Sefton Councils over zealous parking enforcement has been mentioned in an article in the Daily Mail after a Formby resident proved she had purchased a ticket but was still fined after the ticket blew across the dashboard leaving it out of sight.



Janet Tibbetts had driven from Formby, on Merseyside, to Southport to go shopping and paid £1.40 to park in the town centre.
But when she returned half-an-hour later, she found a £50 penalty charge notice on her windscreen.
Janet, 59, took her ticket from the dashboard to the council parking office to ask why she had been fined. She was told it was clearly a mistake and that she should write to Sefton Council — which she did, including her ticket as evidence.


She told the council the ticket may have fallen into a shaded part of the dashboard. She said she would have stuck it to the window, but there was no adhesive.
The council refused to cancel the fine — but added that if she paid within 14 days it would only be £25. Janet complained again, but the council stood its ground and informed her the fine had now increased to £50.


Janet then didn't hear anything for a couple of months. During this time, she and her fiance Nigel Burgess bought a house in the South of France and moved there.
When Janet returned to England in December 2015 to visit family, she found a letter from the council explaining how to appeal formally.
She had missed the deadline, but appealed anyway and informed the council of her French address for future correspondence.


She returned to France and didn't hear anything for nine months, until her daughter Gemma, 20, called to say bailiffs had turned up at the family home in Formby. They said that if Janet didn't pay the fine immediately they would return the next day to seize assets.

When Janet tried to pay over the phone, she was told it was not possible, as she was calling from an international number. In the end, she had to ask a friend in England to pay the fine for her and transfer the money. Janet says: 'I did nothing wrong — I paid for my parking and had the ticket as proof.'
A spokesman for Sefton Council insists the ticket was 'correctly issued'.

So which part of in clear view did she not understand?

Is it that hard to close your door, THEN make sure the ticket is still visible?


The 'jobsworth' was doing his job.

The ticket proves nothing apart from she manage to get a ticket for the time she was there. Could quite easily have got it of another driver returning to their car. Photo's are taken as evidence, So they must have sufficient to say she'd not paid and displayed as requested.
Pay your £25, learn and move on.

I agree with Ceam. Pay AND DISPLAY is easy enough to understand. You pay for a ticket and display it. Many years ago I had a ticket that blew of the dashboard in the wind when I closed the door. In those days they did overturn the fine if you had a valid ticket, but not any more. At the time, yes it was annoying, but ever since I have always checked the ticket is on display when leaving the car.

Report something news worthy - nah - more than my job's worth mate.
Contact all involved in the issue for comment - nah - more than my job's worth mate.
There you are - a couple of more appropriate uses of the term 'jobsworth'.
We may not like them, we may think they are not needed but they are doing a job as directed by their employers.
I'm not sure deriding them in this manner puts you or this 'news' (and I use the term with much reluctance) site in a particularly good light.

Well if they're upsetting the Daily Heil they must be doing something right.
Which bit of the entire process did Ms Tibbets not understand and led her to believe she could ignore the fine?

The warden was doing his job , correctly. As usual
something goes wrong it's someone elses fault.
Get over it and apologize to the traffic department.

You could always use a tax disc holder to display the ticket since they are no longer needed !

Ms Tibbetts has form for this kind of thing. Ask anybody who had the misfortune to live near one of her nurseries.

If she hadn't gone one step too far by blaming them for not supplying adhesive to the tickets I reckon they would have let her off if its the first time this has happened, do it a couple of times and they will not let you off, from my experience.
Any sympathy held by the reader/appeal officer was lost when she attempted to come across as a victim, this point changed the tone of the appeal in my view. There are ways to deal with people and blaming everyone else and attacking the reader in the scramble to defer fault at all cost in this and most cases does not go well when you are asking for understanding and sympathy.

Originally Posted by Ruler!1

You could always use a tax disc holder to display the ticket since they are no longer needed !

I parked on Houghton Street one day and put my ticket in the tax disc holder. As I returned to my car a warden was stood by it and when he realised it was my car he told me that I was lucky not to get a penalty as 'he had not seen the ticket in the holder'.

You can buy self adhesive ticket holders to put in your windscreen. It's a good idea but another piece of junk obscuring the view.
Years ago the idea of self adhesive tickets was brought up by the Attendants themselves. The councils reply was it would cost an extra penny per ticket to produce. I believe since then they have come up with the fact the glues might gum up the ticket machine? It's possible but other towns make it work.
As a Car driver it is assumed we all took tests to prove our abilities to use a Car in a responsible manner? We all have to have insurance which means we have to be all adult & go online shopping to compare prices. In fact considering the amount of stuff we have to do to actually drive our vehicles it's amazing that we can't all be responsible enough to check our ticket is still clearly displayed once we've closed our Car doors. Instead drivers choose to blame Parking Attendants or the Council for their mistakes & this site is as big a moaner as all the drivers who get caught out by their own laziness.