When it comes to parking tickets Barrie Segal has seen it all. From traffic wardens ticketing a rabbit hutch on a yellow line, to a hearse being slapped with a £120 fine while loading a coffin at a funeral service. In fact he has had so many stories posted on his website that he has written a book about them.

“I could have included so many more tales but in the end we just had to draw the line,” he says. “Some of the situations where people got a ticket are so absurd it almost beggars belief, but they are all true and are a serious indictment of the parking system in this country.”

Few people would dedicate their lives to something as everyday as parking tickets, but then Segal is hardly most people. A chartered accountant by trade he has the air of a true eccentric, and says he is campaigning against one of the most corrupt and incompetent schemes in the country. “The system is simply not working,” he says, “and I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

This week councils will consider the implications of new guidelines issued by Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, suggesting they be more “motorist friendly”. The new document makes it clear that councils should not use parking fines to raise money. “Raising revenue should not be an objective of parking enforcement, nor should targets be set for raising revenue or the number of penalty notices to be issued,” the document says.

The changes will discourage councils from offering incentives such as free televisions and holidays to wardens who hand out the most tickets, as well as deterring the setting of targets for wardens. Rosie Winterton, the transport minister, said: “There is a perception that motorists are often unfairly penalised by parking attendants who are only interested in issuing as many tickets as possible. We want to ensure the penalties are fair and justified.”

All well and good, but Segal believes most councils will not be able to wean themselves off what has become one of the most lucrative sources of income. Councils made £1.16 billion from parking charges and fines in 2005, up from £638m in 1997, and the revenue is still increasing.

Since 1993 when parking enforcement was taken out of the hands of the police and given to local authorities, along with the revenue generated by fines, the number of parking tickets has increased massively: in London alone they went from 3.2m to 5m between 1996 and 2006.

Segal claims that by its very nature the system is geared to extracting as much money as possible from motorists because many councils subcontract parking enforcement to private, profit-making companies that are paid on a performance basis. He says the “ludicrous” examples he has come across are proof that this is the case.

Segal’s website www.appealnow.com advises motorists on how best to appeal against their parking ticket and he claims to have helped more than 1m motorists get tickets cancelled.

While many of the appeals are made on mundane grounds such as the issue date or offence details being incorrect it is the more bizarre incidents that form the backbone of his book, The Parking Ticket Awards: Crazy Councils, Meter Madness and Traffic Warden Hell (published next Friday by Portico Books, £5.99). They include:

- Michael Collins, who was driving his lorry in north London when a burst water main caused the road to give way. While he was waiting to be rescued a warden slapped a ticket on the windscreen, and said: “You can appeal.”

- Robert McFarland, a tour guide in the Yorkshire Dales, left his horse Charlie Boy in the street; he returned to find a ticket stuck to it. Under vehicle description the warden had written “brown horse”.

- The traffic warden Damien Smethurst handed out the most tickets in a single shift when he managed to nail 101 cars, totalling £8,080 in fines. The problem was that he issued them on a bank holiday, which meant 84 were invalid. “This is what gives parking attendants a bad name,” said his employer.

The book is also littered with trivia from the world of parking. Did you know that the parking meter was invented in 1935 by Carl Magee of Oklahoma City and was first introduced to Britain in 1958? Or that Britain’s first parking ticket was issued to Dr Thomas Creighton on September 19 1960 when he parked his Ford Popular outside a London hotel to attend a patient suffering a heart attack. There was a public outcry and Creighton was let off the £2 fine.

Today the most expensive place to park in Britain is Westminster, central London (the council charges £7.99 for two hours), and traffic wardens’ most wanted man is the driver of a white Nissan van (registration R671 LPD) which has 250 outstanding tickets.

Outside Britain two American academics published a paper that they claimed indicated the level of corruption in a country by reference to the number of parking tickets issued to its diplomats in New York. Kuwait came out top with an average of nearly 250 tickets per diplomat per year, followed by Egypt (139) Chad (124) and Sudan (119).

Behind the light-hearted tales is a serious point: if motorists feel that they are being targeted by rapacious councils using underhand tactics, tempers will boil over. Some traffic wardens are being given stab-proof vests and in June one was attacked after he ticketed a car outside a pub in south London that was holding a wake for a soldier killed in Iraq.

Top five tickets, 2007

1 Peter Stapleton a disabled driver, was hopping mad when his leg fell off mid journey forcing him to pull over to reattach it – and got a ticket

2 When a tree fell on Nicky Clegg’s car while driving near Pershore she thought she had had a lucky escape. But when she returned to the wreck with police the following day a traffic warden had got there first to pin a ticket to the shattered windscreen

3 Fred Holt, a pensioner who was held hostage in his local bank during a robbery, received a ticket despite wardens being told not to issue any by police at the scene

4 A young mother who pulled into a motorcycle bay when her baby started choking assumed the approaching traffic warden was to offer assistance. Instead he gave her an £80 ticket

5 The hearse given a ticket while parked outside the funeral directors. When challenged Edinburgh city council claimed the ticket was correct because the coffin was not yet in the car

Beating the rap

What to do if you believe you’ve been issued a parking ticket incorrectly:

- If possible tell the traffic warden why the ticket is wrong and ask him to record what you have said in his notebook.

- Examine the ticket to ensure all details are correct. There must be a date of issue and date of contravention.

- Check the vehicle registration number, vehicle colour and place of alleged contravention are all correct.

- Gather information on parking signs, yellow lines etc. Are they visible and clear? At night, were the street lights on? Take photographs as evidence.

- If you want to appeal do so immediately – don’t wait for it to become payable in full.

- The first step in the appeal process is to write to the council to challenge the ticket. Do not pay the ticket prior to this: you cannot appeal a ticket that you have paid. If the council rejects this informal challenge it will send a “notice to owner” form. You must return the form within 28 days with your representations to the council. If it rejects your case again you will receive a “notice of rejection of representations” and with it a notice of appeal, which allows you to put forward your objections to the independent adjudicator.

- Outside London you must appeal to the National Parking Adjudication Service (www.parking-appeals. gov.uk). In the capital you have to use the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service (www.parkingandtraffic appeals.gov.uk).

Explore Features

• Porsche

• BMW

• Mercedes

• Ferrari

• Bentley

• Audi

• Maserati

• Aston Martin

• Jaguar

• VW