Forty per cent of fines overturned on appeal
Councils rescinded 1.8m parking tickets over five-year period
FOUR in 10 parking and bus lane fines have been overturned by British councils following appeals from drivers, new figures reveal.
Data obtained from 245 local authorities shows that 4.3 million appeals for parking and bus lane penalty charge notices were lodged between 2012 and 2017, with 1.8 million of them being successful.
Basingstoke and Dean council in Hampshire overturned the highest proportion of tickets, with 90 per cent of 12,804 appeals lodged over the five-year period proving successful, while a quarter of all parking and bus lane fines it issued were eventually cancelled.
While Basingstoke council said the introduction of new parking machines in 2017 had reduced the number of successful appeals, Aberdeenshire Council, which overturned 70 per cent of tickets on appeal, said that when dealing with first-time offenders, “we generally take the view that the cost of pursuing payment is not the best use of resources”.
The figures, obtained by the BBC via Freedom of Information requests, found 84 authorities overturned more than 50 per cent of all tickets issued on appeal.
RAC spokesman Simon Williams said: “These figures are frightening because they reveal that in a very high proportion of cases drivers have been right to appeal. Councils should learn from this.”