A recent victory at PATAS will mean grounds for appeal for thousands of motorists caught by CCTV cars in Richmond! Drivers in one London borough were feeling a little less persecuted today after council chiefs took CCTV cars off the road following a blunder. Richmond upon Thames town hall bosses said Smart Cars that issue parking tickets could be out of use for up to a week, potentially losing thousands of pounds in revenue. The U-turn comes after a landmark ruling in which motorist Nigel Wise had a £100 fine thrown out by a parking appeal tribunal after he proved Richmond was using the wrong kind of cameras on its cars. The carer, 59, claims councils across the capital, which issue up to £10 million in tickets through Smart Cars every year, are making similar errors. Last week Richmond said that all its "CCTV camera cars are correctly licensed and were at the time of this (Mr Wise's) incident". But today, the authority admitted this was not the case and campaigners are demanding the authority refunds thousands of parking tickets issued by its two vehicles. A council spokesman said: "In light of Thursday's decision, we are looking at all documentation relating to camera cars. "Until the checks are complete, both cars have been taken off the road." Richmond earned more than £573,000 last year from 12,305 tickets issued through CCTV cars. Its parking services are contracted out to Vinci Park, but the final sign-off for camera licences rests with town hall officials. It had originally blamed the Vehicle Certification Agency, which issues licences, for typographical errors on the certificates. The traffic wardens who normally sit in the cars will instead patrol the borough on foot.

http://www.manchester.gov.uk/egov_downloads/200910_Parking_Report_to_the_Joint_Committee.pdf "One of the principle difficulties is that the driver of the CCTV vehicle parks is for anything up to five minutes while the operator points the camera at the offending vehicle. Appellants have questioned why the council CCTV car can park for five minutes on a double yellow line while they are having penalties imposed on them for the same practice. Adjudicators have noticed that in some of the correspondence the council has claimed that the TMA provides an exemption from parking restrictions for a CCTV vehicle. This is not the case - there are NO provisions in the TMA or any of its regulations that create exemptions to parking restrictions in TROs for vehicles engaged in camera enforcement."