APCOA and Council Penalties may all have to be repaid - £100 million?

Guys_Dad

1 Try visiting Milton Keynes
2. Not POPLA. But there is an independent parking appeals tribunal for council tickets.

bazster

Hot_Bring wrote: »

All council car parks in Brighton and Hove are managed by NCP as are Birmingham City Council car parks ( one of the biggest councils in the country ).

NCP do a lot of them round my neck of the woods too.

Coupon-mad

Guys_Dad wrote: »

Great news and all that but it all seems a bit petty to me - although this time petty is on our side.

Let me explain. If a Council has its own traffic wardens, does one not appeal in the first instance to the Council? And in the PPC area, does one not appeal to the PPC first?

In both cases, the appeal is to the financially interested party with a 2nd line appeal to an independent adjudication service.

So why is it not a similar conflict of interests in the above 2 situations and only a conflict when a Parking company is employed by a council?

Don't get me wrong. I am delighted at the news, particularly if any contract has the Parking company having rights to the "fines" as it will be them who initially may have to pay the refunds, but I am still puzzled by why the situation in the Independent article is different from any other parking first line appeal.

Because having their own CEOs (or using private ones) should not affect the statutory requirements, for a Council to carry out the administration and consideration of appeals. What's been happening is the PCNs have given what looks like a Council appeals address but then some Councils have in fact farmed that out to the same firm doing the front line warden-ing.

That's where they were wrong. Private firms do not have the accountability nor the local Government clearance to conduct such appeals work, I expect. For example, a Council employee can exercise discretion on behalf of the Council, and apply policy within strict local authority guidelines, but surely a private firm can't even if those guidelines are waved at them.

It's a bit like where the Police use civilian 'Police staff' to undertake a lot of jobs but the line has to be drawn carefully to stop them doing anything that's wholly down to the accountability of the police themselves.

APCOA wouldn't have had the foggiest clue as it's nowt to do with BPA guidelines, as we know. I wouldn't be surprised if Vinci and NSL have also conducted appeal consideration for some Councils too.

bazster

Hot_Bring wrote: »

Unless that revenue is spent on transport - i.e. Brighton & Hove used their £16m a year 'profit' on bus passes for the elderly and cycle lanes.

AIUI parking fines are not to be used for revenue raising, period. Of course, a prudent council would err on the side of a surplus rather than a loss, but any such surplus must be re-invested in traffic management.

All purely academic of course, since we know that most councils blatantly raise millions through fines.