Parking fine refunds totalling £289,000 unclaimed

The council has ended a scheme to find those owed refunds after wrongly issuing more than 6,000 fines

An estimated £289,000 in refunds for wrongly issued parking tickets remain unclaimed, a council has revealed.

Reading Borough Council admitted last year it incorrectly handed out 6,136 Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) between 2013 and 2024.

A year after a restitution scheme was launched to trace those owed compensation, the authority is closing it down with only 783 claims - 12.8% of the original estimation - approved for refund.

The council said money would still be paid to motorists who make a claim to Parking Services and chief executive Jackie Yates said she "sincerely apologised" to people affected by the mistakes.

In October 2024, a number of "irregularities on Traffic Regulation Orders" that meant all PCNs issued on the main "no stopping" road through Reading known as the East Route had no legal basis.

A council meeting confirmed the route covered Kings Road, from its junction with Watlington Street to Cemetery Junction, Wokingham Road and partially into the adjoining streets.

During the 12-month scheme to find those entitled to a refund the council wrote to 2,235 people.

Despite an initial surge after a social media campaign, direct correspondence and media interviews it has only received 51 new claims since the beginning of May.

Contact was limited to motorists with recent PCNs and valid addresses still held by the council.

This is likely to exclude many older cases, especially since Reading Borough Council confirmed it did not retain personal data for most PCN payments.

There was no cross-referencing with council taxpayers, the Electoral Register or other internal databases.

This may have limited the reach of the process, particularly for older or low-income motorists who are less likely to appear in credit databases.

For those with court enforcement orders incorrectly issued against them CDER Group was employed to contact all 147 affected individuals, then credit reference agencies were used to trace those unresponsive.

Only 69 of the 147 were successfully refunded, leaving 78 unresolved cases.

A committee meeting in September concluded the issue has "been in the public domain with sufficient attention for almost a year" and a decision was made to end the scheme.

But new claims can still be made to the parking team.