Thousands of Yorkshire motorists could be in line for refund after parking ticket fiasco

Around 16,000 parking tickets have been wrongly issued by West Yorkshire Police’s PCSOs, the force admitted yesterday.

Members of the public have paid more than £485,000 to the courts after being fined for illegally parking by PCSOs who did not have the power to give the tickets.

Police records show the penalty notices were issued between 2006 and March this year.

But the force said PCSOs may have handed out other tickets, not on its current record system, from three years earlier in 2003.

Assistant Chief Constable Andy Battle said it was only when the force reviewed PCSO powers five months ago that the error came to light.

He said: “West Yorkshire Police carried out a review of PCSO powers in March 2015, at which time we discovered that PCSOs had not been correctly granted powers to issue non-endorsable Police Fixed Penalty Notices for parking offences.

“This was due to an anomaly in the way that powers can be allocated and meant in effect that PCSOs were not empowered to give tickets issued to vehicles illegally parked.

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