Parking ticket appeals are a 'POSTCODE LOTTERY’
A FOI (Freedom of Information), request by the online parking marketplace YourParkingSpace.co.uk has revealed that, on average, 31% of all council parking ticket appeals are successful.
However, the chances of success varies widely across the country, from a high of 81% successfully appealed down to a low of less than 1%, leading to a ‘parking postcode lottery’.
Motorists who appealed a PCN from Basingstoke and Dean were shown to have the greatest chance of having it overturned, with an 81% success rate. Lincolnshire County Council had a 80% success rate with West Dorset and Solihull councils all had appeal success rates of 77%, whereas Preston, Bournemouth, Swindon, Lewisham, and Merton all had success rates of 20% or less. Appeals in Wandsworth, South-West London, and Havering, East London, had the lowest success rate, with less than 1% of parking ticket fines being overturned by the Councils.
Harrison Woods, Managing Director of YourParkingSpace.co.uk commented: “Receiving a parking ticket is always frustrating, whether it was deserved or not. And as the research shows, whether you win your appeal or not often simply comes down to where the ticket was issued.”
In total, 190 councils across the UK replied to a freedom of information request, showing that nearly 24%, more than 1.1million, of all council-issued parking tickets are appealed, with an average of 31% of those appeals being successful.
Managing Director Harrison Woods has called on councils to embrace new technology as a solution, “It’s madness that some councils are dealing with tens of thousands of PCN appeals, sometimes with over 50% of those appeals being successful. It’s a huge administrative expense and something that could be avoided if more were to embrace the changing customer behaviour of pre-booking online.
Mr Woods went on to say, “Motorists want to stay within the law and we’d welcome the opportunity to work with more councils to open up their car parks to online booking. It’s a win-win – it helps motorists avoid parking illegally, and for councils it results in additional revenue and a reduction in the administrative headache of PCN appeals.”
Councils with the lowest chance of a successful PCN appeal:
Council PCNs Issued PCNs Appealed Successful Appeals % Successful
Wandsworth 165,840 55,230 47 0.08%
Havering 38,304 25,370 89 0.3%
Bournemouth 33,566 3,568 49 1%
Leicester City 38,162 6,076 84 1.3%
Newham 169,588 17,171 823 4.7%
Councils with the highest chance of a successful PCN appeal:
Council PCNs Issued PCNs Appealed Successful Appeals % Successful
Basingstoke & Deane 8,575 2,482 2,015 81%
Lincolnshire CC 2,779 756 609 80%
West Dorset 3,794 1,086 842 77%
Solihull 17,220 4,856 3,743 77%
North Norfolk 6,012 2,087 1,596 76%
Notes
Founded in 2013, YourParkingSpace.co.uk is an online marketplace that features driveways, private off-street parking spaces, lock-up garages and, significantly, spaces from commercial car park operators. In the past 18 months YourParkingSpace has raised £250,000 in seed investment, signed a 15-month partnership with NCP, and began offering hourly and daily pre-booking at car parks and parking spaces nationwide.