For over a year Liverpool Council has failed to respond fully to Freedom of Information questions about an alleged 'back door route' used by a number of Labour councillors to get parking fines rescinded by the local authority.
It was in October last year when the ECHO first began investigating claims several councillors from the ruling Labour group had seen their parking tickets cancelled via a former council officer in previous years. We first reported on this matter in January of this year.
The claims were initially brought to light by the city's Liberal Democrat leader, Cllr Richard Kemp, who said he became aware of the situation last year and put a complaint into the council's standards board.
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He said he believes in total there have been 18 parking tickets received by city Labour councillors that were wrongly cancelled by an officer who is no longer employed by the authority. Cllr Kemp said he understands that some senior officers and their friends had also 'used the same route' to get tickets cancelled.
We first submitted a Freedom of Information request in October last year, asking for the full details of any parking tickets that had been received by elected councillors and then rescinded by officers since 2015. We did not receive any response until January.
The council said it did not hold a complete record of data relevant to our request 'such as to be able to provide a sufficiently comprehensive and accurate response.' It added that searching and gathering the relevant information from the 'limited information actually held' would take more than 41 hours - more than the 18-hour limit prescribed under the Freedom of Information Act.
As such, we narrowed the scope of our questions in a new Freedom of Information request, submitted to the council in January. We asked for the names of any councillors who had fines rescinded by the council's parking services team between 2015 and 2020 and for the details and explanations of why the fines were rescinded.
The last update we received from the council came in August. We were told that the issue is 'more complicated than would first appear' as it potentially involves data protection rights. We were told that the council's response is being reviewed by senior officers and that a response should arrive soon. That response is still yet to arrive.
Speaking about the year-long delay, Cllr Kemp, who has chased up the response himself with the council, said: "The failure of the council to respond to an FOI request about the abuse of parking tickets by officers and members of the council is an absolute disgrace.
"This is a politically sensitive matter which the council has made worse by its failure to respond to information requests quickly. In this case the ECHO found out that councillors and a number of officers had potentially dodged the rules and arranged for a officer to cancel parking tickets. Councillors should use exactly the same system as everyone else if they feel that they have been giving a ticket unfairly.
"This was politics at its worst. Unfortunately, when I referred those matters to the council, I was told that they could not be pursued because the officer at the heart of the issue had already resigned from the council’s employment.
"Even now, although the mayor promises a new openness and transparency, the internal procedures of the council still seem to cling to the old culture of darkness and delay.
"Officers and members alike should always remember that we answer to the people of Liverpool, and we must be scrupulously clear and scrupulously open about how we handle their affairs and their money."
Liverpool Council has been approached for a response.
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