parking charges made £26million for Islington Council
Islington Council ranked sixth highest out of the country’s 371 authorities in revenue from parking tickets, permits and pay-and-display charges in the financial year 2011 to 2012 – despite being the second smallest borough in London.
Read the full article here
Friday, 4 January 2013
Parking charges top £1bn as council plug budgets
Motorists are paying more than £1 billion a year for parking as councils search for new ways to earn money in the wake of government cuts, it emerged today.
Researchers found that Conservative-run councils rake in far more from parking charges than town halls under Labour.
According to research published by the opposition, households in London are spending more than £600 a year on residents' permits, meters and fines.
Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, has vowed to expose what he calls a ''great council cash-cow cover-up'' by forcing authorities to publish parking revenue.
Read the full article here
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
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.
Read the full article here
Penny inchers: Traffic wardens given tape measures to check how far cars are parked from kerb
Traffic wardens are going to new lengths to nab drivers, by using tape measures to see how far from the kerb they are parked.
And they are dishing out £70 fines for those more than 19 inches away.
Read the full article here
Friday, 28 December 2012
Motorist's ticket fell off windscreen at Changegate car park
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.
Read the full article here
'I'm not paying unfair Purley parking fine'
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.
Read the full article here
Pictured: The moment traffic warden slaps parking tickets on two minibuses carrying disabled children after they sang at charity carol concert
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.
Read the full article here
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