PARKING tickets issued in car parks by Bury Council have been declared "invalid" after a solicitor exposed they were incorrectly worded.

Aubrey Isaacson, who has practices in Prestwich, Whitefield and Sunnybank, fought a six-month battle with the council after being issued with a ticket in the Longfield Centre car park.

After taking his case to the National Parking Adjudication Service in Manchester, Mr Isaacson was told this week that he had won his appeal against Bury Council on the grounds that the Traffic Regulation Order was invalid.

The decision could open the floodgates for hundreds of motorists issued with tickets in off-street car parks in Ramsbottom, Tottington, Radcliffe, Prestwich, Whitefield and car parks outside Bury town centre.

Celebrating the result, Mr Isaacson said: "I believe that bullying bureaucrats should be brought down whenever possible and this is particularly so when they are bungling, bullying bureaucrats!

"Local authorities such as Bury, and the companies who sub-contract the parking duties for them, offer no sympathy or mercy or quarter to people who commit a tiny infringement.

"It now turns out that Bury have been obtaining hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions of pounds, over the past years when they were not entitled to do so, because the parking orders which they have relied upon have been invalid."

Mr Isaacson (64), who has been practising law for 40 years, received a parking ticket for not positioning his wheels exactly between the white lines of the Longfield's free car park.

He said he had no idea he was breaking parking regulations and decided to look closely at the law behind the Traffic Regulation Order.

The order comes under the Metropolitan Borough of Bury (Parking Places) Order 2003 and affects more than 1,600 off-street parking spaces throughout the borough.

The order was made under section 35 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and, while it was found that Mr Isaacson had contravened the order for not parking within the marked bay, he discovered a legal loophole that made the Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) invalid.

Under the order, PCNs should carry a statement informing motorists that is an offence to fail to pay the penalty charge incurred for contravening regulations.

Mr Isaacson's ticket did not include the relevant information and therefore his parking ticket was rendered invalid.

However, on further inspection it was revealed that the Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) itself was invalid as parking offences had been de-criminalised in 2002.

Upholding Mr Isaacson's appeal, parking adjudicator Mark Hinchliffe said: "It is, to my mind, wrong that a citizen who reads a TRO written and brought into effect after de-criminalisation should be threatened with prosecution for not paying a penalty."

He said the council was in a "no-win" situation as the penalty charge notices did not comply with the Traffic Regulation Order, which was found to be "legally unsound, legally ineffective and falsely based and reasoned".

Mr Hinchliffe criticised Bury's transfer of TROs to the de-criminalised system and warned: "It is vital that the Traffic Regulation Orders that the councils rely on to regulate parking and to generate penalty charges are up-to-date and are fit for purpose in today's de-criminalised times."

This is the second rap on the knuckles within 18 months for the council by the parking adjudication service after Radcliffe motorist Roger Macarthur won his appeal for incorrect wording of his parking ticket. Since then the council has changed the statements on its tickets to specify an exact timescale for people to pay the penalty charge.

Commenting on the latest case, a spokesman for Bury Council said: "Advice to date suggests that we should still enforce the Orders while the decision and the possible implications are being discussed."