Free Traffic Legal Advice

I live in a busy coastal town and we only have on street parking. As a last resort if I come home from work and there are no other spaces I have on occasions parked overnight in this particular spot. I know it’s not ideal but as there are no official signs and no double yellow lines I assumed that although it’s not ideal, I was safe from a fine. Went to drive to work this morning and I have ticket. The wording states
“Code 27
Parked in a special enforcement area adjacent to a dropped footway”

They waited 5 minutes and as I didn’t appear they issued a fine.

I have taken some photos showing that there are no signs and no yellow lines. I was parked in front of this area across the 2 ends of the white lines.

Can anyone shed any light whether they can enforce this fine?

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Can you give us a GSV link to the location, please.

I am very suspicious on this one, because it is clearly NOT a dropped kerb, but the double-dashed lines in your photo indicate the ends of a parking bay, so it does look as if this could have been enforced, but not with the contravention on the PCN. Hence the need to see the full picture on GSV

I see no regulation signs for the two bays in question, therefore parking half in and half out is not a contravention, and there is no dropped kerb there, so the contravention did not occur and you should submit representations on that basis.

A police constable could no doubt issue a Fixed Penalty Notice for obstruction, but I can't see the council have any enforcement powers there at all.  Why didn't they put double-yellow lines there ?

Anyone else got any further take on this? I would like to be fairly confident that they cannot fine/enforce  this before I go the appeal route.

Yes I understand this, thanks again for your kind help. I just wondered whether anyone else had a take on this, as I don’t want to start appealing etc if in reality I am not clearly going to win.

There are 3 situations where the kerb is dropped and the contravention is made out None apply here.

(1)In a special enforcement area a vehicle must not be parked on the carriageway adjacent to a footway, cycle track or verge where—
(a)the footway, cycle track or verge has been lowered to meet the level of the carriageway for the purpose of—
(i)assisting pedestrians crossing the carriageway,
(ii)assisting cyclists entering or leaving the carriageway, or
(iii)assisting vehicles entering or leaving the carriageway across the footway, cycle track or verge;

They could have used a different regulation but didn't

An adjudicator would have to stretch the law beyond all recognition to not allow your appeal, but it will go to tribunal 

IMO, the footway has been lowered to meet the level of the carriageway, it's just that in this case it's been achieved by placing three steps. OK, not the gently sloping type we're used to seeing, but the criterion is an objective test of whether the footway has been lowered and the answer must be yes IMO.

So you move on to ..for what purpose? And we're missing half the available info!

The test:
..for the purpose of assisting pedestrians crossing the carriageway,

What we can see would enable pedestrians, or at least the able-bodied of them, to leave the carriageway and reach the footway. But this is not the test. It has long been held that in order to meet this standard there must be a means by which pedestrians can enter or leave the carriageway opposite i.e. they are provided in pairs, not singly. Otherwise 'assisting crossing the carriageway' cannot be achieved.

GSV doesn't give a definitive answer because it's out of date. So, get your camera out and take photos of the opposite side of the road, say spanning a length of 15-20m either side of the point immediately opposite the steps.

If there's no corresponding dropped footway then the council are on to a loser, they might also be if an adjudicator holds that the utility of steps excludes sufficient persons as to not apply to 'pedestrians'. But this aspect hasn't been tested in court as far as I'm aware and therefore I don't think that it's possible to state definitively that steps as such fail to meet the test.

And OP, as the prohibition is 24/7 and the exceptions of alighting/boarding and use of a BB do not apply, then placing yellow lines can actually mislead, although in practice it's often done.