The ever rising cost of the parking ticket fine always raises certain questions in our head. The answer is however available if we backtrack to the Road Traffic Act of 1991 wherein it was put forward that the Local council was to invigilate the local traffic regulations and they were also responsible for issuing parking tickets according to the new traffic bill passed.
In other words, one can say that the supervision of the traffic wardens are done by the council and not the police.
The Traffic Management act 2004 came to effect on 31st 2008 and distinguished the consequences of issuing parking tickets into higher and lower version of being an offence. In this respect the parking on the double yellow lines was costlier then cases of an expired pay of parking tickets and display tickets.
Most of the times parking fines may cost parking rule breakers a lot of money. There is however reasons for the charges levied. Sometimes the cost of the fine is high in order to prevent the parking rule breakers from repeating the same mistake time and again and so that they are more cautious while parking near places where there is heavy traffic.
The size of the parking fine also depends on the kind of administrative expenses the council has to pay, for example the wages of the traffic wardens, training cost for the same, cost of dealing with motorist’s appeal and chasing parking fines that remains unpaid.
Many a times, the work is given out as a contract to external private companies. Local councils almost all the times aim to remain in the back.
In case of early payments of parking fines by motorists, the council grants a discount of 50%. This makes motorists hesitant to genuinely appeal since they fear losing the discount offer in case of the second appeal.
Raising revenues from parking tickets plays a crucial part in any Local Council’s yearly budget. Did you know your parking ticket funds the appeal process that we are entitled to? Does that make the system bias I wonder as it cannot claim to be independent when it relies on parking fines for finance?
The maintenance and gradual increase in this convenient source of revenue generation is thus extremely important for the local council and its contractors who might also be in this for a percentage.
As a result, a lot of parking tickets are issued in this country unjustly and in fact illegally. Moreover, you would never hear of the council coming forward to do anything about it.
So when it comes to the traffic wardens, they ticket first and ask questions later. Having said that it is also true that 70% of all the appeals are won by the motorists.
Appeal rejection without any legally valid ground is not something that hasn’t happened before. Councils commonly do the same which proves the fact that they look to protect such revenues that they generate.
Where the general public is concerned, it is extremely tough for them to prove that such malpractices go on.
Thus, it can be safely said that the huge amounts stated as fines exist so as to not to let motorists violate traffic norms and thereby create a road chaos. From the council’s point of view, like an indirect tax, it is an instrument to generate extra income.
Finally there are various sites over the Internet through which we can cancel a parking ticket which we feel was illegally and unjustly issued to us.
Mostly, the traffic wardens are under a lot of pressure to hand over as man parking tickets as possible for which most of them are issued without any valid legal reason. IN fact you can use this information o your advantage while you appeal.
A common myth that exists in the minds of people is that the appeal letter is too complicated to write and that is why hardly a few go ahead towards a genuine appeal. However, this is not true and samples and templates of such letters are abundantly available on the net to use.
For a successful parking ticket appeal, you can choose between the following two paths of action. Going by the first one, you can show photographic evidence of the absence of any ‘no parking’ markings on signposts in the area where you parked.
The next strategy involves taking the same path as your parking ticket. Thus, if is says that you were parked at Lee Street, you might as well have been on Lee road all the day.
Last point, never ever pay any attention to the private parking tickets issued. These might look similar to the publicly issued ones and would also follow up with several threat letters but if you don’t pay any heed to them, eventually they’ll stop bothering you. This is simply because, they can never take you to court as their court fees would be a lot higher than the fine they collect from you.
Visit the site at http://www.cancelmyticket.co.uk, and find out about a successful Parking Appeal. Get more info on how to appeal a Fixed Penalty Notice from here.