Blogger gets Wellington parking fines reversed

Well done to Dave at Big News who blogs:

The Wellington City Council is to waive and refund thousands of dollars of parking tickets to motorists after wardens and council contractors blatantly ignored Council policy in issuing parking infringements. …

According to the Council’s parking manual [not online], infringement notices are “not issued…until six minutes after a (clearway) restriction begins, or within six minutes of when the restriction ends”. Yet in the past two years, 181 were – including people parked for a matter of seconds, still in their vehicles. The Council’s manual also states that “when the person in charge of the vehicle is present, then he or she in the first instance should be moved on”.

So basically the Council had a camera that was photographing cars on a clearway and ticketing them – even if the driver was remaining in the car and just dropping someone off etc.