If you want to know why parking fines are so high then you must go back to the Road Traffic Act of 1991 where the regulation of parking violations and the activity of ticket issuance thereof was handed over to the local councils.
In other words the Traffic Wardens now work for the Councils and not the Police.
The parking tickets were put into higher and lower offence zones on 31st March 2008 when the Traffic Management Act 2004 came into effect. In other words, you pay higher fine for parking on a double yellow line than owing an expired pay and display ticket.
The high parking fines act as a restraint to traffic rule violating motorists and are probably priced that way keeping in mind this fact.
The administrative costs that the council has to bear shifts from them to the motorists via the huge parking fines. These costs include traffic warden’s wages, their training costs, dealing with motorist appeals and even the cost of chasing unpaid parking fines.
Many a times, this work gets contracted out to private companies by the local councils, since the latter always prefers to be in the back.
Motorists are often offered upto 50% of parking fine discount in case they pay early. This make them not go for genuine appeals in the fear of losing out on the discount if they have to appeal a second time.
Did you know your parking ticket funds the appeal process that we are entitled to? One wonders whether the system is independent at all. Hence, parking fines undoubtedly are one of the most crucial elements of any council yearly budget.
This dependence as a result have increased the importance of issuing tickets on a regular basis to both the Local body and the private concerns to which the task has been outsourced.
It can thus be safely stated that a huge no. of parking tickets are issued in an unjustified and unfair manner in this country almost 70% of which do not even have legal validity. But have we ever seen the council to do anything about it? The answer is no.
Today the wardens talk less and tend to issue tickets more. The statistics say that a large part of the appeals are won by the motorists.
Various councils in the past have rejected appeals made by motorists immediately without having any legally valid reason. It is only because they want to protect their income.
For local councils, it is a fortunate affair that ordinary folks cannot easily prove that these malpractices go on.
So basically parking fines are so expensive because of the deterrent effect on motorists. It is also an indirect tax to raise money for the Local Council
Various people have received such unfair and unjust parking tickets and would love to appeal against the same only if they know how to. There are various websites on the internet that provides help in such appealing matters and also writes a simple letter that can cancel any parking ticket.
The fact is that the traffic wardens are under pressure themselves to hand over as much parking tickets as possible, something that you might take advantage of during your appeal.
Many do not appeal thinking the letter required to be extremely tough and complicated. However this is far from the truth and as stated earlier, many sites would gladly come to service by providing you with samples or parking ticket appeal letter templates.
There exist two methods in successfully appealing for a parking ticket. The first is that of photographic evidence. The photos you submit as proof must show that there had been no markings or signs in that area to show any parking restrictions.
The second method involves going with the flow of the parking ticket issued. Thus, if it said you were parked on Lee Road, you might as well have been parked on Lee Street.
To conclude one can say that never ever pay any attention to the privately issued parking tickets which look similar to the public ones. After sending you threatening letters for some time they would just cease to exist since they would never drag you to court. This is because the fine amount that they’ll realize from you in court is much lesser than their court fees.
Please visit the http://www.cancelmyticket.co.uk website. Find out how you can Beat Parking Ticket fines. Also find out more information about Parking Ticket appeals from this site.