Southwark Labour forced to refund nearly £500,000 after illegal fines scandal

As reported in The Standard, Southwark Council is refunding almost half a million pounds after wrongly fining thousands of drivers in just four months. More than 10,000 penalty charge notices were issued illegally between February and June this year due to what the Council has admitted was an “administrative error.”

This latest fiasco follows an earlier blunder in January when the Council was forced to repay £120,000 for fines issued on a bus lane that did not legally exist.

Cllr Victor Chamberlain, Leader of Southwark Liberal Democrats and Opposition Leader on Southwark Council, said:

"Southwark Labour has been caught out again — illegally fining thousands of drivers and wasting huge sums of money. This is not just an embarrassing mistake, it’s yet another example of incompetence from a Council that cannot get the basics right. Residents are paying the price for this chaos and they deserve so much better from their local authority."

Southwark Liberal Democrats are calling for urgent assurances that all affected motorists will be refunded quickly, that the full costs of this error will be covered by contractors and not Southwark taxpayers and that stronger oversight will be introduced to prevent further costly blunders.