Free Traffic Legal Advice

From your narrative I think you are entitled to the "assisted boarding" exemption. Can you please outline what you did on arriving with your car through to your mother being in the car ready for you to drive off.

You misunderstood. At the moment I am assuming you parked the car, then left it to go to where your mother was staying, and assist her to your car. This is called "assisted boarding". Normal boarding is where the passenger can wait or come to the roadside unassisted to board the car. I just wanted you to tell us what you did between parking the car and driving away with your mother on-board. Boarding/alighting passengers is an exemption to most restrictions like yellow lines. 

How long dod it take - if you were in and out with your mother then you have a shot at assisted boarding. You need a convincing account as to why she shouldn't wait at the kerbside.

You don't want to volunteer a time, only as long as necessary and necessarily a bit longer than the observation time, and you have the BB as evidence.

But 10 mins as in this case can be seen as reasonable by an adju
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Case reference 2250464004
Appellant Maimuna Jallow
Authority London Borough of Tower Hamlets
VRM GP24HFK
PCN Details
PCN TT59171456
Contravention date 18 May 2025
Contravention time 11:57:10
Contravention location Commercial Street
Penalty amount GBP 160.00
Contravention Parked resident/shared use without a valid permit
Referral date -
Decision Date 02 Feb 2026
Adjudicator Sean Stanton-Dunne
Appeal decision Appeal allowed
Direction
cancel the Penalty Charge Notice and the Notice to Owner.

Reasons
Mr Edrissa Cham has attended the hearing today as the authorised representative of the appellant.

Mr Cham says that he was collecting his 94 year old grandma and that, upon arrival, she was experiencing chest pains and acute breathlessness. He says that he placed her down in the correct position and provided her with inhalers until she eventually stabilised. Mr Cham says that the whole incident was less than 10 minutes and that he walked his grandma to the car with his brother when she was recovered.

The picking up exemption allows for a motorist to leave a vehicle where a passenger requires assistance. It is more likely than not to be the case that a 94 year old may need some assistance when being picked up.

I am satisfied that the purpose of the vehicle being parked was to collect a passenger. The fact that assistance then had to be provided due to an emergency situation does not alter the reason for the vehicle being stopped. I would not in any case regard a period of parking of 10 minutes to be excessive for collecting an elderly passenger and helping them back to the vehicle. I am satisfied on balance that the picking up exemption applies in this case.

Fine. YOu don't want to say too much in what is, after all, only an informal challenge. It allows them to reject and also write a load of tosh about the boarding exemption which they hope will encourage you to cough-up. So submit this, and post up their inevitable rejection when you get it.

Total and utter tosh, needless to say, because it totally ignores your representations, which are based on boarding/alighting passengers, not parking.

Of course, because you submitted an 'informal challenge', you have received the usual Fob-Off letter that all London councils send out. They send out this nonsence because they know that almost all people, (>95%), just cough-up when they receive it, knowing nothing about the law, and glad to get the discount, and "closure" of the matter.

If you are prepared to stand you ground and take them all the way to London Tribunals you have a very strong case for cancellation of the PCN, and indeed a costs award. However you must now wait for the Notice to Owner, and submit those same representations again, and also point out in them that their reply to your informal challenge totally ignored the whole basis of your representation. You then demand that they accept that the board/alight exemption permitted you to park there and collect your aged and arthritic mother.

The NtO is sent by post to the owner of the car, using the name and address on the V5C Registration Certificate, so are you the owner, and is the address up-to-date and correct in all details.