£2.5m parking fines write-off

Published on Tuesday 22 April 2008 22:03

A LOCAL authority that is making £27 million cuts to services has had to write off more than £2.5 million in unpaid parking fines, it was revealed yesterday.

A confidential report said some 34,260 tickets issued in Aberdeen over four years had had to be scrapped because of a legal mistake.

The fines cover the period since the city council took control of parking from the police in 2003, and they have been written off on the orders of the local authority's city chamberlain, Susan Cooper.

Councillors are being asked to write off 82,200 for 1,034 tickets from only seven people over the same four years.

The move comes after a court ruled all parking tickets should include the date of the offence and date the ticket was issued. A High Court judge in England made the ruling after two successful appeals against Barnet Council.

Aberdeen City Council tickets used to include only the date of the parking offence, but this was changed in October 2006.

Under Aberdeen City Council's rules, individual debts of up to 10,000 can be written off without prior approval of councillors. The report states: "Parking office staff, on the basis of advice from the office of the city solicitor and local sheriff officers, now consider the outstanding penalty charge notices issued prior to 4 October, 2006 are unrecoverable."

Labour councillor Willie Young said: "This is atrocious news. This is public money that was owed to the council. More should have been done at the time to chase it up."

The city council's plans for cuts in services have led to widespread protests.