Free Traffic Legal Advice

The PCN was affixed to the car windscreen






GSV: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TqcH5HeWDB7Xnbsq9

There are only 2 entrances to the CPZ, and this is the signage:



I think there are now signs on both sides of the road in the lower location - I could go and check but I doubt it's material, any more than the leaves obscuring the RH sign in the upper photo.

I don't dispute that I was parked where and when they said, and the evidence is very clear.

The only error I can see is that they have miss-spelt the name of the road on both the ticket and the appeal rejection as "Clovely" rather than "Clovelly".

BTW - I've not been sitting on my hands since they rejected my appeal, they posted it on 2nd November, which was a Thursday, and therefore their presumption was that it would be delivered within 2 working days, i.e. Monday 6th, which is when the 14-day countdown for the discounted payment window started.  The day after it came I started a topic on Pepipoo.

It was actually delivered on Thursday 16th, 10 days late.  I have asked if they would extend the 14-day window by 10 days, on the grounds that they must know that it is unsafe to assume that Royal Mail will deliver when they should, and that injustices can arise if they do just assume.

If they don't then tomorrow, Monday 20th is my deadline to either pay £55 or decide to "make further representations".

So I guess what I'd like to know is are there any "technicalities" which give me a sporting chance of getting this dismissed, or should I just pay up while it's going to cost me £55 rather than £110.

The background is that I parked on the SYL because I thought it was fine, based on ignorance.
 
I did not know that the SYL was actually part of, i.e. governed by the hours of, the CPZ - I thought the road had yellow lines, and what the CPZ did was to create gaps in the SYL with resident's parking bays, i.e. in the road you could park in a bay according to the rules for the bays, or you could park on the SYL according to the rules for that.

In a somewhat feeble, straw-clutching claim in my defence, there are a number of London boroughs who say that there can be situations where SYLs on roads within a CPZ operate at different times etc, and when that happened there'd be signs associated with the SYLs to tell you
 
So I didn't think that the CPZ days/times defined the period of operation of the SYL - I thought that was defined by the information plates on the lamp posts along the road, and in a further display of idiocy I thought that this:
 


was a SYL info plate, not something totally nothing to do with yellow lines.


So I appealed on the basis that the SYL on which I was parked did not prohibit parking at the time I was on it.
 
This was their rejection:
 

I did fear that might be the case.... :-(

Am I right that it's the owner or keeper who is liable from the outset, and there's none of the driver-is-liable-but-POFA-allows-liability-to-be-transferred-to-keeper stuff you get with private parking charge notices?

Correct. The keeper is assumed to be the owner, and has full responsibility for a PCN. For parking PCNs, if the PCN is served to the car or driver, the driver can submit an informal challenge, (or pay of course), but if, after 28 days has elapsed since service, a Notice to Owner is sent to the name and address recorded by DVLA for the vehicle.
All postal PCNs are sent to the keeper. Apart from a driver submitting an informal challenge, the driver has no role at all in the enforcement process.  Private parking tickets are totally different hence two separate forums.

In the end I didn't pay the reduced amount by the end of the deadline, so if anybody thinks there might be a viable tribunal appeal open to me I'll sit and wait for the NtO, otherwise I might try throwing myself on their mercy re the appalling Royal Mail delay and ask them to accept the reduced payment a few days late.

For later, The Hillingdon (Waiting & Loading Restrictions) Order 2023.

OK - today I got a letter saying that "on this occasion" they've decided to re-offer the opportunity to pay the reduced £55 within 14 days of the date of the letter, which was 1st December.
 
Presumably the NtO issuing process won't start until the deadline of 15th December has passed, so we're in the dark until then, and I've got to decide between hanging on and hoping that some kind of escape appears, or pay the £55 and move on, with at least the crumb of satisfaction that the penalty charge was less than the cost of a resident's permit.

Well, it's not exactly difficult to "interpret".  TBH it doesn't really need any "interpretation", reading will suffice.
 
Bear in mind that it's a response to my complaint to them about how long their appeal rejection letter had taken to arrive, and a request for them to extend the 14-day discounted payment window to reflect when it actually arrived rather than when they presumed it had.