COVENTRY council is considering an offer from a member of the public to foot the bill of writing to those wrongly fined after driving through city bus gates.
A meeting will be held next week to discuss whether to accept campaigner Richard Heneghan’s offer to pay for the council to notify all motorists who paid their fines for driving through Park Road, Greyfriars Green and Gosford Streetbus gates between December 2015 and April 2016 by means other than bank transfer or credit/debit card payment.
His offer, made in December, followed repeated refusals from the Labour-run council to write to each driver individually to notify them of their right to a refund of their £30 fine (or £60 if they did not pay it within 14 days).
Coun Jayne Innes, cabinet member for city services, has argued she could not justify using tax payers’ money to right to the affected motorists.
But Mr Heneghan believes the council is dragging its feet and has offered to dip into his own pocket to fund letters being sent to all drivers who paid by non-electric means, as long as the council automatically refunded drivers who had paid by bank transfer or credit/debit card payments.
To date, only £18,000 of the £398,460 of fines has been returned to motorists who drove through the bus gates when the signs at Park Road, Greyfriars Green and Gosford Street had been de-authorised by, the council claims, a ‘typo’ in a letter from the Department for Transport.
