Told they 'got it wrong' and forced to remove six wrongly marked box junctions
Residents are to be refunded for tickets issued incorrectly after the council was ordered to pay £750 in costs to a bus company it repeatedly fined wrongly.
Anyone who has paid a ticket issued at one of six wrongly marked box junctions in Ealing junctions since last Thursday, October 30, will be paid back, following the ruling that the Council is to remove them. The Council is refusing to give refunds on tickets issued before that date.
Last Wednesday the council was ordered to pay costs to First United Busways for 17 tickets which were overturned by a parking adjudicator on appeal. The decision followed several other similar findings by adjudicators in relation to the South Road junction.
And the junctions at St Joseph’s Drive, Cambridge Road, Hamilton Road, Southall High Street junction with Avenue Road, and the Broadway junction with the Mall will all also be removed, as well as the Uxbridge Road junction with Lower Boston Road, in Hanwell.
Adjudicator Gerald Styles told the council representative: “I think the council has got it wrong.
“I am awarding costs on the grounds the council has been wholly unreasonable. It is the disregard of the earlier decisions from which consideration has to flow.”
Cabinet Member for Customer and Community Services, Councillor Phil Taylor, said: “Following a meeting with the Department for Transport in June we understood that double width yellow boxes could be placed at the T-junctions, as long as there was sufficient traffic flow in the area. We provided additional data and fully expected the DfT to confirm they were happy. Now eight months after we originally approached them, they appear to be suggesting this is not the case, but have still failed to provide us with a report setting out their position, despite repeated requests. “It is ridiculous that it has taken the Government department which sets the rules so many months to interpret its own manual and we still have not received a definitive response. This just underlines how unclear the regulations are.”
What EalingToday subscribers are saying on the forum
"It was only the financial muscle of the bus companies that allowed an effective challenge to this to take place. Next time the Council will probably waive bus company fines so it is the ordinary motorist who will bear the brunt. It is a measure of how dependent the Council have become on revenue from scams like this that they refused to give it up for so long.
"As for the residents who have had their money taken from them by an illegal scheme the Council say they are not going to give refunds. 'You're not getting your money back' looks set to be the new Council motto."
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"Funny how the Councillors will blame the Govt for something that they had total control over themselves. If there was any doubt then get stuck into it and establish the facts and suspend robbing people until you know it is legal. I support Box Junctions when correctly designed as otherwise Traffic can come to a halt. But the amount of money ripped over locals would indicate that they are a trap in which people can easily fall into."
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November 6, 2008