The Honest Truth

50 years of parking tickets 

Fine issued to a rabbit hutch

THERE’S nothing more frustrating for a motorist than finding a parking ticket on the windscreen. Parking ticket expert Barrie Segal (right)  told Rob McLaren The Honest Truth about the dreaded tickets . . . and how to successfully appeal against them.

HOW DID you become a parking ticket expert? 

Because I kept getting incorrect parking tickets! I started appealing them and winning and discovered that a lot of the tickets issued across the country simply aren’t legal. 

HOW MANY are issued each year in Britain? 

Around 10 million — and many of them aren’t legal.

IS IT easy to appeal a parking ticket? 

It’s far too time consuming. It was taking me about 40 minutes to write out an appeal so I designed a website, appealnow.com, which can make a claim in about four minutes.
If the appeal to the council isn’t successful, then you can take your case to an independent parking ticket adjudicator.

WHAT WOULD you change about the ticket system?

Each parking authority has different rules, like how much time after a meter expires do they issue a ticket. 
I’d like to see one uniform protocol for the whole of the UK. These inconsistencies confuse motorists.
I think it’s also a mistake that councils have farmed out enforcement to contractors, which has taken away the quality control. 

WHAT SUCCESS have you had?

I was part of the definitive parking tickets case in the High Court. Tickets are meant to have two dates — when the offence took place and when it was issued, but many councils were just using one. 
In 2006 one of my friends got a ticket like this and Barnet Council wouldn’t back down, so we took it to the adjudicator. He agreed the ticket wasn’t valid. But the council didn’t accept this and took it all the way to the High Court, who also said the council’s tickets weren’t valid. 
This caused panic among many councils who weren’t following procedure, including Glasgow. In the end it meant more than three million parking tickets were cancelled.

WHAT ELSE should people look out for? 

There’s a common scenario I call the ghost ticket. That’s when you see a parking attendant coming towards you and you drive off. No ticket has been given to you or has been put on the vehicle, which is the legal requirement. 
Out of the blue about 28 days later you’ll get a document called Notice To Owner, which says you haven’t paid a parking ticket and it’s now gone up from £60 to £120. You have to appeal that. It’s a blatant fraud. 

CRAZIEST PARKING ticket story you’ve heard? 

A man in Eccles was unloading goods for a pet shop and parked on yellow lines, as he was entitled to do. He saw a traffic warden approaching but thought just to be safe he’d go and park in a pub car park round the corner.
When he returned to the shop he was astonished to see the parking attendant writing out a ticket. He refused it, so the warden put it on a rabbit hutch he’d left on the pavement — which is not a vehicle for the purposes of the Road Traffic Act!

DO YOU still get tickets? 

Sometimes I go out and try to get a ticket on purpose! It’s no good saying parking tickets in an area are illegal unless you can prove it. 

LAST ONE you got on purpose?

I parked in a street in the west end of London that’s a controlled parking zone. One concession made to authorities is that they don’t have to have a no waiting sign every 60 metres if there’s a massive sign at each vehicle entrance to that zone. But councils have been very lax in showing these signs correctly. Which I proved when I won the parking ticket appeal!

HAVE YOU helped out anyone famous? 

I can’t possibly comment, other than to say that my book — The Parking Ticket Awards: Crazy Councils, Meter Madness And Traffic Warden Hell — has been endorsed by Bob Geldof. 

DON’T YOU get sick of hearing about parking tickets? 

No, despite the fact I’ve been doing this for seven years. The challenge is always there and you realise the longer you do it, that you don’t know it all. 
It’s also very nice when a member of the public contacts me to say they followed my advice and the council backed down.

What to do if you get a ticket

The first thing to ask yourself is whether the ticket was issued fairly. If it’s unfair then you should appeal. I have an acronym based on my name.

S is for stay calm — particularly if the parking attendant is still there. There isn’t anything he can do other than note your complaint.

E stands for examine the parking ticket. Are the details correct? It should also show what the contravention was.

G is for gather all the evidence. If you have a mobile phone with a camera take pictures of the street lighting, road markings and signs. 

A stands for appeal now. There’s a strict time period in which you can appeal and that starts to tick away immediately after you get the ticket.

L is for last resort. If all else fails, appeal to the adjudicator.

What the law requires

THERE are numerous rules local authorities must follow to issue a parking ticket legally, detailed in the Road Traffic Act 1991 in Scotland and the Traffic Management Act 2004 in England.

The tickets have to contain the date of the contravention and the date the ticket was issued.

It should also carry details of the correct vehicle, time and street and what the contravention was. 

The tickets must be placed either on the vehicle or given to the driver. 

Streets on which the tickets can be given must appear in the local authority’s traffic management order for it to be enforceable.

First UK ticket was overturned

A MAN named Carl C. Magee is credited with inventing the parking meter. The world’s first meter was installed in Oklahoma City, USA, on July 16, 1935. 

The first UK parking meters appeared in 1960. They were operated by clockwork and needed winding up with a large key.

Initially 625 parking meters were installed around the country. It cost 4d (2p) an hour to park, with a fixed penalty of £2.

The first person to receive a parking ticket in the UK was Dr Thomas Creighton on September 19, 1960, when he parked his Ford Popular outside a West End hotel to attend to someone having a heart attack. There was a public outcry when the facts became known and the doctor was let off with the fine.

© All copyright D.C. Thomson & Co. Ltd., 2010