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Festive revellers celebrate as £34k of parking fines written off by Hackney council

Drivers are having £34,000 of parking tickets written off after a council website wrongly stated that restrictions were being suspended over Christmas and New Year.

Hackney council is rescinding 355 penalty charge notices issued on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve after traffic wardens penalised unsuspecting drivers.

A statement on the council’s website had informed motorists that it would employ “Sunday Parking Enforcement until 7pm” on December 24 and 31, meaning drivers could park for free.

As motorists took advantage of the apparently relaxed rules, traffic wardens had a bonanza, issuing hundreds of £55 fines throughout the borough.

Hackney council initially rejected appeals for the fines to be reversed, but eventually accepted that an error had been made and said it would scrap every fine issued over the two days.

A spokeswoman said: “We are aware that an incorrect statement was placed on our website, which led some drivers to believe that parking controls were not in place on New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve. This should not have happened.

“As we are unable to know who may have referred to the website before parking, we have taken swift action to cancel all parking PCNs issued on both days, and will refund those drivers who have already paid, to ensure we are treating all drivers fairly. We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all those who were affected.”

The council said the tickets would have brought in £34,000 to council coffers “based on the value they were at when cancelled”.

Just over half of the tickets issued have already been paid, and will now be refunded at a cost of £12,000, the council said. The remaining 175 will also be written off.

There are two levels of penalty charge notice fines in Hackney depending on the level of disruption to other traffic and motorists. A more serious offence attracts a £130 rate and a lesser incident could cost £80.

A 50 per cent discount is applied if the fine is paid promptly.

Hackney said each appealed PCN is “considered on its own merits”.

It added: “On this occasion we have been proactive in responding to this error. Once we identified that there was a problem with our information, we moved swiftly to cancel all the PCNs.”