Nottingham City Council have today given the public visable notice of an increase in parking charges in their city Centre car parks. Charges were increased earlier in the month at Trinity Square, Broadmarsh and Curzon Street, amongst others.
Today members of the public arriving at the car park in Curzon Street would notice a sign declaring that from 15th December prices would increase. Prices had already increased however, and without any notification in the areas affected before hand. This move comes after pressure was applied on the Council about the legitimacy of the new parking price tariffs, which also included an increase to on-street parking price and time and more controversially a plan for reduce priced church and religious group parking.
Had the move taken place across all parking areas the council may have played down claims that the new manager of Nottingham City Transport Marcus Pope is incompetent, but today sees yet another catastrophe: The prices at the meters haven’t been dropped down to their previous price, pending the official raise on Dec 15th. This could mean that the public are being wrongly over charged.
The implication could go further, and mean that the public could treat the meters as out of order, and avoid parking charges in the sites altogether. Indeed the legitimacy of any parking fine given may not even stand up in court, as the meter could be treated as faulty, as the price increase shouldn’t be effective until December 15th; and even in areas not affected, the public could shun the new prices and charge periods as they were not given the statutory notification of 30 days for increase to parking fees that Section 35 of the Road traffics act 1984 requires Nottingham City Transport to put up.
The act, may mean that current charges are not legal, and the public can not lawfully be charged.
The parking fiasco comes ahead of the councils plans to introduce a massive work place parking levy in April 2012.
