The council is here to serve its residents, and one way it can
do that is by making sure we have reasonable parking rules that are
followed by everyone. Therefore, having fines is an important tool.
However, we all make mistakes sometimes. You park thinking
something will take 40min, you pay for 1h but it takes 1h15min. You
get back to your car and there is a ticket.
Or you park somewhere on Sunday on a paybyphone only bay, when it's
free, but forget that on Monday you don't have to go to work as
early because you have a doctor’s appointment beforehand.
When you get to your car around 09:30 there is a ticket.
Everyone makes mistakes. But I believe it's unreasonable that Haringey charges its citizens 130 pounds for mistakes that can happen to anyone. Even the discounted rate of 65 pounds is extremely high. Several other councils will have a discounted rate of 30 or 35.
We need to understand that people are struggling out there. Rent is crazy and overall costs to live in London are very expensive. When you have expensive parking tickets like those, you are mainly punishing the poor. 65 pounds is a FULL DAY of work of someone who makes minimum wage. It’s 70% to 75% of a day's work of a teacher. For the rich, on the other hand, it’s nothing. It's less than 15% of a day's work for someone who makes 100k+. But for the poor, it's a lot.
Do we think it's fair and morally correct to say ''Alright, you made a mistake when parking, now we will take 70% of one day that you worked to provide for your family?''
It’s just unfair with us.
The argument that if the fines are not high enough, people will
intentionally commit parking infractions does not make any sense.
No one would intentionally park illegally and pay 70 pounds for it.
That could only potentially be true for premier league football
games and big events at Finsbury Park, for example. For that, the
council could keep higher parking fines during event days. But
there is not need to punish all other residents during normal
days.
This ePetition ran from 22/01/2020 to 30/04/2020 and has now finished.
12 people signed this ePetition.