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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 5 September 2008

Parking tickets ‘spin’ is an insult to intelligence

• COUNCILLOR Danny Chalkley patronisingly assumes that the rest of us are thick but his remarks (Parking ticket hot spot revealed, August 29) are virtually meaningless in the context of the £38 million that Westminster and their enforcement contractors NCP raised last year from parking tickets.
Cllr Chalkley’s spin doctors have him lamely declare that there has been a “40 per cent reduction in tickets issued to resident permit holders”.
Resident permit holders account for virtually none of the tickets issued ... er... they’ve got permits, Danny, they’re not likely to get tickets.
His claim that there has been a 50 per cent reduction in tickets issued to HGVs is equally fatuous because the relatively small number of HGVs that deliver do so before 11am when they are lawfully entitled to go about their work without harassment from people such as Cllr Chalkley and his NCP goon squads.
There is much that is questionable about the way Westminster goes about collecting this medieval form of taxation.
It is a statutory requirement that all personnel involved in any form of law enforcement, including parking attendants, undergo criminal background checks. If this requirement is ignored the fines they attempt to collect are invalid.
When a rogue attendant is found to have been putting tickets into the system without putting them on the vehicle, all the tickets he or she has issued should be traced and refunded.
Justice requires openness; therefore contracts between Westminster and NCP should be put into the public domain.
At present motorists are harassed under arrangements which are secretive and kept hidden from them.
Westminster also claims that parking attendants are no longer incentivised to issue tickets (thereby acknowledging that it was wrong to do so in the first place) but this
is a complete red herring inany case.
How much of the £38 million raised in fines finally ends up with NCP?
The hapless parking attendants may not get a share any more but the directors
and owners of NCP certainly do and are very juicily incentivised indeed.
They wouldn’t be doing this otherwise and can hardly believe their luck which is
why any form of incentivised law enforcement is ultimately corrosive.
Until someone who can afford to bring an action in
the courts to get all this stopped, travellers passing through Westminster will have little choice but to submit to the seemingly unaccountable system and pay them
whatever fees they decide that they want.
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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