Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi all,

Got a strange one for you!

I have a residents parking permit for Lambeth Council in London and have done for some time with no issues.

I changed the number plate on my car (for the avoidance of doubt the exact same car, just a different number plate) from GK61 UUX to LO09 HAT.

I completed this change on 1 July and uploaded the evidence of the insurance schedule to the Lambeth site the same day. Lambeth accepts insurance schedules as evidence which is fine.

As I have moved houses previously and had no problem with uploading evidence etc I quickly forgot about it as I assumed everything was fine and did not receive any email notifications etc telling me something was wrong.

On 13 August I received a parking ticket and didn’t think anything was particularly wrong and thought a mistake may have been made but then I received a second one on 16 August. I immediately then appealed both of these tickets on the grounds that I have a valid residents parking permit. I logged into my account to check everything was okay and realised that my evidence had never been approved by the council and was sat in the “pending” stage. I have attached screenshots of my account.

However it looked like my parking permit was associated with 2 number plates – both GK61 UUX and LO09 HAT.

From 16 August to 23 August I received a subsequent 4 parking tickets, taking my total to 6.

I appealed all of the tickets and called the parking permit team to ask them to sort out my account so I did not receive any more tickets. I was asked to email them too which I did and have attached the correspondence where they apologise for their admin error.

2 of these have been cancelled after appeal, 1 was upheld but then cancelled because they realised they had given me 2 tickets within 24 hours without the car moving, with 3 upheld, meaning I have 3 cancelled tickets and 3 they are continuing with.

I believe in some cases the case has been looked at properly by a human as opposed to the standard computerised response as there are details in some of the letters I spoke to the council about and they added to my account. All the letters that they are upholding have slightly different language in them as you will see.

My question is what am I supposed to do here? Should I just pay the 3 tickets they are continuing with or wait for notice to owners/go through the statutory complaints procedure? Do cancelling 2 of the tickets effectively set a precedent for the other 3?

If you need any further information, please let me know and thank you in advance. I have only edited the attachments for the removal of my personal information which I do not believe to be relevant however the tickets relate to the street that I live on.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bK91VPiWpi4Ak_KxcZ5wY6RMNvR7R6Ws?usp=sharing

What stage are the non-cancelled PCNs at.

Don't pay them - follow the process to a formal rep to notice to owner and if they still are silly go to the tribunal. They won't contest if the facts are the same as the cancelled ones.

It would help if you posted inline pics of key docs.

OK, make a list of all the PCNs - dates, reason for cancelling, reason for not.

I can see they are saying you didn't provide the correct evidence but there seems to be some lag between the initial application change and the PCNs?

They seem to say they need the logbook but:

You will be asked to provide copies of the vehicle registration document (V5/C) or valid insurance schedule for your new vehicle, and you will need to wait for the evidence to be approved. Until the evidence is approved, you must ensure that the vehicle is legally parked by purchasing visitor vouchers or using pay by phone.


Note the 'or'.

Whatever they are being vindictive against a resident who seems to have played by the book.

So three in play.

I would wait for NTOs and reference the ones cancelled for 15 and 20 August saying something like you understand these were probably cancelled because they were issued in error owing to the council's own fault with recognising my permit and you expect them to do the same with the others.

Would be my take but hopefully others will chip in.