Legal case lodged in UK Court seeks ruling against Westminster’s Motorbike & Scooter parking tax

A crucial first blow has been landed on a new front in the escalating battle against plans for a new bike parking tax being pushed by Westminster City Council. After a great deal of hard work behind the scenes by opponents of the new tax led by the NTBPT and their lawyers, a powerful case has been gathered together and an outline of it has now been formally lodged in Court.

I will say more about this soon but the gist of the case against WCC is easy to grasp.

The council have only given one substantive ‘reason’ for imposing new charges for parking bikes and scooters in bays on public roads that have already been paid for from our tax payer’s money. If you’re up for or into that sort of thing, you here are the Orders in full and the ‘Statement of Reasons’.

Below is my quicker and more concise version.

The council say the reason for the new charges is to ‘manage demand’ for bike parking.

This is a well spun way of saying that the new charging scheme is intended to deter a significant number of poorer riders from parking in on-street bays.

Opponents say the reason for the new charges is to create a new stream of revenue in the form of a bike parking tax.

And if you can’t be arsed to download and wade through all the orders and stuff here are the ‘reasons’ as Westminster present them.

“Due to the ever increasing pressure on Westminster’s finite kerbside space, the scheme introduced a small charge for motorcycle parking. The decision to do so was made in order to reflect motorcyclists’ increasing use of and demand for these limited resources.”

And in case you thought that was a bit flowery try this.

“Although not a main consideration upon implementation, environmental issues have since also become more pertinent.”

So, who do you believe? Is Westminster really telling the truth about their ‘reasons’ for imposing a brand new pay by phone charging scheme – or talking tosh? You decide…

Overhaul of UK parking fines system long overdue but will any politicians have the guts to support it while Westminster stay top dogs in issuing dodgy PCN gravy train tickets?

Over the last few days I’ve been rather more immersed than I’d like in the dark and dodgy business to be found lurking behind the smoothly drawn official lines about parking schemes and scams. The most pressing things have been focused by calls from the NTBPT to help them and their legal team deal with Westminster’s plan to try and force riders of scooters and motorbikes into the clutches of ‘golden contract’ Verrus As you may recall, this lot have a potentially juicy contract from WCC to use their super-slick pay by phone systems to extract a brand new bike parking tax. And they’ve already trousered well over £2 million from the first few months ‘trial’ of the new tax.

But there is good news on that front though as the case against the legitimacy of the WCC plan, and recent Traffic Orders to try and make it a permanent fixture, is already big and powerful. And, following a meeting I went to last Friday where the NTBPT team discussed refinements with their lawyers, and we all went off to get a few more crucial facts and figures, I can say that the case is growing stronger each day. And there will be more to say on that very soon after the application for statutory review is lodged this Friday!

However, there may be other glimmers of hope for progress. These latest steps in what will be a crucial case for all UK bike and scooter riders also coincides with a new coalition of forces to call for a complete overhaul of the way parking is ‘managed’ in Britain. As this article reveals in useful detail. But this has prompted me to do a mini review and dig a bit deeper to see how we got into what seems to me to be an increasingly nasty and abusive mess.

Ever since parking enforcement was ‘decriminalised’ in 1991, i.e. it could be done for councils by big profit-making companies – in exchange for a slice of the cash extracted for ‘managing’ this aspect of road use – it has become a very big business indeed.

In fact the latest figures show that the total income from UK parking charges and fines reached an eye-watering high of £1.9 billion per year. And, to make matters worse this is not only one of the few real growth industries in terms of revenues, it is probably the fastest growing one in Britain right now. Some councils doubled the income they squeezed out of motorised road users in the last year alone – and one is trying desperately hard to bolt a new bike parking tax on the side.

But as we all know, whenever big sums of money are at stake there will always be some players who are prepared to bend or break the rules as much as they dare – to get a bigger slice of the action. And recently I’ve had to do a bit of digging to discover who is doing what on the dark and dodgy side.

So, the less good news for me has been finding out just how rotten our parking enforcement systems have got. The number of parking penalty charge notices PCNs that are unlawfully issued is staggeringly high. This is clear to see if you know where to look, as all UK councils have been forced to reveal the figures. But top of the national league in issuing dodgy PCNs – which is in my view nothing short of an abuse of local government powers is… well who do you think? Yep, as Westminster City Council’s Annual Report on Parking shows, they are streets ahead of all others when it comes to the number of fines they have to withdraw because they were unlawfully issued in the first place.

Since 2005, Westminster council has agreed to cancel an average 20% of all PCN notices to pay a parking fine each year as they were found to be unlawful for various reasons. The extent of this unlawful use of Traffic Management power is shockingly quantified by the council’s own figures.

In 2008/9, there were 133,856 instances in which a PCN for an alleged parking offence was cancelled as it had been issued without due evidence that a violation had been committed.

This works out at an average of 372 unlawfully issued fines per day! Does our UK system in which this can go on need overhauling? You bet.

So now back to the big question about whether UK politicians will support new challenges to the rotten parking enforcement systems we have – and riders are facing more of. In my view the answer will depend on various things. But the key one in the run-up to the election is whether they think there will be more votes in supporting the challengers, or the fat cat players who are currently driving the gravy trains.

Well, I’m sorry to say that’s all I’ve got time to say for now as there is still quite a bit to do before Friday – when the next few rounds in fight against new bike parking taxes will begin…



Will the UK Serious Fraud Office investigate claims that top Westminster Council officers were part of a £200m Parking Enforcement contract scandal – or not?

Unless you are new to Britain or live in a shed or up a tree, you will know that the business of ‘enforcing’ parking regulations frequently arouses suspicions of foul play. Parking contract activity may seem like a dull aspect of local governance, but since it was ‘decriminalised’ in 1991, it has become quite ‘exciting’ for some. And, with parking fees and fine incomes for UK councils totalling £1.9bn per year in 2009, it has also grown into a very big and often murky business indeed for others, especially in that most illustrious and wealthy of London Boroughs, run by Westminster City Council (WCC).

But, the latest focus for suspicions may cap all that have gone before. This week, two top WCC officers were formally accused of a series of offences under the Fraud Act 2006, and of Gross Misconduct in Public Office. I learn late tonight that the BBC have now picked up on this. The claims were lodged by the No-To-Bike-Parking-Tax (NTBPT) campaign group against the suspects who are… Well I’ve just heard that one of them is shaping up to take legal action to block being named and attack anyone with the temerity to question the legitimacy of his recent actions, so, as I have no intention of interfering with the due course of justice, I have for the moment removed the names of the suspects…

To be fair to Westminster, as I always try to be, theirs is not the only place where the execution of parking business can at times become unseemly or shown to be illegal.

Dodgy doings by private parking companies with hugely lucrative council contracts across the UK have been well documented over many years. And, as the latest ‘SHOCKING’ video evidence shows, the UK’s ‘leading parking enforcement firm’ APCOA, recently employed a couple of ‘swaggering’ wardens to act as agents of local governance, but who seem to have extended the ‘services’ they offer the local community to a spot of illegal drug dealing.

I can’t vouch for the reliability of this footage or legal case against the two ‘civil enforcement officers’ though, but note that the National Newspaper who published reports of these seemingly criminal actions has not been made to take them down as yet. I am, however, fairly confidant that if the two officers caught on film were selling illegal drugs, they will probably be subject to rigorous investigation by their employers and be brought to due justice by the police. In fact the employers APCOA were quick to say they were “appalled” by the allegations and are taking them “very seriously” and that “any suggestion of illegal activity by their employees, would be taken straight to the police”. Strangely though, I am far less confident about what will happen to the two senior officers on the Westminster payroll. I am even doubtful about the extent of justice that will be brought to bear on this case.

For a start, the video footage of two blokes in parking enforcement officer’s uniforms doing a sixty quid dope deal is clear – and looks like damming evidence of deeply dodgy conduct. Whereas it is not so easy to see such clear proof of what that Gilchrist and Large may have been up to. Especially as the evidence so far is currently all in a 54 page report that details the various claims about what they have been doing behind the scenes where big value enforcement contracts are transferred from one company to another. But although I make no claims to being a legal expert, I have read the complete list of ‘suspicions’ of wrong doing and have formed my own opinion that that there seems to be some serious and well evidenced reasons to doubt that due procedures have been followed.

In a nutshell, it is claimed that the WCC officers made a series of moves to enable Westminster and over 30 other councils to change the contractor they used for parking enforcement, but without going through the full tendering processes that local authorities are required to do by UK and EU law. Crucially though, if it is eventually proved that this is what they have done it could mean that all of the councils involved will have to pay back over £200m to people who were issued with PCNs by companies that had no legal right to do so.

So, with that amount of local government and big parking company business revenue potentially at stake – and the ongoing £billions from future enforcement contracts – it should come as no surprise that the activities of ********* and ***** are likely to benefit from a significantly more well funded defence than a pair of dope dealing traffic wardens are likely to muster.

It also seems likely to me that a whoever is involved with investigating the allegations of Fraud and Gross Misconduct, they will be in for an uphill struggle and will face intense scrutiny and great but probably well hidden resistance from various aspects of the government machine. Initially, this investigation will be by the Met Police who have told me tonight. “We can confirm we have received an allegation of fraud on 10 February. The allegation is currently been looked at. We are unable to discuss further at this early stage.”

I also gather that whether this ends up being investigated by the SFO will depend on various factors including the amount of cash that ends up being considered to be at stake.

Meanwhile, the latest news I’ve been given from Westminster tonight comes from Mike More, Chief Executive of Westminster City Council. He tells me that these allegations are all part of an ongoing campaign by a “motorbike protest group who are unhappy over parking charges in Westminster”. Although More fails to acknowledge a parallel set of similar claims being investigated in Sunderland by the Parking Appeals car driver group co-ordinated by Neil Heron. Anyway, More goes on to say that WCC “remain confident that the parking contract was properly let by our officers and all allegations of fraud or deliberate wrongdoing are completely unfounded”. Although he feels obliged to add that they are now considering their legal position to see what action they should take in response to these claims with a suggestion that “if “there is an investigation “we will fully co-operate with any police enquiry and I fully believe this will resolve the issue.”

But with no undue disrespect for Mr More, the Met police have already issued a crime number in response to the NTBPT claims – so it is already clear that an investigation is going to happen – and has begun. What remains to be seen is how far the investigation will go and to see if the SFO will be drawn into investigate these allegations that senior officers have been engaged in Fraud and Gross Misconduct. All I can say for now is, that we’ll all have to wait and see but don’t hold your breath though because this is in my view likely to be a very long winded affair…

NTBPT Gridlock Central London & Win Round 1 in fight against plans for UK Bike & Scooter Parking Tax as Office of Fair Trading start investigating case against Westminster…

As GMTV warned on their morning news and this slideshow shows, the ‘gathering’ demonstration ride organised by the NTBPT and mentioned in my previous post, did indeed bring traffic to a standstill in central London. You can also see a nice little film of these goings on here. Ironically, these ‘amateur’ protesters took a leaf out of the professionals’ latest book on high-tech road user tax extraction systems – as written by Messrs Gilchrist, Chalkley & Slick-Willy pay-by-phone merchants Verrus – & the ‘gathering’ was triggered by simultaneous multiple text alert. Cripes and gadzooks!

So, within minutes of the text going out, hundreds of peaceful but angered riders suddenly gathered at Trafalgar Square and began riding round it during a lunch time demo.

The most astonishing thing about the event though – apart from the fact that there seems to be nothing that the authorities could do to stop it happening – was to see how incredibly quickly a relatively small number of riders could bring all the roads into and out of Trafalgar Square to a gridlocked halt. As a fellow riders rights champion, BMF Chairman Anna Zee said to me once we’d all arrived at Milbank. “It was incredible to see what a huge impact a relatively small number of riders can have within three minutes of gathering together and starting to ride perfectly legally round a small but critically central roundabout…”

Anyway, once the protesters had made their point of protest about the bike parking tax plan being pushed by Westminster, the riders all moved on in appropriately dignified fashion through Whitehall and Parliament Square and were joined by over a 100 more to rally outside the Tory HQ at Milbank.

A key point for the demo was to encourage the Conservative party leaders and key members to think about the huge damage that one of it’s flagship council’s (Westminster City Council no less) is doing to their reputation by trying to impose a new Stealth Tax on riders of powered two wheelers.

Currently, the word from Tory central office is that they regard this attempt to pioneer an unprecedented extra tax against a key group of vulnerable road users as a ‘Local Matter’. Correspondingly, I have it from the highest levels inside Tory HQ that this unprecedented plan to create a new M/C parking tax and spread it across the UK is something that party leaders are not going to bother about or to consider in a broader context. But I’d add, yet.

In my view, which I have shared with their top transport policy adviser and a couple of Tory MPs who were prepared to listen so far, this could be a very grave mistake unless they think again about a plan to impose an extra new tax on UK riders. Especially as just about all of the million plus motorbike and scooter riders in Britain also just happen to be VOTERS as the RAV campaign is beginning to explain in time for the next election.

It is also crucial for me to point out that it is not just the Tories who are seeming to hide behind the excuse that ‘this is a local issue’ while turning a blind eye to bad or unjustifiable policy decisions to create new revenue streams via ‘motoring’ taxes. After all, the Labour party and Lib Dem central office have also all held back from anything remotely close to condemning this stealth tax for what it is

But sadly, up until now my suggestions and indeed those from others in the motorcycling community have fallen on stony ground. Nevertheless, there is also some very good news for all concerned with treating riders as part of the solution to many congestion problems instead of seeing them just as a target for a bit more ‘motoring’ tax.

I learned late on Friday that the Office of Fair Trading OFT has reconsidered it’s earlier attempt to try and pass the buck for investigation of claims that Westminster have bent or broken rules to ensure trading is done fairly. After a great deal of work on submissions to the OFT by Graham of NTBPT and a couple of tweaks that I added to his latest contact with them their new position looks like this:

“Due to the complexity of the issues you have raised your case has been passed to our Preliminary Investigations Team and has been allocated thirty working days for research and response.”

Well done to all concerned I say – and round 1 to the NTBPT!

GMTV Report that Riders will protest in central London against Westminter’s attempts to impose new M/C parkin tax

I have had a great start to my day! GMTV London news included a report this morning to say that riders will be protesting in central to London against Westminster’s M/C PARKING TAX. Actually it will end up at Tory HQ and is in my view likely to be even better attended than the one that happened last year. As far as I’m concerned the point of this demo is to let the potential leaders of our next government know that turning a blind eye to an avaricious and unjustified plan to turn M/C parking into a new revenue stream is a step too far and will always have bad consequences for the reputation of any party that goes that way. And lest we forget, currently the Labour government has done bugger all to stop this pernicious and regressive move by Westminster so far. Go to NTBPT to get more info and don’t worry about signing up just turn up if you can or send a message of support if you can’t. PLEASE!

Anyway, back to the news of TV news coverage.. This is an important sign in my view to show that the mainstream media are taking this issue seriously again – and to the point where they will broadcast news BEFORE IT HAPPENS.

In journalistic terms this is a bigger deal than it may look as it  shows a great deal of belief by news journos that something newsworthy is about to happen. That’s easy to do when an event has the might of a government or big company to push it through but giving the same respect to plans by a bunch of scooter and motorbike riders is a much tougher call for them to make – but They are right.

This ongoing struggle by Westminster to impose a new and entirely unjustifiable tax on riders is far from over, especially as most people are starting to recognise that scooters, mopeds and bikes  are a crucial part of the solution to congestion and mobility problems and not something to target for a new tax! And, just so you know, part of the reason that I have not been blogging as much as I would like is that I’ve been up to my eyes and ears in all sorts of goings on behind the scenes that make me sure that this fight is not only far from being over, it is winnable.

Lastly for now, I also leaned yesterday that seasoned professionals in the BBC News team are privately very concerned about the tosh that was spouted by WCC’s Martin Low in an appalling attempt to justify an unjustifiable scheme.