Free Traffic Legal Advice

Reading your narrative, your circumstances come under what is referred to as "mitigating circumstances", i.e you were not permitted to park there, but mitigating circumstances, ( distressed baby in the car who needed changing and no other parking locations), compelled you to do so.  Of course there may well be other, technical issues around the PCN, the parking location etc that would also be grounds for cancellation of the PCN, and others on here may spot one. For instance there is no telephone facility on the PCN for payment of the penalty.  It could be considered that this is discriminatory, and therefore grounds for cancellation.

The problem with "mitigating circumstances" is that only the council can cancel a PCN if they accept these. An adjudicator can only accept a set of legally defined circumstances, and mitigation is not one of them. In addition to this, councils are renowned in London for their venality and rapacity and usually reject all informal and even formal representations because they know from experience that most people just cough-up. Having said that, don't be disheartened, because it is always worthwhile submitting informal representations to a PCN, and especially in your circumstances. Sometimes somebody in a council with at least a smidgeon of humanity will accept such representations.  So submit reps on the compelling circumstances that essentially forced you to stop there, and post-up their reponse when you get it. Do mention your conversation with the CEO when the PCN was issued, as this should be in their notes.

You can only submit formal representations at the Notice to Owner stage, but you're not there yet, so I suggest you submit an informal challenge explaining the circumstances, (based on your narrative here),  and also that you spoke to the CEO who said he would make a note of the situation. Post up their response when you get it.

Are you the vehicle owner and is the name and address on your V5 Registration Certificate up-to-date and correct in all details ? The Notice to Owner is sent to that address.

Councils invariably refuse all informal reps because they know most people then just cough-up, so don't be disappointed if they refuse your reps. Your problem at the moment is finding a cast-iron reason for the PCN to be cancelled. You will see that the PCN has no telephone or postal payment option, it is either on-line or by personal visit to the council office. I suspect this is not lawful, but nobody else has yet commented on this aspect, so I'll make a few enquiries. Whatever, it is certainly highly discriminatory in my opinion.

So, for now, submit an informal challenge. This will give us time to investigate the payment options issue. As regards the contravention itself, I can't yet see anything to refute this.

S23, can you post up the whole pages for your PCN, so we can see the complete page and text top to bottom. There is a possible non-compliance with the regulations on PCN content.

Those uploaded above are both complete pages - I have double checked and everything has been captured. Let me know if you would still like new images

I have challenged the PCN informally within the 14 day period and will keep you updated. V5C has correct name/address

Many thanks

@S23 if you get a rejection please post up a copy of the informal representations.

I've had a look on traffweb and this is the map tile: https://store.traffweb.app/kent/documents/parkmap/msched/Y29_rv8_2.pdf

There is an obvious issue because the traffic order creates a single bay, not two different bays with different restrictions.

One question I'm sure will come is, why didn't you pull over in one of the pay to park bays on the other side of the carriageway?

I'll get hold of the traffic order but there is often an exception for circumstances beyond the control of the driver, this might qualify. It's also not entirely true that the adjudicator cannot consider mitigation, he cannot allow based on mitigation but he can remit the case to the authority for reconsideration. When that happens in around a third of cases the council refuses, but in a third of cases they accept and in another third they do not respond (if they don't respond within 35 days they're deemed to have accepted the adjudicator's recommendation).

What hearts of stone they have in that council. I hope they all get to travel in Charon's boat when the time comes !
However, I'm not sure whether your circumstances would win at an adjudication, but see what the others say. You've got 14 days from the 28th May to pay the discount.

@S23 any update?