Hannah Goff BBC News Online

Ticket-happy parking attendants could become no more than a bad memory if a radical new approach to parking enforcement is extended across the nation's highways and byways.

Wardens are being told to think the unthinkable

Both Manchester City Council and London's Westminster council are urging their parking wardens to end the blitz on hapless motorists and take a "commonsense" approach instead.

They are being told to think the unthinkable and consider whether an illegally parked vehicle actually warrants a parking ticket before issuing one.

And in Manchester the use of the dreaded clamp has been outlawed in city centre areas.

The moves follow a public backlash to "jobsworth" parking attendants and a string of negative stories about irrational ticketing.

In Manchester these include a bus being given a parking ticket at a bus stop and a rabbit hutch ticketed outside a petshop.

'Test of reasonableness'

It is hardly surprising that at one stage the rate of successfully appealed parking tickets in the city topped 60%.

And in Westminster, tickets have been issued to cars before their drivers could get the money in the ticket machine.

And Soho businesses claim to have seen cars being blitzed with tickets at 4am.

Manchester parking attendants have been retrained to apply a "test of reasonableness" before issuing a parking control notice or PCN.

This means they might engage in a discussion with a delivery driver unloading his wares while parked on a double yellow line before slapping a ticket in his windscreen.

If we say our enforcement program is all about keeping the traffic moving - when we clamp a vehicle we keep it there for longer Manchester's head of parking Andy Vaughan

If after several minutes the van is still there or causing an obstruction, then a ticket would of course be issued.

Manchester's head of parking services Andy Vaughan explains the move: "We had almost lost support for what we were doing - and any enforcement regime requires public support.

"There are some policy issues as well such as clamping which just don't make sense.

"If we say our enforcement programme is all about keeping the traffic moving - when we clamp a vehicle we keep it there for longer. How does that help?"

In Westminster, while policies have not changed, the council's contractors, NCP, has been telling its attendants to play it by the book.

There are calls for proportionality within parking enforcement

"We have listened to the criticism of our parking regime and as a consequence are currently involved in a review of our regulations.

"NCP has been briefing its attendants on the importance of certain elements of the existing regulations and the need for them to be followed closely," a Westminster council spokesman said.

And it is the detail of such regulations that perhaps is key - especially where private money-making outfits run council parking enforcement contracts.

'Conflict of interests'

Self-styled parking campaigner and "clamp fairy" Toby Micklethwait says there is an inherent conflict of interests when the very people policing parking contraventions are the ones who make money out of them.

"They are acting as judges, they are deciding that people are breaking the law and they are making money out of it - that has got to be wrong," says Mr Micklethwait, who has a website which shows how people to remove a clamp from their vehicle.

RAC head of traffic and road management Kevin Delaney says that as it is unlikely outsourcing will end, it is about getting the contract right in the first place.

"All the local authorities really need to do is think what they really want.

"If they want to keep the traffic flowing then the contract has to be about quality rather than quantity of tickets. It has to be based on compliance," Mr Delaney added.

Clamping has been outlawed in Manchester City Centre

There is no doubt that we are seeing a backlash - from the motorists, from politicians and from the lawyers who deal with the parking appeals, Mr Delaney says.

"They are increasingly calling for proportionality."

He cites a case in which a man was given a ticket for parking his car in a pay-and-display car park 10 minutes beyond the expiry time.

His vehicle was also removed 10 minutes after the ticket expired.

He paid the ticket but contested the tow fee and his case was upheld because the adjudicators said that to remove the vehicle was not only "disproportionate" but an "opportunistic" use of enforcement powers.

This strive for proportionality is something reflected in Manchester's new policy.

'It's a fair cop'

Mr Vaughan: "We're not just going soft irresponsibly but what we're saying is that we must be proportionate in what we do and I am not sure that we always did that".

"We are never going to be the most popular of the council's services but if we can get to where people just say - It's a fair cop - then that will be okay."

So is this policy likely to be adopted by other councils?

London's Camden Council, which has one in five parking tickets successfully appealed, said it did take an interest in what other councils do.

A spokesman said: "We have fairly specific pressures in Camden and it is by far a more congested area than Manchester.

"Our wardens are trained to make reasonable decisions but it is very difficult for them to start to engage in a discussion with people about how long they're going to be there because not everybody tells the truth."

Parking regulations can be very confusing for the motorists

However, the RAC's Mr Delaney believes that change really is afoot.

"Other local authorities will be watching to see how Manchester does - many will be hoping their experiment fails.

"But if it doesn't fail there will not be a single local authority in the UK which will be able to resist its new policy," he concludes.