The Brixton Blog has reported that motoring fines worth millions of pounds have been wrongly issued to drivers in Lambeth…
Figures from Lambeth council show it has been forced to cancel tens of thousands of fines in each of the last three years after drivers appealed against them.
The cancelled fines – issued for breaking parking rules and for driving in bus lanes – add up to millions of pounds every year.
The Parking Management Act prohibits councils from setting targets for the number of tickets they issue. However, Lambeth council’s contract with NSL sets out expected issue rates at 218,000 Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) a year.
Data released to the Bugle under the Freedom of Information Act shows that in 2012 the council cancelled 43,723 of the 195,705 penalty charge notices that it issued – or 22%. The number was even higher in the two previous years: in 2011 it cancelled 24% of all fines and in 2010 it cancelled 26%. So far this year the number has fallen: 12% of all fines issued between January and August have been cancelled.
A spokesman for Lambeth council was keen to highlight this reduction, saying in a statement: “These figures show both the number of penalty charge challenges and the number of cancelled penalty charge notices are falling in Lambeth.”
He added: “Anyone who believes that the penalty charge notice they have received is unfair should challenge it.”
Lambeth’s penalty charge notices range from £60 fines to £130 fines, meaning that even if all the 2012 fines were at the lowest rate, the council wrote off more than £2.6m in invalid fines.
The data also shows that about half of all appeals against the motoring fines were successful in the past three years.
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