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By MAIRI MACDONALD
 

Cabbies joined protesters Grant Davis and Tom Conti


Protestor Clayton Dillon
'We'll refuse fares' threat as cabbies bring traffic to halt

Protest over parking tickets causes gridlock in streets around Town Hall

CABBIES protesting at the number of parking fines dished out in the borough are threatening to refuse to take passengers to Camden.
Members of 1,000-strong London Cab Drivers Club, which represents black taxis, brought gridlock to roads around King’s Cross when they staged a demonstration on Thursday.
Some 300 cabs circled the streets surrounding the Town Hall in Judd Street.
Hampstead-based actor Tom Conti was among protesters who carried placards accusing Labour councillor John Thane, Camden’s environment chief, of behaving like a “pirate”.
Drivers Club chairman Alan Fleming, 67, of Agamemnon Road, Fortune Green, believes Camden’s 105 roadside cameras result in unfair fines for taxi drivers.
He said: “If you put so much as half a wheel over a yellow junction box you get hit with a ticket.”
He added: “Camden Council is covering up for the incompetence of its overspending by using drivers as a milch cow.
“They are putting pressure on drivers which could ultimately cause accidents. If Camden doesn’t do anything soon, drivers are going to build up an image in their mind about the area that could put them off working in the borough.”
Cab drivers have accused Camden of being the worst borough in London for handing out fines.
But the council claims that, in 70 per cent of appeal cases where a parking fine is disputed by a driver, the council is found to be in the right.
Dressed as a pirate, taxi driver Grant Davis, from Bromley, south-east London, said: “It has become a joke. You can’t drop off or pick up without getting a ticket through your letterbox a week later. We can’t understand why we are being persecuted and I know of people who have been getting tickets at three or four in the morning.
“It could get to the point where drivers are too worried about getting a ticket to take women back to Camden late at night.”
Driver George Vyse said: “Councils like Camden see fines as extra revenue. They say pay it now or we’ll double it.”
Mr Conti, co-founder of London Motorists Action Group, said: “All people who drive in London are affected by this, not just taxi drivers. But the whole point of a black cab is that they can take you where you want to go, drop you off, hang on while you take cash out of a cash machine and they are being penalised for doing their job.
“There are things I would rather be doing today than this and none of these taxi drivers here today should have to give up fee-paying time but it has come to this.”
Camden Council’s assistant director of environment Alex Williams admitted there was a “strength of feeling” among cab drivers over the borough’s parking policy.
He said: “Our job, through effective parking enforcement, is all about keeping London moving. Cab drivers, more than most, receive the benefits of this.
“Motorists who receive a parking ticket have a right of appeal to an independent adjudicator and we win more appeals than any other central London borough.”
He added that there had been a 13 per cent reduction in parking tickets in the last year due to “more motorists understanding and complying with parking rules”.
Cab drivers say the worst spots for tickets are the stretch of Euston Road outside King’s Cross railway station, a junction box at the corner of High Holborn and Kingsway and the nearby junction of Southampton Road and Theobalds Road.
 
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