One-in-seven parking fines are incorrect
AT least one in seven parking tickets is wrongly slapped on vehicles in Carmarthenshire.
Traffic wardens in the county got it wrong more than 1,500 times last year, figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act have shown.
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A motorist buys a ticket at the Island Place car park machine in Llanelli, where prices have risen. PD100107B-01
Out of 10,636 tickets issued by Carmarthenshire Council, 1,597 were successfully challenged by motorists.
Critics have branded the parking situation "ridiculous". But Carmarthenshire Council said it would "make no apology" over the mistakes.
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An authority spokesman said: "The number of successful appeals against parking tickets is quite low for a busy town like Llanelli.
"There is pressure on the authority to keep traffic moving on increasingly congested streets, and a need to rigorously enforce bad parking and parking fee dodgers.
"We get many more complaints from businesses and private residents about badly and illegally parked vehicles than we do appealed bookings."
In Llanelli, wardens got it wrong 536 times.
This means one in eight of the 4,045 tickets handed out to motorists was successfully appealed.
County councillor John Jenkins said a review of town centre parking was urgently needed.
He said: "The street parking situation in Llanelli is confusing to say the least — there are many faded double-yellow lines, for example.
"The council is missing an opportunity to generate income for the town by not providing more accessible street-level parking."
In August, the council denied setting targets for the number of parking tickets issued by wardens — despite giving out a figure which said otherwise.
The authority backtracked on a response to a Freedom of Information request after being named as one of six councils in breach of Department for Transport guidelines.
Ann Williams, aged 26, of Furnace, had a ticket three weeks ago, when she was shopping in Llanelli town centre.
She said: "I think the system with parking tickets is ridiculous.
"Although, I appreciate I parked in the one-hour bay 10 minutes longer than permitted, there was no real problem caused.
"It makes shoppers very anxious trying to rush their shopping to avoid having a costly ticket — it doesn't do anything for the town centre.
"I agree tickets should be issued to people who park obstructively or without due care, but to give a ticket for parking slightly over the time in an allocated bay is wrong.
"If the council want to encourage shoppers to come here, they need to scrap the tickets and put people's mind at ease."
But council traffic management manager John McEvoy said: "If it was not for bad driving and parking practice, and parking fee dodgers, there would be no need for traffic wardens.
"They only exist to keep traffic moving, discourage dangerous parking practices and to ensure orderly parking management on streets and in car parks."
chantelle.rees@swwmedia.co.uk
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Comments
by Bob, Kidwelly
Thursday, February 04 2010, 3:46PM
“"They only exist to keep traffic moving, discourage dangerous parking practices and to ensure orderly parking management on streets and in car parks." What absolute rubbish. If a car is not causing an obstruction and it overstays its allotted time in a parking bay, there should not be any reason to book it if the aim is to keep traffic moving.
If Mr McEvoy was not so totally incompetent in his job and had turned the streets of Llanelli into nightmares for the driver perhaps the traffic could flow more freely. How about stop narrowing roads and placing large obstacles in the path of perfectly good roads and just let the driver get on with it.
How many years ago now Mr McEvoy did you swear that the new taxi rank would be up and running in Murray Street- still waiting. What idiot constructed the nightmare that is now Gelli Onn? How is forcing the traffic to come to a complete stop on Trimsaran Road keeping the traffic moving?
Why is it that when I warned you a couple of years ago that removing the lorries and taxis only access to Mincing Lane and Market Street would cause considerable congestion your answer was ¿Oh well let¿s try it and see what happens¿. Well what¿s happened is exactly what I said would happen, we now have a continuous traffic congestion in Park Street every day with hapless passengers dodging the traffic to try and get to the taxi rank.
The traffic wardens or whatever you want to call them are only there to grab more money for this greedy council. They should be sacked if they issue any tickets that are illegal, but since we have a council that revels in incompetence that is not going to happen.
Everybody should challenge every ticket they get, let¿s face it with odds like this the chances are it will be scrapped.”