News / Council
Slow uptake to council’s parking refund scheme
State government has no plans to intervene after fines blunder
Mark Phillips
FEWER than 2% of recipients of potentially wrongly issued parking fines in Merri-bek have sought compensation since a refund scheme began this month.
Far from an anticipated flood of people seeking a refund, the scheme has had barely a trickle of applications.
Three weeks into the scheme, just 3428 applications have been made and payments approved by the council have totalled just $106,000.
This is just a fraction of the Merri-bek Council’s estimate that up to 250,000 fines may have been impacted by the mistake over a 12-year period when the council was fining drivers twice it should have been for a range of minor parking offences in “green sign zones”.
When it publicly revealed the error in June, the council estimated the final bill for providing the refunds could be anything between $10.7 million and $14.7 million.
The error was made from 2013 because the council was charging motorists 0.5 penalty units for 11 different types of parking offences when it should only have been charging 0.2 penalty units. This translated to overcharging motorists by between $43 and $59 for each parking offence, depending on what year it was issued in.
The council has introduced a scheme where drivers who believe they were charged wrongly can apply online for a partial refund.
It opened on July 1 and will run for 12 months.
In the first three weeks up until July 22, 2491 applications had been finalised. Eighty-seven per cent of these, totalling 2188 applications, had been approved for a refund. The other 303 applications had been refused because of ineligibility such as applying for a fine not part of the scheme or lodging multiple applications for the same infringement.
Another 937 are either yet to be processed or awaiting finalisation due to requests for additional or different documentation.
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Merri-bek’s chief executive officer, Cathy Henderson, said the council was reviewing applications steadily as they came in.
After a claim has been validated the motorist will receive an email advising of this and that payments will be made within 21 days.
“We have designed the scheme to be quick and easy to use,” she said.
“We have promoted the scheme through Council’s communications channels and the media to ensure that as many affected motorists as possible are aware of this scheme …Council is moving quickly to refund eligible motorists through our proactive parking refund scheme because it’s the right thing to do.”
Despite the council knowing of potential problems with its parking fines regime for at least a year before it took action, the state government will not be intervening.
A government spokesperson said the Minister for Local Government, Nick Staikos, was aware of the issue but would leave it to Merri-bek to rectify its error by issuing refunds where requested.
“Issuing parking fines is the responsibility of individual councils and the government does not have the power to intervene in council decision-making,” the spokesperson said.
“We expect Merri-bek Council to act in good faith and compensate affected Victorians as needed.”
Anyone with concerns about administrative actions and decisions of councils has the option of contacting the Victorian Ombudsman.
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