Liverpool report reveals ‘unacceptable culture’

Cancellation of

Liverpool City Council has released information about parking penalty notices issued to elected members that were cancelled between 2015 and 2020.

The interim chief executive of Liverpool City Council has said the historic cancellation of parking fines for councillors showed an “unacceptable culture”.

The disclosure follows a Freedom of Information request. The city council said it has taken a considerable amount of time and effort to pull together the response due to gaps in records. Further work is ongoing to ensure that all documents that can be made public are disclosed.

The Freedom of Information request by the Liverpool Echo newspaper showed 51 penalty charge notices (PCNs) were challenged and rescinded by councillors at the authority between April 2015 and December 2020.

The city council is being partially overseen by government commissioners after a critical inspection report which followed the arrest of then-mayor Joe Anderson, along with a number of other people, in December 2020 as part of a Merseyside Police fraud investigation.

Interim chief executive Theresa Grant, who took over after Tony Reeves stepped down last year, said: “We have released historic information about parking penalty charge notices issued to elected members that were cancelled between 2015 and 2020. It highlights previous poor practice, relating to past processes and scrutiny of the way the council used to be run.

“It is, sadly, an example of the unacceptable culture that pervaded parts of the council in the past, as documented in the ‘best value’ inspection report. I want to be clear that what happened historically is no reflection of the council’s current parking services staff nor management team.

“It is important to remember that much has changed at Liverpool City Council and we are now a more mature organisation, one that is open and transparent about decisionmaking.”

As part of an improvement journey following the publication of the ‘best value’ inspection report by Max Caller in 2021, the council said it has made many changes to its governance systems and processes.

Any elected member querying a ticket should have been directed to the standard appeals process for parking tickets. The council concedes such a process would have ensured that an authorised appeals case handler would have considered the response in a fair and appropriate way. Councillors receiving a parking ticket are now advised