THE CIVIL ENFORCEMENT OF PARKING CONTRAVENTIONS
(ENGLAND) REPRESENTATIONS AND APPEALS REGULATIONS
2007
Opening Speech
1.
I am pleased to be here today to ask the Committee to give
its approval to the draft Civil Enforcement of Parking
Contraventions (England) Representations and Appeals
Regulations 2007. These have been discussed in the other place
already and were widely welcomed on all sides. These regulations
are part of a package of regulations and guidance that will put into
place new procedures for parking enforcement by local authorities
in England. They make no changes to the procedures used by
the police and traffic wardens. They cover England only and
similar regulations for Wales will be coming before the House later
this session.
2.
The regulations are made under Part 6 of the Traffic
Management Act 2004 and form one component of the
Government’s strategy to make better use of the existing road
network by improving road safety, reducing congestion and
minimising the impact of road traffic on the environment. The TMA
gives local authorities a specific duty to manage their networks,
and fair and effective parking enforcement has a key role to play in
this. When a local authority takes this responsibility over from the
police service, it frees up police time to concentrate on more
serious matters. It also means that parking restrictions are, often
for the first time, enforced throughout the area and at all
appropriate times. While this does not always please motorists it
is essential to facilitate safe and smooth use of the highway.
There are over 28 million vehicles on the roads in England, and
each of them spends an average of 23 out of 24 hours parked.
Managing that demand is what we ask local authorities to do.
These regulations will help them do this in a fair, transparent and
effective manner with the overarching objective of keeping traffic
moving safely.
3.
The present legislation on traffic enforcement by local
authorities is complex and untidy. The Road Traffic Act 1991 deals
expressly only with contraventions in parking places in London.
This Act has been applied, with adaptations, to other types of
parking contravention in individual London boroughs and in a
series of Orders to all contraventions in individually designated
areas outside London. When the Regulations now before the
Committee and the other necessary statutory instruments have
been brought into force, no adaptations will be necessary and
there will be a single code for England applying to all civil
enforcement areas, with only minimal differences between London
and elsewhere. Wales will have its own parallel sets of
instruments.
4.
There are six sets of regulations, only one of which (the
Representations and Appeal Regulations) are for affirmative
resolution by Parliament. These affirmative regulations before the
committee today set out the procedures for disputing a Penalty
Charge Notice, a vehicle immobilisation or a vehicle removal.
Some drivers believe that a Penalty Charge Notice, the clamping
of a vehicle or the removal of a vehicle is never merited. But it
may genuinely be the case that the charge was served or the
vehicle restrained or removed in error. This may be because the
driver was delivering or collecting goods he had loaded or
unloaded from the vehicle and had left the vehicle to do this. Or a
valid permit, ticket, voucher or badge may have been displayed on
the vehicle at the time. Or the owner who received the payment
reminder was not the owner at the time of the contravention. A
Penalty Charge Notice - or “parking ticket” - is not a serious matter
and does not involve endorsements on the driving license. But it
does have a financial impact that a fair society should only levy
when merited. And clamping or removal can be a considerable
inconvenience, even when merited. The measures put in place to
challenge Penalty Charges Notices, vehicle immobilisation and
vehicle removal are an important part of delivering a just
enforcement system.
5.
The procedures for representations and appeals set out in
these regulations largely replicate those in the Road Traffic Act
1991. That Act replaced a costly and time-consuming procedure
in the Magistrate’s Court with a simple and streamlined
independent adjudicator who dealt only with parking matters.
That original system has been changed to some extent by adding
bus lane, certain moving traffic and congestion charging
contraventions to the responsibilities of some of the adjudicators.
But we need to ensure that the procedures remain simple and
easily accessible to the public, avoiding the fear that they will need
costly legal or other representation to make their case properly.
6.
We believe that the draft regulations before the committee
deliver the continuation of simple and straightforward procedures
for representations to the issuing authority and appeals to the
adjudicator that are easily accessible to the public. They were
prepared with the help of a working group comprising
representatives from local authorities, the British Parking
Association, the police, motoring groups and the parking
adjudicators. They have been subject to extensive consultation,
but few comments were received on the representations and
appeal provisions and the changes that have been made since
consultation largely result from reconsideration by Government.
7.
We have also had the benefit of expert and robust advice on
our proposals from the entirely independent adjudicators. This
reflects their experience of dealing with many thousands of
individual cases and we are grateful to them for this advice.
8.
I would like to draw the committees attention to the areas
where the draft regulations improve on the current procedures.
9.
The Penalty Charge Notice itself will, as recommended by
the Transport Committee, state on it the procedures for
representations and appeals. The Committee was of the view that
there is widespread ignorance of the challenge procedures and
that putting them on the Penalty Charge Notice would help to
resolve this.
10.
The circumstances in which a representation and an appeal
can be made have been widened to specifically include instances
where the enforcement authority has not followed the correct
procedures. This ground would cover such things as an authority’s
failure to observe the correct time limits or to include the right
information in notices or a case where a local authority had served
a penalty charge notice by post when it was not authorised to do
so.
11.
Finally the Adjudicator will have the power to return to the
local authority for reconsideration a case where a contravention
has taken place but in mitigating circumstances. This could cover
cases where a driver had to pull over because someone in the car
suddenly felt ill, or the cheque for a resident’s parking permit had
been banked by the local authority but the permit had been lost in
the post. Local authorities have long had the power to cancel a
Penalty Charge Notice in such circumstances but a couple of them
have shown some reluctance to use this power. The adjudicators
will now be able to ask them to consider the case again. I would
like to clarify a point raised in the other place which was whether a
local authority was bound to reconsider a case referred back to
them by the adjudicator. I can assure the committee that the LA
must reconsider the case put to them by the adjudicator. If the
authority does not make a decision within 35 days, it is deemed to
have accepted the adjudicator’s recommendation and must cancel
the Notice to Owner.
12. These
regulations
will
be widely welcomed by local
authorities and the public and I hope they will also be welcome by
all members. It has taken a lot of hard work to balance the needs
of local authorities for a strong and effective enforcement regime
and the needs of motorists for one that is flexible and fair. They
are based on the successful regime put in place by the Road
Traffic Act 1991 but make a few key changes to help deliver a
fairer and more transparent system of effective parking
enforcement by local authorities. I commend the regulations to the
Committee.
Winding up speech
1. Complement Committee on interesting and informative debate.
2. Respond to particular points made.
3. There have been changes to the regulations and the
Government’s guidance in the light of responses to last year’s
consultation and advice from the working group of local authorities
and their representative bodies, the Chief Parking Adjudicators,
the police, and motoring organisations. The majority of these
changes do not affect the regulations before the committee today
for consideration. The only change of significance to them is the
addition of the need for a local authority to set out on the Penalty
Charge Notice the right to make representations to the issuing
authority and, if that is rejected, to make an appeal to an
adjudicator. This change was made in response to
representations made to Ministers in Parliament rather than replies
to the consultation.
4. Government decided to move into this set of regulations various
other matters about notifying the recipient of the right to make
representations and appeals that at an earlier stage were included
in the draft General Regulations. The reason for this change is
that, on closer examination, it appeared to Government that these
matters fell to be covered in the affirmative regulations to be made
under Section 80 of the Act. As a consequence, the full list of
matters to be included in Penalty Charge Notices and Notices to
Owner has had to be divided between the two sets of Regulations
but they are drawn together in the Department’s guidance to local
authorities
5. The regulations setting out the procedures for representations and
appeals in respect of removed vehicles are made under powers
conferred to the Lord Chancellor by section 101 B of the Road
Traffic Regulations Act 1984. At an earlier stage these provisions
were included in the General Regulations but the Lord Chancellor
(Modification of Functions) Order 2007 (S.I. 2007/1756) means
that they are subject to affirmative resolution in the same way as
the provisions with respect to representations and appeals against
Penalty Charge Notices and vehicle immobilisations.
6. There have also been small changes to the wording of some of the
regulations to make their intention more explicit.
7. These regulations provide a fair, open and effective framework for
parking enforcement by local authorities. I commend them to the
Committee.