Police pay legal costs for traffic ticket

Police have agreed to pay the £1,500 legal costs of a motorist they wrongly charged with parking illegally.

Gary Davies parked outside a theatre in Great Yarmouth last year, in a spot where restrictions had been controversial for many years.

Norfolk Police served him with a bill of charges but later dropped the case and agreed to pay his legal fees.

His lawyer Ian Fagelson said he would donate his fee to charity.

Mr Davies had been working on a building and parked outside St George’s Theatre in Yarmouth Way on 14 February 2023.

He obtained a restraining order from the police, but argued that if he had committed a crime, it should be a civil matter and not a criminal one.

He asked for help online and learned that parking enforcement had been decriminalized in that location.

The case was due to go to court, but Norfolk Police dropped the charges in January and agreed to pay the legal costs.

“As far as I knew, I had done nothing wrong. The police, of course, disagreed, but it turned out they were wrong too,” Davies said.

“It is very important that the police admit their mistakes and make this clear.”

Retired business lawyer Fagelson took over the case and called the charges “completely insane.”

Mr Fagelson said: “It was bizarre. Gary was charged with something that was not a crime.”

He promised to split his fee between World Jewish Relief’s Ukraine Crisis Appeal and Magen David Adom, which runs an emergency ambulance and blood donation service in Israel.

Phil Payne, traffic justice manager at Norfolk and Suffolk Police, admitted that police should not have pursued the prosecution.

In a letter to Mr Fagelson, he wrote: “Norfolk Police accept that they should not have brought proceedings as parking at this location had been decriminalised some time before the date on which an officer made a report of the traffic offence in relation to your client’s vehicle.”

“Any parking enforcement at this location is a civil matter that must be dealt with by the local authority.”

“This concludes the matter. However, on behalf of the police, I would like to apologize to your client for any unnecessary inconvenience this may have caused.”

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