If you were angry before, you'll be livid after reading this

We've got two pieces of important news: 

Council spent money fighting parking challenge that it considered "likely" it would it would lose.  Meanwhile it raked in millions it believed would likely to be declared unlawful.

Council reports show that Barnet Council considered it likely that it would lose the legal challenge brought by resident David Attfield over its unfair residents' parking charges.  Yet it chose in our opinion:  

• To waste over £100,000 in legal costs
• To carry on claiming unlawful parking charges for nearly two years
• And exposed David Attfield to enormous personal financial risk and stress

The reports, described as Corporate Performance Indicators, highlight major risks that the Council faces in its delivery of Environment, Planning and Regeneration services. In a number of reports (including the earliest and most recent reports), the Council acknowledges that it is "likely" to lose the judicial review action (see for example page 15 of the Environment, Planning and Regeneration report for Quarter 1, 2011/2012).  
https://www.barnet.gov.uk/downloads/download/267/corporate_plan_indicators_2011-12_quarter_1

When this was pointed out to the Council and they were asked to justify why they had fought the legal action, they replied that they had prudently taken a "pessimistic" view in these reports.

Amazingly, according to the Council Leader, the Council "has no alternative but to look to appeal the decision".  This opinion is totally against what the trial Judge, Mrs Justice Lang DBE stated in her conclusions, that an appeal would have "no real prospect of success".

There is an 'alternative', Barnet - accept you got these charges wrong, give up your hopeless resistance, refund the money, find a fairer way to fund the road maintenance budget and let us all move on! 

Petition launched urging Council to accept High Court Ruling 

If you think that it's time the council refunded the money it unlawfully claimed from you these past two years.

And if you think that the Council will simply waste more public money by appealing against the ruling and that this will unjustly expose David Attfield to further legal costs and stress.

Then please sign our petition urging the Council to do the right thing and accept the emphatic High Court ruling that has been made against it. 

You can sign the petition using this link: http://petitions.barnet.gov.uk/CPZAction/

You can tell Richard Cornelius, the Council Leader what you think at at cllr.r.cornelius@barnet.gov.uk 
You can contact Dean Cohen,the Cabinet Member responsible for parking at cllr.d.cohen@barnet.gov.uk
Please also tell your MP what you think
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders green)  mike.freer.mp@parliament.uk
Matthew Offard (Hendon)  matthew.offord.mp@parliament.uk
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) theresa@theresavilliers.co.uk

Please sign.  Please write.  It will send a powerful message to the council to end this madness.