Claims for thousands of parking fines that were issued in error in Reading have ‘slowed to a trickle’.
Reading Borough Council admitted that it wrongly issued 6,136 penalty charge notice (PCN) fines last October.
The PCNs were erroneous because of faults in traffic regulation orders (TROs) that are used to regulate the road network and impose parking restrictions.
The council initiated a restitution scheme to repay those affected, with an update on the scheme being provided to councillors.
Michael Graham, monitoring officer and assistant director of legal services said: “The repayments have slowed to a trickle really, with the publicity around this affair at the very beginning, we took on a slew of claims, where there has been subsequent publicity, we have seen a spike, but now it has sort of dwindled to a small number of claims ongoing.
“At some point, we then have to start to think about when will be the appropriate point to call a halt on any further publicity and claims.
“So we’ve got to exercise some judgement about that, and you may wish to discuss that.”
He went on to say that council officers have contacted those it has information about who they believe are entitled to refunds, particularly those who were prosecuted.
Mr Graham explained: “We’ve effectively written to everyone who we can write to, so there’s no more proactive work we can do as a council to go back to people who’ve had a relevant PCN to say they may be entitled to a claim.”
So far, a total of £65,000 of claims have been paid by March, with a further £13,000 approved for payment.
Of the 998 claims made, 357 have been paid, 56 are pending a refund, and 247 have been rejected.
Councillor Finn McGoldrick (Labour, Norcot) questioned the high number of rejections.
She said: “Where we do have people coming forward, why is it that we’re rejecting their claims, and just to check that it is robust?”
Mr Graham: “The main reason seems to be that people have heard that there is an opportunity to get a repayment of their PCN and so without actually researching the details which are on the website, they are banging in any PCN that they’ve had, but of course we’re only interested in a limited number of PCNs which we have listed.”
Councillors then discussed how funds earmarked for the repayment scheme should be used.
It was initially calculated that the scheme would cost around £360,000, all of which would come from reserves.
Darren Carter, interim director of resources, suggested that remaining funds should be reinvested into digitising TROs.
The update on the scheme was provided to the council’s audit and governance committee meeting on April 9.
Councillors agreed to receive an update in July, where they are expected to set a deadline for the end of the repayment scheme.
