There is something stirring in the national consciousness — a thirst for battle and a militant refusal to accept unfair punishment. Up and down the country, motorists returning to their cars to see that familiar scrap of paper fluttering under the windscreen wipers are no longer taking things lying down. As the number of parking tickets issued every year is growing, so too is the groundswell of rage against them.

New figures released to The Sunday Times reveal that in the year ending March 2003 the National Parking Adjudication Service received 8,537 appeals against parking tickets. Three years ago it received just 649.

In London the trend to challenge parking fines is even more apparent. The latest figures available from the Traffic and Parking Appeals Service, the organisation which deals with objections to tickets issued in the capital, show that 42,966 appeals were lodged with it in the year to March 2002.

Furthermore, these figures do not include all those successful challenges made directly by motorists to councils, which never reach the adjudication stage.

The statistics also prove that while it might seem arduous it is well worth a driver’s time and effort to contest a ticket. The latest figures from London show that 24,646 appeals found in favour of the motorist, a success rate of more than 57%. Outside the capital the rate of appeals accepted is even higher: 5,680 — or 67% — of the 8,537 appeals received last year were accepted.

“There is a real tide of public dissatisfaction with parking attendants and tickets,” says Barrie Segal, who runs the website appealnow.com, where motorists can contest their tickets. “Numbers are growing, but it still stuns me that more people don’t appeal.”

Since 1994, when local councils were first allowed to decriminalise and privatise their parking controls and keep the revenues they raised, parking attendants have been accused of bad practice and overzealousness.

In January this year 51-year-old Kevin McGuire from Bury, Lancashire, won his appeal against a £60 parking ticket after showing that NCP, the car parking company contracted by Bury council, had faked a photograph in an attempt to prove its case that he had parked in contravention of the rules.

Resentment was fuelled further when it emerged that some wardens are given incentives for issuing as many tickets as possible. In Westminster, NCP even ran a competition in which the warden who gave out the most tickets won the star prize of a car.

Some appeals have shown up massive errors in councils’ ticketing systems. A motorist recently appealed against a fine in Wandsworth, south London, arguing that the detailed wording of the ticket differed so greatly from that of the Road Traffic Act 1991 that it rendered the ticket invalid. The ticket did not, for example, spell out that the 28-day payment period began on the day the ticket was issued.

The adjudicator found in favour of the driver, implying that all tickets with the same wording in the borough could be deemed null and void — amounting to more than 200,000 fines. However, the ruling cannot be applied retrospectively and the borough has now changed the tickets.

“Too few motorists have any idea how to challenge parking tickets,” says John Squires, a parking expert and author of a new motorists’ guide to contesting tickets that is due to be published next month. The book will reveal the loopholes in the parking regulations and encourage drivers to understand the law better.

“Councils always play hardball and never give drivers any grace,” he says. “So I think motorists are allowed to do the same, to pull the council up on any errors of procedure or regulation and fight the ticket.”