Legal case lodged in UK Court seeks ruling against Westminster’s Motorbike & Scooter parking tax
Posted: 26th February 2010 | 3 Comments »
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…
WCC talking sense? dont make me laugh. Its all a deception on their part to screw more money out of us. Vive la resistance!
[...] Legal case lodged in UK Court seeks ruling against Westminster’s Motorbike & Scooter parking t… [...]
[...] has prompted me to think long and hard about the acts of lawlessness and allegations of lawlessness that are linked to moves to extract a new parking tax from motorbike and scooter riders – under [...]