Should You Appeal Parking & Bus Lane Fines?
Thursday, 22. March 2018
According to the findings of the BBC, who surveyed 245 local authorities, yes you should. Because 4 in 10 parking and bus lane fines have been overturned by local authorities during the 5 years 2012 – 2017, During this period 4.3 million appeals were lodged with 1.8 million being successful.
Basingstoke and Dean council in Hampshire overturned the highest proportion of tickets at 90% of the 12,804 appeals lodged. In addition, a quarter of all parking and bus lane fines were eventually canceled. Couldn’t be arsed I guess!
Their excuse was aging equipment meant that often the machines were faulty causing problems with the issuing of tickets. New ticket machines installed in 2017 have apparently reduced the number of successful appeals. Aberdeen council overturned 70% of tickets on appeal, they said that if they had a first time offender it could often cost more to collect the fine than simply overturn it.
That’s what I like to hear, if you appeal a ticket, you are unlikely to pay it if they don’t overturn it so they may as well overturn it and save the bother of chasing the fine. The BBC found that 84 authorities overturned over 50% of all tickets issued on appeal.
When asked by Auto Express an RAC spokesman took a slightly different approach than me, suggesting that with so many appeals succeeding should the tickets have been issued in the first place so should the local authorities review their ticketing procedures? I tend to agree! By Graham Hill
