In 2005 more than 8 million parking tickets were issued and estimates suggest that as many as 60% of these tickets were issued incorrectly or illegally. Many people are unaware that it is relatively easy to challenge parking tickets, and more often than not; have them cancelled.
Parking enforcement has become a largely privatised business in the UK, with many local authorities outsourcing responsibility for parking enforcement to private companies. This civil enforcement takes responsibility for parking offences away from the police and into the hands of civilian staff.
These new Civil Enforcement Officers (CEO’s) have targets to meet and issue tickets no matter how fair, logical or justified. Thankfully local authorities are still bound by traffic laws and regulations laid down by central government and these are intended to protect the motorist against unfair and over zealous parking enforcement.
Many argue that the authorities have lost sight of the original purpose of parking enforcement (to make the roads safer and keep traffic moving) and are using parking offences as a stealth tax to generate additional revenue. This became more evident in March 2008, when the government gave councils additional power to issue Penalty Charge Notices (tickets) using CCTV images. This has lead to teams of civilian employees trawling hours of video footage to spot even the most minor indiscretion, and issue fines.