High Court reject legal challenge

In a bitter blow today, a High Court Judge rejected our application to overturn Barnet's CPZ charges.

The decision is as surprising as it is disappointing.  We had genuinely expected the Judge to find that we had raised a serious case that needed to be decided at a full trial.

The case in the event turned on a very narrow question:  whether a Council can set resident's parking charges to raise revenue for things that have nothing to do with resident's parking (paying for travel passes for the elderly and fixing potholes in the case of Barnet).

We relied on two High Court cases which we say make it clear that parking charges need to address a parking related need (the cost of running a CPZ and the need in some areas to dampen demand might be lawful reasons to increase charges).

This is what we firmly believe;
It is what David Attfield's solicitors firmly believe;
It is what David's QC firmly believes;
It is what the RAC Foundation firmly believes;
It is even what Westminster Council firmly believed when they proposed introducing night time parking charges: they argued that the charges were needed to dampen demand,  not to raise revenue to fix potholes.

We need to think carefully about our next steps.  Legally, there is merit in taking the question of whether CPZ residents should pay for travel passes and potholes to the Court of Appeal.  But we must assess what the cost of this would be and whether we have the necessary support.  We will keep you posted.

We leave you with some food for thought:  If Barnet and the Judge are correct that parking charges can always be used to pay for a Council's transport spending,  then there is scope for Barnet to double or even treble the current charges.  Barnet makes about £5 million profit a year from parking but spends around £15m on transport (mainly paying for bus passes).  How much more of the burden of paying for travel passes and potholes will Barnet try to offload onto CPZ residents?

Barnet issue corrected information about visitor voucher sales

If you have looked at our blog over the past few days, you would have seen a post about the decline in the sale of visitor vouchers.  Our blog was based on information disclosed by Barnet Council last week under the Freedom of Information Act.

Barnet Council have today informed us that their information was incorrect and that the number of £4 vouchers sold was much higher than they had stated.  We have therefore deleted our blog entry.