£500,000 of parking tickets ripped up

It is a familiar dilemma facing hundreds of motorists every day.

Do you pay that £60 parking ticket and get the £30 " discount", or do you dig your heels in and insist you shouldn't have been ticketed?

Today, it emerged that it is worth complaining. Richmond council was forced to rip up thousands of tickets worth £500,000 after it sent out letters claiming to have considered appeals by motorists when, in fact, the council had not examined each case in detail.

Nearly 6,000 tickets have been urgently reviewed after it emerged that the council's parking office wrongfully rejected appeals in a bid to clear a huge backlog.

The move came to light when an employee alerted senior managers.

Richard Mellor, the council's head of legal services, launched an investigation and found the council had breached the 1991 Road Traffic Act.

Officials ordered 11,369 tickets to be cancelled after the council risked falling foul of another piece of legislation - the London Local Authorities Act 2000 - which gave councils a sixmonth deadline for reminders to be sent to owners of ticketed vehicles.

A re-examination of 5,749 tickets led to the eventual cancellation of 1,697 tickets and refunds have so far been made in a further 889 out of 3,032 cases that had already been paid.