Council Isn't Revealing Information on Parking Tickets

They say a request would cost too much to investigate

An application made under Freedom of Information (FOI) for details about parking tickets issued in the borough has been turned down.

Neil Houston from Birmingham has asked local authorities throughout the UK whether their council wardens receive bonuses or incentives and wants specific data relating to every ticket issued over the last five years.

He is hoping to get dates, locations and reasons for the tickets and compare different authorities.

Ealing Council told Mr Houston that officers in this borough weren't on any reward schemes but it wasn't at liberty to release any detailed information about the tickets that have been issued.

Mrs Gabay, Information & Data Compliance Officer, told him that this part of his request would exceed £450.00 which she says:

'' .. represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2.5 working days in determining whether the Council hold the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.''

Mr Houston is not satisfied with this explanation and has reissued his request.

He replied: ' Thanks for the response thus far, regarding the refusal on the grounds of time taken to see if the council do hold this information, I think it's obvious that the council do hold it.....
I would like it noted that other organisations have been able to provide extracts at the
same level of detail that have been requested here.''

A council spokesperson has told Ealing Today that they weren't able to provide the information because of the level of detail the applicant wanted.

Southampton and Anglesey councils both use the same data collection system as Ealing, and have been able to provide Mr Houston with the figures.

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August 18, 2009