I am Italian and last month rented a car and paid by phone to park in the London borough of Islington. Then I found a penalty charge notice on the windscreen. When I appealed, I was told I had not paid because I entered the letter I instead of the number 1 for the number plate.
I asked the council to cancel the penalty since the letter and digit are indistinguishable. It said that, although it appreciated it was a simple mistake, it makes no exemptions for incorrectly submitted details. The slogan at the bottom of its reply read: “Towards a Fairer Islington. Our commitment.”
FF, London
When the font for car registration plates was updated in 2001, parking apps and ANPR cameras were non-existent. Since then, the indistinguishable difference between O and 0 and I and 1 has cost drivers thousands in fines.
You have to know the current format of UK licence plates to work out which is which. If you’re a foreign national in a hire car that’s an absurd expectation.
Until now, I’ve only heard of private parking companies charging for this confusion. For a council to do so is inexcusable. Islington council says the ticket should never have been issued because wardens are expected to exercise “common sense and discretion”. That’s as may be, but your appeal was then refused by the correspondence and appeals officer.
And a week after the council told me it had cancelled the fine, you were told to pay up within 24 hours.
This, according to Islington, is because the system requires a “hold” to be put on a fine before the “responsible officer” gets round to cancelling it. If the responsible officer is on holiday this could, presumably, take weeks. Moreover, while it was quick enough to inform you of the fine, it tells me it did not plan to tell you it was being cancelled unless you got in touch again.
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