Borough council to issue refunds to drivers over irregularities with traffic regulation order

A report to the audit and governance committee by monitoring officer Michael Graham said the restitution scheme approved in October 2024 had seen 1,141 claims made over parking penalty charge notices of which 714 had been approved for refunds, with a further 131 awaiting further information and 296 rejected.

All 60 cases of enforcement action had been settled with refunds paid, giving a total across penalty notices and enforcement of £68,000.

Mr Graham said the council had also written to a further 2,235 people who were subject to a penalty charge notice but not enforcement action.

He said to prevent similar errors arising a system had been put in place between Network Services, Parking Enforcement and Legal Services to review new TROs and monitor any issues that may affect enforcement.

“Officers have been transparent about the identified issue, and, where applicable, enforcement activities have been suspended at the point where the issue came to light,” the report said.

All draft TROs are now circulated to Parking Services for comment and proposed sites are walked by officers to compare the TRO with the actual restrictions.

Mr Graham said a ‘Digital TRO’ project has been initiated which would provide a map-based TRO management system to provide “significant risk mitigation against future TRO inaccuracies”.

He said one issue identified was the lack of opportunity to discover mistakes at an earlier point as there was no report back about implementation of the councillors’ previous decisions and their proper implementation.

Work is taking place to ensure that officer decision notices are completed where expected and filed in the appropriate council system and a new agenda item will be placed on all committees to follow up on previous decisions.

A ‘Speaking Up’ campaign was launched for staff last March 2025 to highlight formal channels such as whistleblowing and informal channels including staff groups through which problem issues such as the mistaken TRO may be raised.

Mark Smulian