Bailiffs sent to millions more motorists as traffic fines rise
More drivers are falling foul of clean air zones, road tolls and parking restrictions — and thousands of vehicles are being sold off when owners refuse to pay penalty charge notices
Enforcement action is being taken against millions of motorists for traffic penaltiesChris Smyth
, Whitehall Editor
Monday August 19 2024, 12.01am, The TimesCouncils are sending bailiffs to millions of motorists a year to collect unpaid traffic fines, with numbers doubling since the pandemic.
Drivers are increasingly falling foul of a proliferation of clean air zones and road tolls, while the cost of living crisis and councils’ growing desire for cash are said to have contributed to a trend of local authorities taking enforcement action against motorists for unpaid parking tickets and other traffic penalties.
Bailiffs have said that motorists are increasingly “selfish” as they feel free to ignore the law, and attribute this to the same fraying of the social fabric that led to riots across the country this month.
The officials are able to seize people’s cars until they pay up. Thousands of vehicles are being sold off when people refuse to pay.
More than 18 million penalty charge notices (PCNs) were issued last year. Numbers have risen steadily and are up 18 per cent outside London since 2018.
However, the number of cases referred to bailiffs is rising much faster. In 2023-24, councils referred 4 million penalty charge notices to enforcement agencies, up from 2.4 million the year before, 1.9 million in 2019-20 and 1.3 million in 2017-18.
Russell Hamblin-Boone, chief executive of the Civil Enforcement Association, which compiled the figures from companies working for councils, said that a post-Covid backlog of court proceedings explained part of the “big jump” in local authorities taking action.
But he highlighted other reasons and said that national policies “have supported things like clean air zones, Ulez and other emission reduction strategies, so there has been a big increase in the use of PCNs to enforce that”.
A decade ago 83 per cent of penalty charge notices were for parking. By 2022 only 47 per cent of PCNs were for parking while 19 per cent were for road tolls and 8 per cent for violation of clean air zones.
Hamblin-Boone also said there had been a “fracturing of the social contract” since the pandemic, of which he said both riots and traffic infringements were symptoms.
“The social contract says, ‘We will forgo freedoms to be protected by the government’, and people are saying, ‘I don’t feel protected, I’ll do what I want’,” he said.
“People have given themselves permission to act with impunity. Antisocial behaviour is being normalised and we see selfish actions daily. Motorists not respecting rules, parking where they want and ignoring traffic regulations.”
He added that there was a “financial element — there are some people who are struggling with the cost of living who get a fine and think. ‘I don’t need to deal with that as immediately’”.
Edmund King of the AA said that the figures were a “stark reminder to drivers that you can run but you can’t hide” and that they should try to obey the law. But he said avoiding fines “has become more difficult” with a plethora of different speed limits, low-emission zones and bus lane cameras.
London’s ultra-low-emission zone (Ulez) was expanded last year to cover all of the capital’s boroughs“Our concern is that sometimes drivers can’t concentrate on the road and driving safety because they’re paranoid about being snapped with a camera. Drivers who aren’t intending to break the rules do get caught by the system,” he said.
King added that some junctions and bus lanes were “cash boxes” for councils that should be focusing on making the roads safer. “Some local authorities get dependent on that income, and rather than change the layout of a junction they leave it as it is.”
Councils have been struggling with a funding shortfall and separate figures this week showed council tax receipts have increased by almost two thirds in the past decade to £38.5 billion as they try to plug the gap.
When a motorist ignores repeated requests to pay fines, a council applies for a court order, which is then passed to a specialist civil enforcement company, a type of debt collection agency that works with local authorities.
In about 30 per cent of cases motorists pay on receiving a warning letter, but in the rest bailiffs will knock on their door and have powers to impound their cars until they pay. In about 0.1 per cent of cases the car is sold off to cover the debt. Motorists are charged £75 for an enforcement letter and £235 for a bailiff visit, on top of their fine.
Isaac Occhipinti of the British Parking Association said that enforcement was rising as councils “manage a wider range of traffic-related schemes than ever before. These range from on and off-street parking to banned turns, school clearways, bus lanes and clean air zones.”
Bath was the first city outside London to introduce a clean air zoneBut he called for an increase in parking fines and added that there was “growing evidence that the deterrent effect has diminished over time” and that a minority considered fines to be cheaper or more convenient than legal parking.
A spokesman for the Local Government Association said that “bailiffs should only ever be used as a last resort”, adding: “Money raised from fines and charges is used for running parking services, with any surplus spent on essential transport improvements, including fixing the £16.3 billion road repairs backlog, reducing congestion, tackling poor air quality and supporting local bus services.”
Bailiffs turned up at carer’s house ‘over £78 fine’Paula Rosevear had just woken up when a bailiff knocked on the door of her home in Plymouth in April this year (Charlotte Alt writes).
He had been sent by Bristol city council to collect an outstanding £508 fine that Rosevear had incurred by driving through the city’s Clean Air Zone (CAZ) the previous year without realising.
“The bailiff said to me he clamped my car. He said, ‘You’ve got ten minutes to pay this £500 or we’re taking your car away’,” Rosevear, 50, said. “I was absolutely distraught. I care for my mum with Alzheimer’s and I have my son with special needs. My car is my lifeline.”
Bristol brought in a low-emission zone covering the city centre and some major roads in November 2022. Most vehicles are required to pay £9 for entering the zone with a failure to pay resulting in a penalty charge notice (PCN) of £60 plus the CAZ charge.
A decade ago 83 per cent of penalty charge notices were for parking infringementsWhen Rosevear travelled to Bristol in June 2023 before a flight to Turkey the next day, she did not remember seeing any signs informing her about the restrictions. On her return from holiday she found a PCN for £78.
“I didn’t even know the zone existed — I’d never heard of it. I live in Plymouth. We don’t have that where we live and we didn’t see any signs that warned us that we needed to pay some type of toll or obviously we would have done so,” she said.
Her appeal was rejected by the council. Not long after, two of Rosevear’s close childhood friends died by suicide within a short space of time.
She said: “It made me very poorly, mentally very poorly, and I wasn’t in the right place at all to be dealing with [the PCN]. Obviously, my own fault, I should have gotten back a bit quicker and the next thing we received another fine.”
In the end, a bailiff turned up at her door and Rosevear had to borrow the £508 to keep her car. She said: “The worst part for me was that if I had intentionally driven into that zone then I would have deserved that fine but I didn’t even know this thing existed and it wasn’t clearly signposted so we didn’t even notice it, so I feel like it was entrapment and we were almost set up.”
Figures released by the council this year showed that 285,645 PCNs were paid by drivers. Of 985 cases taken to an independent traffic penalty tribunal, 642 were settled in the drivers’ favour.
Adam Soble, 42, received a PCN when driving to Bristol Airport from Stroud, Gloucestershire, and unknowingly entering a short stretch of the low-emission zone.
Adam Soble took his case to a traffic penalty tribunalHe said about 50 metres of the ring road fell within the the low-emission zone and that “it seemed to serve no other purpose but to catch people going to the airport”.
Soble took the case to the traffic penalty tribunal, which ruled that the signs directing drivers off the M5 towards Bristol Airport were “confusing” and “not adequate” in informing drivers of the low-emission zone.
Bristol city council said: “While we understand that this has been a difficult personal situation for the resident and sympathise with their position, we have always been clear that it is drivers’ responsibility to check if they need to pay the Clean Air Zone daily charge.
“Drivers can use the vehicle checker on the council or government website before travelling to find out if they need to pay a charge for their chosen route.”
It added that drivers could appeal against the PCN and that payment plans were available for those in financial difficulty.
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