When highway robbery makes a loss

A decade ago, parts of Britain went parking ticket mad. The number of tickets issued and the amount of money raised by councils spiralled upwards. It was claimed that one central London council actually raised more money from parking fines in one year than it did from council tax.

Even though those excesses have been mostly choked off by central government, there’s still plenty of marginal behaviour in play when it comes to parking tickets, clamping and towing.

I know this because earlier this year the Department for Transport issued a long and detailed document on this subject, titled National Guidance to Local Authorities: Parking Policy and Enforcement.

It’s a goldmine of fascinating information, because all the guidance can be clearly read as trying to stamp out various types of bad behaviour in local parking regimes.

Mind you, I’m only reading this fine document because of a run-in I had with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) at the beginning of the year.

I had an appointment at a hotel on the River Thames at Chelsea. I turned up to park for the hour in an area known as Lots Road, not too far from Stamford Bridge. Although all the parking bays were empty, the meters would only take coins and I was cashless.

RBKC seems to be the only central London borough that doesn’t offer smartphone or card payment. I looked around for the controlled parking signs. There were none, despite there being plenty of poles along the sides of the street.

Two other cars were parked on a yellow line, so I did the same and left. Unfortunately, the yellow line was ‘live’ until 6pm that day.

Half an hour later, my girlfriend appeared to tell me the Citroen C4 Cactus had been given a ticket. I was annoyed but, considering the importance of the meeting, decided that I'd have to live with it.

I returned to the car 30 minutes later and the car had gone. It didn’t take long to find out why: the RBKC towing bay was at the end of street. The Citroen had been lifted and shifted about 200 yards from an empty street.

Two minutes later, I was being asked for £265 to get the Citroen back. The chap in the queue in front of me was an RBKC resident trying to recover his Skoda Yeti. It had been towed the morning his resident permit expired. "Funny," he said to me. ‘"The council used to write to you and remind you of the expiry date."