Letter sent to CEO Bolton Council and Local Councillors

Dear Mr Harriss and Councillors,
In Wednesday's Bolton News the council are reported as stating that only two bays within the Borough were unlawful. As everyone involved in parking issues realises this is incorrect to a degree that cannot be mistaken for a genuine mistake, far from there being only two illegal bays I would put it to you that we will be hard pressed to find two bays that are compliant with the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002. (TSRGD) I have investigated many bays at various locations throughout the Borough and ALL are unlawful and this has been verified by the DfT which unconditionally states the Bays fashioned by the Highways Department and subsequently supported on several occasions by Parking Services, Legal Services and various councillors are illegal Hybrids of a 1032 bay and a 1028.4 bay.
Councillor Peel stated that the council has acted in good faith and the council were updating the Traffic Orders, this statement verifies the bays were unlawful by stating the Traffic Orders were invalid, and Malcolm Cox has now admitted an abuse of office by stating that the Council have known since 2002 that the bays were wrong, despite this knowledge Bolton Council continued to issue unlawful Penalty Charge Notices on Unlawful bays across the Borough, and as a consequence unjustly enriched the council finance department coffers with illegally derived income.
The statement in The Bolton News Wednesday 14th November by Mr Cox is untrue, there were no changes to the design of the bays, just a recommendation that some bays can be narrowed to 1800mm to minimise any obstruction, (See below) there were changes to sign plates but not to bays see information below from Department for Transport, a full script of the changes from 1994 TSRGD to the 2002 TSRGD is attached.

The problem goes back to Sept 2000 when the Council took over Decriminalised Parking Enforcement from the Police, yet after 7 Years the Council have done nothing to change the bays to make them Lawful, the Council were more concerned with deceiving the public by not informing them that the bays did not comply with Statute, enforcement should have been suspended until the bays were made Lawful, The council did none of these and continued to extort money from an unsuspecting public by defrauding them
Mr Harriss and Councillors, are you aware that more than 22,000 Penalty Charge Notices were enforced by Bailiffs since September 2000? The largest payment I have found paid to a Bailiff was £800 paid for parking in what is now admitted was an unlawful bay and the vast majority of these 22,000 Warrants of Execution will have been issued unlawfully and very possibly that number will have to be increased now that you have admitting that the Traffic Orders are not compliant, if the Traffic Regulation Orders do not comply, a parking contravention cannot occur. If the Bay is non compliant the contravention cannot occur.
I now ask the Councillors in the interests of Justice to force the issue of a public meeting regarding the circumstances surrounding parking bays in general and the unlawful application of PCN’s in particular and I will continue to insist for this in the interests of maintaining democratic processes and open-ness in Local Government.
The Council have lost the trust of the Public because of the lies, spin and misinformation that has been issued time and again from more than one department but which has subsequently been shown for the fiction that it is.

The local press and the vast majority of the public are behind my campaign against such deliberate illegality in local government and the Council are quickly losing credibility which it may be already too late to regain and thereby restore the situation to one of trust and reconciliation.
If the Council do not act in a positive and constructive manner soon this issue will get worse before it gets better.
The Council has been well and truly caught appropriating cash illegally, much better to address the situation now by admitting the irregularities rather than at a later date when the situation has been made worse by even more lies and deceit because by that time the public will be left in no doubt as to whether the Council is corrupt or not.

A requirement of regaining that trust must surely be disciplinary action against those responsible because they MUST have acted contrary to Council Policy. There is also a requirement for an honest and determined effort to be made to track down and make full and proper restitution to all those people illegally deprived of money and goods and thereby put right a grave miscarriage of Justice.

Incidentally I have now discovered that all the Bus Stop Bays in the Borough may also be unlawful, the Council were given until 31st December to comply with the New regulations from the TSRGD’s 2002 if Councils did not change the bays by then they should have been removed from the roads, see attached PDF file. The Council have just spent maybe a couple of hundred thousand pounds to resurface and re-sign Deane Road, it appears that the bus stop signing is illegal and the Bus Stop bay should be to Diagram 1025.1 on page 175 of the TSRGD’s 2002, however they can be easily rectified to make them compliant.

The mind boggles at the blundering incompetence of Bolton Council’s Highways and Engineering Department, The Legal Department and the Environmental Services Department, Mr Cox is quoting the 2002 Regulations to excuse the re-signing of the unlawful bays due to cost but he doesn’t use the same regulations to make everything lawful, i.e. Parking Bays, Bus Stop Bays, Signs and Plates etc, he apparently wants it both ways. How many copies of the TSRGD’s do the Council require before someone actually picks one up to read it.

Barry Moss

TSRGD's 1994 amendments 2002 TSRGD's
For disabled badge holder parking spaces (diagram 1028.3) may be reduced to a width of 1800mm where, on account of the nature of the traffic using the road, the width of the carriageway is insufficient to accommodate a wider bay.

20. Parking bays for buses are now prescribed as a variant of diagram 1028.3 (white marking and legend) rather than diagram 1028.2.

21. A new variant of the bay marking to diagram 1028.4 allows bays to be marked “Permit holders only”, which may be helpful where adjoining sets of bays are reserved for different classes of user.

26. Not all bus stops will have to be clearways if the bus stop flag sign is the only sign used (as may be appropriate on roads where buses can always pull up at the stop without being obstructed by parked vehicles). But any bays marked out for bus stops or stands after the TSRGD 2002 have come into force will have to include the edge of carriageway clearway marking shown in diagrams 1025.1, 1025.3 or 1025.4, and be accompanied by an upright sign to diagram 974 or 975 indicating that stopping by vehicles other than buses (or local buses) is prohibited.

27. A saving has been included in regulation 3 for existing bays to diagrams 1025 and 1025.2 to be retained until 31 December 2006 – by which time the bays should either have been converted to clearways by the addition of a continuous yellow line along the edge of carriageway, or the bay marking should have been removed.
It could be argued that the Council are still using the TSRGD's 1994 which has now been revoked. This would not surprise me in the least.