Glasgow LEZ Fines “Procedural Error”

[Southerner]

Motorist-milking council found to have issued in excess of 20,000 fines incorrectly, with a tribunal ruling them “unenforceable”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce7pz2ze56go

The council’s rather hopeful response:

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: "These decisions do not create an obligation to refund penalties which have been paid.”

Bless them; surely they’re p*ssing into the wind, aren’t they? Tribunal says unenforcecable, that’s refunds all round no?

They’re appealing of course, presumably a loss (which seems highly likely) might well cripple them given the general state of local authority finances these days.

[Electro1980]

No. Unenforceable has a specific meaning in contract law. It means you cannot make someone pay, not that the contract is void. There is no basis for demanding refunds.

[Mrr T]

Except this is not contract law.

Since there are other legal obligations on local authorities including an ombudsmen I suspect there may be no obligation to just refund if you complain and if they do not refund go to the ombudsmen you will get your money back.

[Jasandjules]

Electro1980 said:

No. Unenforceable has a specific meaning in contract law. It means you cannot make someone pay, not that the contract is void. There is no basis for demanding refunds.

Do you think the motorists have an intent to create legal relations then?

[Electro1980]

Do you have something of use to add, or did you both just want to adenoidal bring up the technicality that the scheme is governed under other law, even though meaning of unenforceable is exactly the same and derives from contract law, and I didn’t want to go in to investigating the technicality of the law it is under?

The fact remains, unenforceable does not mean that the fine is not valid or that anyone could get a refund. It’s clear the reasoning is down to evidence of receipt of the fine, and you can’t pay it and then claim you didn’t get the notice. There might be a tiny number of people who got additional penalties for late or none payment that might now have a case, if the appeal fails, but they will be tiny.

This kind of binary behaviour is why it is so difficult to discuss anything on the internet. Rather than taking things in good faith someone has to prove how clever they are by jumping on an irrelevant technicality.

[Southerner]

Well, “that escalated….” etc!

I presume the media coverage will lead to a flood of refund requests regardless!

[alangla]

I posted this in the Scottish Politics thread but I guess it fits better here:

Interesting tribunal result here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce7pz2ze56go

The bit that intrigued me was this:

BBC Article said:

In a "key decision" on an appeal against an LEZ fine, the tribunal ruled that it was mandatory for any fixed penalty notice sent by post to be tracked.

Does this mean the Interpretations Act effectively doesn’t apply in Scotland and any NIP, FPN or other legal document needs to be sent via tracked post?
The article says GCC have been sending all their LEZ FPNs this way since the end of October.