By Jenna Daroczy, Parramatta Sun, 3 March 2011

Parramatta council’s new adjudication panel has overturned nearly half of all parking fines submitted, most without any evidence.

Documents obtained by The Sun under Right to Information legislation show since the review board first sat on October 27 last year, 111 people have had their parking fines reviewed.

Cautions were issued to 52 of them, which means the fine was dropped but they were sent letters of warning that their next offence would not be taken so lightly.

Of those 52, the majority claimed they had bought tickets and had been wrongly fined — but could not produce those tickets.

The council could not provide a specific breakdown of how many applicants used this excuse, but staff indicated it was a "high percentage".

The average parking fine in Parramatta is $86, but it goes up to more than $500 for parking in a disabled zone without accreditation.

At the lowest end of the scale, the adjudication panel has overturned $4730 in revenue.

North Parramatta resident Naomi Jackson is one resident who had her fine cancelled after taking her case to the adjudication panel.

Ms Jackson had parked in the recently redeveloped long stay car park beside Parramatta Library and wanted to pay for 14 hours' parking, as the signs advised her she could do.

"I was prepared to pay for the 14 hours of parking; I was heading into the city all day and using this car park was part of my plan for the day," she said.

"But when I went to pay for the parking, I found that the signage on the metre indicated only 10 hours parking, clearly in contradiction to the official parking signs around the car park.

"Yet another contradicting sign, this one a piece of paper laminated and stuck on the meter, indicated that the meter could only issue tickets for four hours of parking."

The council has indicated different parts of the car park have different timed stays, and different meters apply to different sections of the car park.

"I took it to the review panel who reversed the fine, but I still got a letter from the council telling me to 'be more careful in future', which was frustrating because I still think the signage was unclear," she said.

[Click here to view the original Parramatta Sun article.]