Council to reconsider cases of 'flipped' tickets after adjudicator defeats

Canterbury City Council has offered to reconsider cases where it rejected a motorist’s appeal against a parking penalty charge notice received as a result of a pay and display ticket flipping over.

The offer comes after the local authority lost two recent appeals to the independent parking adjudicator on the issue of how it dealt with challenges relating to flipped over tickets.

The offer to reconsider a case applies to anyone who for the first time received a PCN in these circumstances since 1 February 2015.

This was when Canterbury changed its policy from showing discretion to people who appealed on the first occasion they received a PCN for this, to not allowing any appeals under any circumstances.

The council said it had decided that it was “incorrect to have a blanket approach to PCN appeals and that all cases should be considered on their individual merits”.

Applications for the case to be reconsidered should be submitted by 31 December 2015.

Larissa Reed, Canterbury’s Assistant Director of Direct Services, said: “When the independent adjudicator rules against us, we always look at the judgement to see whether we should make any changes to our procedures. On this occasion, we accept we were wrong to change how we handle appeals for flipped over PCNs and have now reverted to our former approach.

“From now on, anybody who had a ticket that flipped over but that was valid at the time the PCN was issued should appeal to us. They are likely to have their fine cancelled if it was the first time it happened.”