Devon hey.....well i can tell you that this has been happening in areas of london since 1997.....

internal fraud is rife....its an epidemic....clampers doing what they want....keeping the fines for the pub.....they tried it with me once....sorry but you have to get gritty and street on them.....as the police wont back them...just know that

peace

People, always appeal. Even when they have got you bang to rights appeal. This Devon story explain why should always appeal. By paying up without appealing, you admit liability. By appealing you refuse this liability even if the decision goes against you.

When you get a parking fine, you can be sure the local authority have got it wrong somewhere. The lines could be drawn badly, signs could be facing the wrong way or you had to pull over to go to the toilet.

Even when the council use a belt and braces approach and double up on the signage, appeal on the grounds that the clutter was confusing. Photograph all the signs, the different times displayed, anything and everything and compare it to the Highway Codes and Regulations and inundate the magistrate once you go through the local authority appeal process.

They don't play fair and now want to issue tickets via cctv so they don't have to pay the wages of the parking wardens.


APPEAL, APPEAL, APPEAL,

Originally posted by Ml5edtoDeath

APPEAL, APPEAL, APPEAL,

Don't forget to point out the risks of appealing fines, especially if all the procedures have been followed. You can run up quite a costs order if it doesn't go in your favour.

Originally posted by bigyin

If you don't pay right away and appeal the most you can pay is the full amount, which in this case would be £60. You cant be made to pay any more than that.

The CPS can (and often do) ask the court to award costs to cover an unsuccesful appeal. Fine + mandatory victim surchage + costs soon adds up and your £60 fine can potentially cost you an awful lot more. I've seen a speeding ticket (defendant was offered a speed awareness course instead of points or a fine but refused) end up costing just under £2k after a de novo hearing, though that was a rather unique case. The moral of that story was (i) don't trust websites that guarantee ways to beat any speeding ticket and (ii) if you're still going to fight, hire a lawyer. Another moral was "don't seek to rely on expert witness evidence if you refuse to pay the expert witness to attend" but that's all part and parcel of "hire a lawyer"

Just to clarify, when I say appeal I don't mean writing in and contesting the fine, I mean actually going to court and fighting it there. It may well be that contesting the fine initially wouldn't attract any further costs.

I've been scowering the local news, both online, tv and papers, but am not able to find any further info about this.

I'm not surprised in the least to be honest. It seems from the very small write up that was originally issued that someone, somewhere is trying to keep this quiet.

I've sent a message to someone I know who works for the local paper but am yet to get a reply.

I seriously think they trying to hush this up..

This happened in my town too. I got an £80 parking fine reimbursed a week ago. They basically changed all the parking meters overnight, making them extremely difficult to operate and had new restrictions, as a blue badge holder, they fined me for parking in a disabled spot that now had to be paid for.

It's town councils trying to rake in some money any way they can. They will have made a load of money by people who did not challenge their fines.