Caroline Sheppard, the chief adjudicator of the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, accused some authorities of operating a "zero tolerance" attitude to insignificant infringements.
She suggested that motorists who have been given parking fines for trivial contraventions of the laws ought to be let off if they submit an appeal against the ticket..
Mrs Sheppard complained that motorists were being punished for such contraventions as leaving one wheel over the white line of a car's parking bay, or failing to display their pay-and-display ticket correctly.
In such cases, drivers whose penalties had been upheld on attraction to city halls have subsequently had them overturned through the tribunal.
Final 12 months the tribunal received much more than 12,000 applications to overturn tickets. In more than 60 per cent of cases it ruled in favour of the motorist.
The intervention by the chief adjudicator comes following The Sunday Telegraph's Campaign for Fair Parking highlighted instances where councils have carried on issuing tickets in locations in which they knew the indicators had been illegal.
Mrs Sheppard accused councils of failing to apply their discretion when penalties had been challenged, and called for "an outbreak of typical sense" in respect of trivial instances.
She advised motorists to challenge penalties if they believe they have been treated unjustly or illegally.
She said: "Motorists must appeal if they have any doubts more than parking tickets. People wish to explain but we just see what comes before us, so let us look at it."
She said that she was disturbed that too many local authorities had been failing in their legal duty to give correct deliberation to representations made by drivers contesting parking tickets, or to evidence offered in mitigation.
She stated that motorists' letters of explanation to local authorities had been frequently dismissed with a standard answer of one or two lines - a practice that suggests that their point of view "had not been looked at appropriately or fairly".
Many councils had been "unwilling or unable to consider appeals dependent on mitigating circumstances", Mrs Sheppard stated.
Mitigation pleas are widespread in cases in which a penalty charge notice had been issued because of a failure to show a permit, disabled parking badge or pay-and-display ticket.
Many local authorities had taken the "extraordinary" view that it was somehow "fairer" to throw out all representations, she said.
Adjudicators had seen this explained in letters of rejection in which local authority officers said it would be "unfair" on individuals who had paid parking ticket fines, if those who created representations were "let off".
Mrs Sheppard, a barrister, also complained about the rising number of appeals that local authorities failed to contest at the tribunal, saying: "I do not comprehend why local authorities reject drivers' representations and then go no further."
The tribunal, which covers all of England and Wales except Greater London, considers instances where motorists have received a parking ticket then appealed to the city hall, which has upheld the choice.
It received 12,423 submissions final 12 months, an improve of 11 per cent on the previous year's figure.
Of appeal cases heard by the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, 34 per cent had been won by the motorist because the authority did not contest the case and a additional 28 per cent had been decided in favour of the appelant after the adjudicator considered and turned down the local authorities' arguments, meaning that 62 per cent of all appeals had been successful nine out of the previous 10 years, the proportion of successful appeals has been over 60 per cent.
Last 12 months in 28 areas much more than half of all representations went uncontested by the nearby authorities concerned.
Areas with the largest percentage of tickets cancelled at the tribunal in 2008/9, the most recent statistics available, included the Medway towns in Kent, where 360 drivers appealed to the parking adjudicator and 91% were successful, and Slough, in which 246 appealed and 84% had been successful .
She declined to comment on local authorities that instructed civil enforcement officers to issue parking fines in spite of having been warned that their regulations or signs had been legally flawed.
But she said it was "regrettable" that the tribunal was still being requested to decide representations against penalties issued on streets where road signs had been misleading and confusing.
In some instances, the parking adjudicator has told authorities to ensure that their parking officials be given guidance from their legal teams.
Penalty charge notices can only be given out when a driver has broken a Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) {Barrie's Note: this is called a Traffic Management Order or TMO in London], or bylaw, that has been created correctly by the local authority.
Mrs Sheppard stated that parking adjudicators had been "bewildered" by a number of Traffic regulation orders, and called for greater clarity so that parking signs were understandable and unambiguous.
Probably the most typical challenges had been over pay and display parking tickets, "signs and lines", car ownership, loading and unloading, parking tickets not given out or not on the car, residents and visitors permits, and disabled bays and badges.
Most (57 per cent) of appeals are dealt with by post, 35 per cent by personal hearing and 8 per cent through the newly introduced telephone conference, the latter up from 12 in 2008 to 167 last year.
Locations where the highest percentage of motorists succeed on appeal in the tribunal
1. Chorley, Lancs - 96%
2. Sevenoaks, Kent - 95%
3. Medway - 91%
4. Maidstone, Kent - 90%
5. East Sussex - 88%
6. NW Leicestershire - 88%
7. Worcester - 85%
7. Gateshead - 85%
9. Slough - 84%
10. Charnwood, Leics - 84%
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