I WOULD like to correct correspondent Bury Community Charge-payer (Your Letters, June 27). My letter about parking was concerned only with the complaints procedure and the reasons why I thought that NCP operatives were issuing fixed penalty tickets "like confetti".

It is a fact of life that there are motorists who will ignore waiting regulations on the highway. Notice I use the word "waiting", and if one reads the regulations or the signs one will see why. Motorists who complain when they receive a ticket have the answer in their own hands.

Waiting regulations were brought in to prevent congestion and this was the basis of enforcement by GMP traffic wardens. Any revenue from fixed penalties ended up with central government. Since Bury MBC took it upon themselves to use enforcement as a means of making money, this has changed and is based purely and simply on revenue.

There is no point in "blasting" the NCP operator as he is only doing his job as instructed by his employer, nor is it the fault of NCP management or the council parking manager. No, the responsibility rests with Bury councillors who commissioned the consultants to evaluate a scheme based on the amount of money that would be raised. The person responsible for negotiating the contract should have been aware of the implications.

With regard to town centre shopkeepers who are being penalised for trying to make a living, the powers-that-be must negotiate some agreement. And the correspondent who suggests that 11pm is an unreasonable time for a shop to receive deliveries should qualify his unhelpful remarks by suggesting when they should be delivered!

May I also suggest that to refer to the NCP operators as "traffic wardens" is incorrect. They are "waiting operatives" as they appear to have been instructed to watch and wait for an offence to be committed, rather than prevent it happening.

A. WITHINGTON, Wellington Road, Bury.