West End Extra - Letters: Parking cameras

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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 20 July 2007

Parking cameras rules are a little bit blurred

• IN your report (Cameras zoom in on motorists, July 13) Alistair Gilchrist, Westminster’s latest parking supremo, airily declares that “If drivers are receiving parking tickets it is because they are parking illegally.”
Not so. Between 60 and 70 per cent of tickets appealed to the parking adjudicator are overturned; and even more would be if people had the time and patience to pursue this. Westminster parking counts on the fact that most people are too exasperated or intimidated to appeal and issues a blizzard of tickets on the flimsiest grounds, confident that most will be paid regardless of their validity.
On the specifics of camera tickets, they are all invalid unless there is no stopping at all (eg on Red Routes). Where loading/setting down etc. is permitted, but not immediately evident, a camera cannot fulfil Westminster’s own guidelines to parking attendants which is to seek an explanation from the driver and, if not satisfied, to require them to move on. They are not permitted to issue a ticket to a driver prepared to leave immediately or to put one into the system after he/she has gone.
I know this because I have successfully overturned a camera ticket on these grounds and I recommend others do the same.
But Councillor Gilchrist saves his most ridiculous remark for the end when he declares “we aim to reduce the number of accidents caused by illegal parking”.
Having closely followed his predecessors’ wild mood swings on parking policy, along with the antics of their unsavoury contractors NCP for several years, this is the first time I have heard this one. I wonder if Cllr Gilchrist can provide us with a figure for the “number of accidents caused by illegal parking” and the amount by which he hopes to reduce it.
MARTIN KENNEDY
Brewer Street, W1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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