87% of parking ticket appeals successful, says Which? Survey

February 21, 2011

A survey of parking charges undertaken by consumer group Which? has found that 87% of appeals against parking tickets in the UK's 20 largest cities in 2008-09 were successful.

The research found that more than 19,000 of the 22,000 appeals made against parking tickets in the UK's 20 largest cities were allowed or not contested.

However, Which? also found a high degree of variability between local authorities in respect of the success rate of appeals. At one end of the spectrum, Westminster City Council saw 87% of appeals against its tickets allowed or not contested, while figures for Coventry, Hull and Bristol were 77%, 73% and 69% respectively. At the other end of the scale, Stoke saw just 22% of its tickets successfully appealed, while the next-best, Southampton had 42% of appeals allowed or uncontested. Most of the other councils on the survey saw appeal success rates of between 50 and 60%.

Peter Vicary-Smith, chief executive of Which?, encouraged more motorists to appeal against tickets they felt were applied wrongly. He said: “If there's one thing drivers hate more than paying high prices for parking, it's finding a parking ticket on their windscreen. If you think you've been unfairly ticketed, make sure you appeal.”

The local authorities covered by the survey were as follows: