A man has been fined £540 after failing to pay Clean Air Zone (CAZ) charges. Clive Harvey, 39, drove through Birmingham multiple times without a bank card, meaning he was unable to make the CAZ payments.
At the time, Clive claims he was waiting for a new bank card after falling victim to an attempted scam in December last year. Having destroyed his card, Clive was unable to pay three days' worth of charges and despite explaining what had happened he was still slapped with several fixed penalty notices.
Clive, from Lichfield, Staffordshire has been in touch "dozens" of times with Birmingham City Council over the course of four months to no avail and even got his local MP Michael Fabricant to take up the cause, reports Birmingham Live.
The motorist, who is a design consultant and owner of an engineering firm, said he believed the council was ignoring him on purpose. "They don't have an answerphone," he said. "It just goes straight to a dead line."
Clive claimed that when he eventually managed to get through to the local authority he was told by a member of staff that the council "had not even read the complaint". That's when he felt compelled to go to his MP.
But he has been told multiple times that nothing can be done. He even claimed he was told to go through debt collectors rather than the council as there was no exception to the payment rules.
Birmingham's Clean Air Zone came into effect on June 1 2021 and charges started on June 14. The pollution-busting zone means cars, taxis, vans, lorries, buses and coaches face a daily charge for coming into the city centre if they are not compliant with emissions standards and have not obtained an exemption.
The council website reads: "Please note you will not receive a notification or alert advising you that you have entered the zone and payment is due; you as a driver are fully responsible for understanding and managing all payments. If you do not pay during that allocated 13-day payment window you will be subject to a Penalty Charge Notice of £120, reduced to £60 if paid within 14 days."
Because the issue has been going on for so long, Clive now owes almost £600. He last spoke to the council the week before Easter and was told once again that nothing could be done.
"When you appeal you lose the discount," Clive said. "Then it goes up to £180 and if they reject your appeal you have to pay. My next point of call was to raise a Freedom of Information request asking for financial figures. It's my honest opinion this is set up to fail. I feel like the victim of a con."
Clive, who was driving into Birmingham to work with a client, described himself as a "highly professional person" and said he believed other people would be struggling.
He added: "If I'm failing with this system then who else is? I was the victim of crime. It was a website handing over engineering documents. I quickly realised 'this doesn't seem right' and did some more research and found out it was a scam."
A Birmingham City Council spokesperson said: "For someone who receives a penalty charge notice they can pay the charge or, if they believe it has been issued incorrectly, they can submit a challenge. If someone chooses to challenge a penalty charge notice they have up to 28 days from the date of issue and a challenge can be submitted online or by post.
“To make the process as clear and as transparent as possible the penalty charge notice includes the grounds for a challenge, in line with the relevant legislation, and the Council has published clear guidelines on how it considers all representations. If someone is unhappy with the decision of the Council to reject a challenge there is another right to appeal or right to challenge a penalty charge notice at later stages of the process.”
For more stories from where you live, visit InYourArea.
