One-woman campaign forces Labour council to repay a year's parking fines
A Labour council is to pay back a year's worth of parking fines after a woman launched a crusade against a 'misleading' sign.
Manchester city council will also remove the sign that the social media campaigner, who uses the name Zoe Bread online, revealed was pointing drivers to the wrong meter, resulting in thousands of pounds in fines.
Over a five-week campaign, the T-shirt maker and activist staked out the street on which she was fined, interviewed a traffic warden, and questioned Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, on a radio show.
Now the local authority says it will refund a year's worth of fines.
The campaign against the sign began in early April, when Zoe was given a £50 penalty for paying at the wrong machine in Collier Street, in Manchester city centre.
Now, Bev Craig, the council leader, has told the campaigner she accepts the sign 'should be better', that it will be changed 'as soon as possible', and fines will be refunded.
Zoe told her 1.3 million TikTok followers the sign directs drivers to a nearby pay and display machine for a private car park and she had 'parked for six minutes with the wrong ticket because of the arrow direction'.
On April 8, in the first of a series of videos, she published a recording of one council official telling her motorists were often fined after parking on Collier Street but mistakenly paying for the private car park nearby.
Then a security guard from a neighbouring car park told Zoe around 10 people a month are caught out by the sign.
On April 11, she revealed the results of her Freedom of Information Request for how many fines were awarded on Collier Street before and after the private car park was created. In 2018, just 93 people were awarded a penalty, compared with 288 in 2023.
Zoe then filmed herself speaking to a parking warden, who told her he agreed that the parking sign was misleading. 'We tell the council but it's up to the council to do it,' he said.
The council insisted many people managed to buy the correct parking tickets for Collier Street. But after Zoe called into a local radio station to question Mr Burnham over the issue, Cllr Craig contacted her to resolve the issue.
The council leader said on Saturday: 'Our signage at Collier Street is legally compliant but we agree it could be much clearer. We're going to address this as soon as possible with new signs, by relocating the meter, and by asking the owners of the nearby private car park to take down their signs which have contributed to confusion.
'As a goodwill gesture, we will also quash any pending or unpaid tickets relating to Collier Street – including Zoe's – and review our records of fines for the last 12 months in that location. We will refund anyone who said at the time that they believed they had paid for their parking.'
Alan Good, a Liberal Democrat councillor who backed Zoe's campaign, said on Saturday: 'It should not have taken Zoe's hard work in raising the issue, formal complaints to the council from myself, in addition to social media pressure, for common sense to prevail.'
Reflecting on her victory, Zoe told her followers: 'If I've learnt anything from this situation it's that the only way to get anything done is to be a completely annoying little pain in the ass. Oh, and that I was born to be a completely annoying little pain in the ass.'
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