30th September 1999

Newcastle City Parking Control
P.O.Box 2BL
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE99 2BL.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: Parking ticket 91238140

I received the above ticket for my car G194 MUB on 9th August. I wrote an appeal on 13/8/99 and received a reply to it this morning. As I mentioned in my letter of 13/8/99, I had previously appealed against a parking ticket issued in similar circumstances. At the time of writing, I had not received any response to my first appeal.

My first appeal was accepted and I was warned that later incidents might not be dealt with so leniently. A fair warning but one that I received after the second incident had occurred.

My second appeal, which I have re-read today, is not really that appealing. I apologise for the tone of that letter, which ranged from sarcasm through to arrogance. The letter I received this morning mentions that you have investigated the circumstances surrounding the matter, yet they were identical to the last ticket, which you waived. It would appear that the circumstances are not all you take into account and I understand why you might be inclined to stick to the letter of the rules when faced with the letter I sent last time.

However, I would like to appeal to you again and I would like to ask you to accept my apologies for the previous letter and look at the circumstances surrounding this matter from my point of view.

I park in the same place in the same car park every day. I have been provided with a parking permit by my employer, who has paid Newcastle City Council handsomely for it. Along with this cheaply printed ticket comes a cheaply manufactured badge-holder, which does not work. When I mentioned the lack of quality of the badge holder to your staff, I was treated like a fool, which I did not appreciate. At the start of last quarter, I affixed the badge to my windscreen following the instructions, which I had received on the telephone, to the letter. I left my car with a badge visible, I returned to find it had fallen from the windscreen because the badge holder had been unable to withstand the heat in the car. From my point of view, I was awarded a parking ticket (something you get when you don’t pay the parking fee due) when the parking fee had been paid.

You can quote chapter and version of road traffic acts if you wish but I find it hard to accept that it is fair for you to charge for parking permits and then award a ticket to someone who held such a permit and was failing to display it because the badge-holder you supplied was incapable of doing its job.

I hope you will reconsider your position. I will be keeping tabs on the condition of the badge holder, which I affixed yesterday for the coming quarter, and I will be doing my utmost to avoid a repeat of this fiasco. I hope you can find it in yourself to waive the penalty, which I truly believe not to be just in this case.

Yours faithfully,

Ashley Frieze.