Ten-minute parking leeway comes into force

Expected to come into force at the end of March 2015, council-owned car parks in England will now have to provide a 10 minute grace period before issuing a fine. This new leeway is to apply to free and paid-for parking spaces on both streets and in off-street car parks. Britain is estimated to 30 million drivers.

This change is just one of several which also includes new restrictions on the use of CCTV cars issuing automatic fines. This change comes as more and more drivers begin to complain about being hit with a penalty just as their ticket expires.

The changes include:

• guidance for councils to highlight that they are not permitted to use parking in order to generate a profit.
• rights given to both residents and businesses to demand parking reviews in the area via petition to the council.
• powers given to parking adjudicators to hold councils responsible.
• protection to prevent drivers from being fined for parking at out-of-order meters.
• ban on CCTV 'spy cars' (excluding no-parking areas such as bus lanes and near schools)

Many have argued that the current parking rules have caused enormous damage to shops and businesses. In addition to this argument, the AA president Edmund King has suggested that "this is a common sense move. All too often there are discrepancies between the car clock, the civic clock, the pay-and-display clock, the parking attendant's clock and the driver's watch, which all result in disputed tickets."

According to figures from the RAC Foundation, councils in England made a combined surplus of £667 million from their on and off-street parking operations in 2013-14. By law, an surplus made by councils must be ploughed back into transport projects such as road improvements.