The government has been forced to correct its figures after a journalist from the Financial Times pointed out an absolute howler of a miscalculation.
Rishi Sunak is looking to woo motorists at the next election after a so-called ‘ULEZ referendum’ in Uxbridge and South Ruislip went his way.
But his pitch to like-minded voters got off to a terrible start after the Department for Transport vastly overstated the number of wrongly issued penalty tickets.
The Plan for Drivers, published on Tuesday and signed by transport secretary Mark Harper, set out to “restrain the most anti-driver traffic management measures” and “stop councils profiting from moving traffic enforcement”.
A section called, “Stopping Unfair Enforcement” cited the high proportion of penalty-charge notices (PCNs) that were overturned on appeal in London as an example of the injustice facing motorists.
It stated that 42.8 per cent of the more than 7 million PCNs issued in the year to March 2022 were successfully appealed against — implying there were about 3.2 million successful appeals against the 7.47 million notices.
However, statistics issued by London Councils, the grouping of London local authorities, show there were in fact 45,709 appeals against PCNs during the period, of which 18,130, or 0.24 per cent of all tickets issued, succeeded — a figure 176 times smaller than the government document claimed.
After the Financial Times pointed out the error, the transport department on Friday changed the document to make clear that 42.8 per cent of drivers who appealed were successful.
The transport department insisted its original point stood. “Our Plan for Drivers highlights that more than 40 per cent of London penalty-charge notice appeals are successful, which is why we are clamping down on overzealous enforcement and making fines fairer,” it said.
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