A deaf man from Hinckley has been given a hefty fine by Leicestershire County Council after claiming he got a parking ticket while trying to explain the pay-and-display machine was not working, reports the Hinckley Times
Michael Broderick, who is a sign language teacher, says the parking machine was out of order and that he went to nearby offices to inform council staff. He claims that while trying to explain the situation in sign language, a traffic warden slapped a ticket on his car. The council denies the claim and insists the machine was working leaving Mr Broderick with a big bill to pay.
He said: “The ticket machine wasn’t working and I couldn’t access the intercom speaker to ask for help because I’m deaf and there is no adapted service.
“I signed to my interpreter across the car park that the machine was not working and we went to reception to explain. I was advised that as long as I informed them which car was mine, there would be no problem.
“I once again looked at the machine which was still displaying a fault and when I went to my car, I had been issued with a ticket.”
Check out the full story on the Hinckley Times
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Andy not Mr Palmer but another one
July 1, 2013
When councils do daft things like this it is usually because the staff are obeying their rules (which they have to do) but the rules themselves do not allow for exceptions to normal procedure. It’s one of those bonkers things that happen because nobody has the power to change it, certainly not the front-line troops.
Most people don’t really know how councils work but the essential thing to grasp is that there are two lots of people involved. The ones we mostly deal with are council staff. They are the hired help, they do as they are told and sometimes make things up as they go along!
The other and much more important people are the councillors. These are elected officials, they are YOUR representative and if they wish to continue to be elected they have to work for their electors. They have a lot of power over the people mentioned above. If a councillor starts snooping about investigating wrong doing by the staff you can guarantee they will all start jumping about.
This is something I have discovered for myself. If you want to get a wrong righted, if there is a bad or unhelpful member of staff that you want to report, then go and see your councillor.
If the councillor is unhelpful there are sanctions that you can apply, for example by approaching the political party leader or the chair of the council. It really pays to understand how the layers of power work and how to pull the right levers to get something done.
If he hasn’t done so already our BSL teacher should go and see his councillor and explain what has happened.
barakta
July 1, 2013
If there is a “leave a note” system for the machine not working, why do the signs never say this? The only thing I can suggest Mr Broderick did in this situation was get a photo of the machine displaying a fault but it’d be proving the photo was taken at the time. If he had an interpreter with him how was he not understood? Can’t the interpreter act as a witness to this event?
Isn’t Leicestershire council the one which fined a Guide Dog user for his dog pooing in a park which obv the owner didn’t know had happened and offered to fix straight away and was legally exempt from such fines? Oh yes, here it is: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Guide-dog-owner-fined-80-animal-mess-couldn-t/story-15899934-detail/story.html#axzz2XmCtJY1q
Sounds like there’s no benefit of the doubt and I agree it’s the sort of thing many deaf/disabled people will just pay off cos the risk of fighting is too high like this. Telling people when a problem happens, we can’t use the phone and so we’re punished twice cos we are then not believed when we report that.