Free Traffic Legal Advice

Good afternoon all,

I have received an email from a hire car company stating they have charged me £60 admin fees due to receiving a PCN from Leeds City Council on my behalf. They state they have now forwarded my details onwards to LCC so I should be expecting the PCN through in the post any day now.

On the date of alleged offence I was actually with a disabled friend of mine (amputee), who had a blue badge. I've asked him to provide me details of it so I could use it in my defense, however I've now found out it wasn't his badge, it was his fathers, and he had borrowed it until he had organized his own (recent amputee).

Obviously this throws a spanner in the works! I'm more than happy to take the hit if you think its sensible to do so, I wasn't parked maliciously and I was under the assumption his blue badge was valid and registered to him.

They have attached the PCN to the email, and I've managed to log in online to see the evidence. The photo they have taken shows an empty space with a van slightly to the front, which is not the vehicle I was driving in. The second photo shows the signage. There is zero photographic evidence that they have provided, so I'm assuming the parking attendant took my reg as I was driving off and assumed I had no badge displayed.

Do i have any grounds for an argument at all here? If I hadn't been charged the £60 by the hire company, I would probably just pay the £35 for a hassle free life, however a total of £95 seems a bit excessive in my opinion.

Thank you all for any input!

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Misuse of a blue badge is a serious matter so I can't see you could be advised to pursue this.

Did you just happen to get back to the car and drive away when the CEO was there?

£60 is a hefty admin charge - more than we usually see - is that in the hire terms?

Hi Stamford, thanks for the reply.

If Id have known it wasn't his, I would never have parked there. I'm too tight (Yorkshire!) to risk things like this happening!

In all honesty I never even saw the parking attendant. I had zero interaction with anybody. I'm assuming one was on the street and has seen me driving away, hence getting the registration. This has come as a bit of a surprise.

They stated its in the fine print, I haven't had chance to look however I did contact them and they confirmed it had already been debited, and I would be able to claim it back if the parking ticket got revoked and I provided evidence of that as a "good will gesture".

Cheers

Did the hire company say what has happened? It seems to me that the hire co submitted representations (challenge) that the vehicle was hired to you. The Council should have responded with a notice of rejection or acceptance.

So is it the case that the hire co has now received a notice of rejection? If so they are still liable for the PCN and liability hasn't been transferred to you.

As this is a schedule 10 PCN the next stage for the hire co is to pay or appeal to the adjudicator. Else a charge cert will be served on them for £135.00.