Labour demands end to parking fines scandal
Opposition Labour councillors have called a special Council meeting in an attempt to end Lambeth’s notorious cash for parking tickets scam.In May of this year the secret financial incentives to hand out tickets in Lambeth's parking contract were made public. In the aftermath, a cross party commission recommended the immediate removal of the financial incentives from the contract signed by the Liberal Democrats and Control Plus in August 2003. For six months Lambeth’s Lib Dems have failed to give any response to the recommendations, but have finally come clean. The recently published “Parking Improvement Plan” flatly refuses to remove the financial incentives. Lambeth recently announced record profits of £8.3 million from its parking and highways enforcement, double the figure from the year before. Labour believes much of this additional revenue comes from overzealous ticketing of innocent motorists of the kind exposed by the Parking Commission. Labour councillors have called a special meeting of the Council to demand that the financial incentives are removed from the contract. At the meeting councillors will have to vote on whether or not to renegotiate the parking contract with Control Plus. A large number of disgruntled motorists are expected to attend the meeting. Cllr Sharon Ward, Labour’s Lead spokesperson on parking commented: “The Liberals refuse to listen to unfairly ticketed motorists or their own parking commission, so Labour has called a special meeting to force them to take notice.” “It is simply wrong to send out traffic
wardens with a quota of tickets to hand out. Of course they are going
to unfairly ticket people, of course they are going to be over-zealous.
The contract must be renegotiated immediately to stop the cash-for-tickets
scandal.”
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