'I'm not paying unfair Purley parking fine'
COUNCIL parking chiefs have performed a U-turn after a carpenter threatened to take them to court.
John Meliniotis had pledged to "fight tooth and nail", over the Purley High Street tickets which had accumulated a cost of nearly £400 after the council sent them to the wrong address.
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Motorist John Meliniotis outside Blockbuster Video CRRS20121210A-073_C
Mr Meliniotis first heard of the fines when a summons from a court in Northampton landed on his doormat last month, after the case was escalated to the courts.
Bemused, the 51-year-old, of South Croydon, phoned the council only to be told he owed money for the tickets, issued in July.
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But the council had been sending the fines to 119a Avondale Road as opposed to 96, where Mr Meliniotis lives.
A perceptive postman noticed the post was going to the wrong address last month and delivered the latest letter to the correct one.
Without being given the two-week window to pay, the cost of each ticket has now soared from £55 to around £190 each, with the cost of escalating the matter added.
To add insult to injury, the tickets were issued for mounting the pavement when Mr Meliniotis parked his van outside Blockbuster, where there is no clear divide between the roadside and kerb. The incidents were captured by the on-street camera.
Mr Meliniotis said: "If the first ticket had gone to the right address I wouldn't have parked there the second time around.
"I'm not letting it drop. I don't see why the council should get away with it. Not only did they get the address wrong, but there is no clear kerb outside Blockbuster to show where the pavement is.
"Croydon Council knew what they were doing, and knew they would get easy revenue from that area of the High Street with that camera pointed there the whole time."
Mr Meliniotis claims the council told him the address blunder was the DVLA's fault. However, the DVLA got his address right when notifying him of his road tax renewal, he added.
A council spokesman said: "Three notices were sent to the address confirmed by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority. The matter has not been referred to the council's bailiffs.
"The penalty charge notices were registered with Northampton County Court prior to issuing the third, and final, statutory notice. This is purely an administrative process and the keeper has not been issued with any court summons, nor will he be required to attend a court hearing.
"Under the circumstances, the keeper's correct address has been logged on the council's system. The PCNs will be reissued, allowing the keeper the opportunity either to pay the reduced amount of £55.00 on each, or make representations disputing the matter."
In October, the Advertiser reported how the AA branded Croydon Council's use of cameras to catch out motorists "unacceptable".
The Department for Transport dictates cameras should be used "only where enforcement is difficult or sensitive and civil enforcement officer (wardens) enforcement is not practical".
Comments
by the3rdbone
Thursday, December 20 2012, 2:14PM
“Talking of exemption, the wardens in New Addington are rife....But the carpet man who parks on the corner on the yellow lines and Never gets a ticket ! Instead the wardens have a cuppa with him, chatting away. But the everyday shoppers get tickets.:( Maybe we should all leave a cuppa on our cars ????
I am still awaiting an email from CC on what they are going to do about this.”
by upstart
Thursday, December 20 2012, 12:07PM
“Personally I think soft targets such as the motorist have become the norm and indeed a revenue raiser for local authorities. I do not care what they say but many of the councils practices to show transparency in relation to ambiguous signs and local parking rules are all but transparent but instead could be considered a form of entrapment.”
by CroydonLife
Thursday, December 20 2012, 11:49AM
“Mr Meliniotis, if you start a petition to have this devious practice wiped out, I will gladly sign it. Just create it here: http://tinyurl.com/3b2vp85 and post a link to it on every Facebook page you can find about Croydon, starting with 'All About Croydon', asking people to share it, and you will get all the support you need.
Local Authorities have been told not to use parking or speeding cameras for revenue generating purposes. Perhaps if Croydon BC were to create more and better parking provision in Purley they would have fewer excuses to deploy these cheating schemes to catch unwary motorists who don't even know they're doing anything wrong.
Most of all, I'm sick of planning authorities allowing Blockbuster stores to set up where there is zero on-site parking. The nature of those stores means they have customers dropping off films all day and all evening, some of whom stop long enough to choose another to hire. Everywhere there's a Blockbuster there is traffic mayhem. It sounds as though the Purley branch has space outside that could be designated as legitimate parking, but Croydon and Purley councillors appear to have recognised the nature of Blockbuster and its customers' parking needs and have set up this trap entirely cynically.”
by Austen_CR_LCC
Thursday, December 20 2012, 7:04AM
“I don't see a problem with tickets being issued for people parking where they shouldn't, nor with using CCTV to spot them.
However, I'm not happy with the fact that while Mr Meliniotis has been clobbered for pavement parking, just about every day you can see vans from security companies parked on the pavements along George Street in Croydon, often with their engines left running (but with no driver at the wheel).
Is the Council turning a blind eye to this serial abuse, is there some exemption we should be told about or is it that the fines aren't high enough for commercial companies?”