Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi all,

Bit of a long winded one here but hopefully someone here can give some great advice.

Back in Feb, I parked in a "residents only" street to take my 4 year old for an ice cream, we were gone 12 minutes in total. Yes, I know it was residents only but my daughter is severely autistic and whilst we haven't got our blue badge either, I honestly thought 10 minutes wouldn't be an issue.

When I returned to the car, the dreaded yellow envelope was attached to the windscreen, however there was no physical ticket inside (this is the honest truth so help me god). I placed the envelope int eh glove box, not knowing exactly what was going on and thought no more of it. All the envelope had on it was "Newcastle City Council Parking."

Weeks later, I receive a Notice to Order from said council, informing me that I haven't paid and therefore must pay the full cost of the fine. I wrote what I believe to be a decent appeal, stating that there was no physical ticket (so how am I even meant to know the details of the fine) and also the situation with my daughter and what exactly I was doing. I have been extremely transparent with them.

The council sent back a Rejection of Representations, which acknowledged my point about the lack of physical ticket but oddly completely ignored the part about my daughter, which I found strange. The letter basically called me a liar, going onto say that the CEO has bodycam footage of the PCN being printed out and placed on the car (I did request this evidence in my appeal, however it also was completely ignored). I drive a Tesla and the cameras picked up the CEO, who was NOT male as the letter stated and there is no footage on my cameras of the CEO printing out a ticket.

I emailed the council and asked if they could kindly share the bodycam footage that they claim exists and asking why they've ignored a huge part of my appeal which concerned my daughter's condition. This morning, I've received another letter, once again which completely ignores the part about my daughter but then goes on to say if I want to view the supposed bodycam footage, I have to pay for it!

The only options they're giving me is pay the fine or appeal to independent adjudication.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Please post-up all the documents.
For your information, the 56 day limit applies to formal representations submitted against a Notice to Owner, and it appears from your narrative that you did receive this and submitted reps which were declined, so the next stage from that is either you pay, or register an appeal with the Traffic Penalty Tribunal; have you done either ?

So, documents, please !

Edit
I should also mention that "failure to consider" may be valid in your case, but will only be decided at this stage, at the adjudicators. The penalty does not increase there, and there are no additional costs either. There may be other things like fatal errors in the documents they have sent you, but until we see these we're totally in the dark.

They've re-offered the discount (£35), so it's now up to you; either pay-up, or register an appeal at the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. Needless to say, this means you would be liable for £70 if you lose and nil if you win. The plain fact is you parked in contravention having missed the sign. However there seem to be a number of flaws in their responses to you, so this could be a win. You haven't said much about your daughter, so we can't really tell you the strength of this as part of your appeal.

Essentially, you have to risk a further £35, because if you don't go to adjudication, you're definitely in for £35 as they've declined your reps

Obviously you feel very strongly about this, so why not risk the additional £35 at adjudication ? It is not a huge amount to get satisfaction that at least your issued are dealt with without bias. All the councils are interested in, is your money. You may lose, but at least the issues will have been dealt with dispassionately by a legally trained adjudicator.

The adjudicators are an outfit called "trafficpenaltytribunal.gov.uk" meaning they're a gov set-up. Probably just side with local authority. All of it is just a money making racket!

@AverageJoe I regularly win between 85 and 90% of appeals, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the adjudicators are independent and apply the law without giving a toss about what the council would like them to do. If you think about it, if the tribunal were a kangaroo court there would be no point in this website even existing. In the last financial year we have deprived enforcement authorities of hundreds of thousands of pounds of ill-gotten gains and we could hardly do that if the adjudicators were not independent.

I also don't agree that it's a money making racket, after all a residents' parking scheme would be pointless if people could ignore the rules without consequence. We do see many, many instances of councils acting as a money-making racket (take this case for example where I represented the appellants), but I can't see anything to suggest that your particular case is one of those (which is not to say you can't win on appeal, we just have to be objective when giving you advice).

Anyway here are the council photos:







Looking at the last image once enlarged, what might be the outline of the PCN does appear to be in the envelope:



It does happen that someone removes the PCN from the envelope, unfortunately these things do happen from time to time. The law provides that as long as the PCN was lawfully served, the fact that some random person might have removed it does not invalidate service (otherwise everyone could just claim they didn't find the PCN attached to their car).

Can you show us the CCTV footage from the car? It sounds like that might be some truly critical evidence but we can't tell you how strong it is if you don't show us.

At the tribunal, it would be for the council to prove its case and if they have CCTV footage, they would need to produce it (at their own expense). You could also request it free of charge under GDPR, but that takes a month to come back (and no they cannot charge for that either).

Other arguments worth considering are:

1) The code 12 vs code 16 issue: you were not parked in a residents' or shared use bay as alleged, you were in a permit holder bay. The code for this should be 16 - Parked in a permit space or zone without a valid virtual permit or clearly displaying a valid physical permit where required, a case in support of this would be M Oppenheim v London Borough of Hackney (2190260964, 6 February 2020) though the argument is somewhat dependent on the traffic order.

I will request the traffic order in any event, but we are unlikely to get it back before you have to decide whether you want to appeal.

2) Then there's the argument that the suffix wording for code 12 is mandatory but it's not present on your notice to owner. This is relevant because on your version of events, the notice to owner is the first notification of the allegation that you actually received, these cases are relevant:

Andrew David Rush v London Borough of Southwark (2120562288, 5 January 2013)
Natalie van Dijk v London Borough of Islington (2150275729, 23 September 2015)

The key takeaway is that we can help you pursue this and you might even have a very strong appeal depending on what the CCTV footage shows, but you really must drop the whole "the adjudicators just side with the council" mentality or you won't get very far with this. Many people appeal to the tribunal and lose because they have no idea what they're doing, that is why we here to help and we always urge people not to go it alone.

Just noticed something else here from the photos.

Ok, I've stated that there was no physical ticket in the envelope right? Look at the photos of the ticket envelope, especially the zoomed in photo. Do you see how there's light at the top of the envelope? That's cos the envelope is open.

My sister is police, I've spoken to her about this and even she said that the envelope should be sealed by the CEO. That envelope isn't sealed as you can see, that's how I found ir on the car, just an open envelope. The car has not detected anyone else approaching the car and removing a ticket.

I've tried uploading the Sentry footage from the car but the files are far too big for this site and they will not upload. I've tried a resize and that doesn't work either.

The car footage does NOT pick up the CEO putting the envelope on the car. It does however have everything else including timings leading up to that point.

I've tried uploading the Sentry footage from the car but the files are far too big for this site and they will not upload. I've tried a resize and that doesn't work either.

The car footage does NOT pick up the CEO putting the envelope on the car. It does however have everything else including timings leading up to that point.

Upload to Youtube as an "Unlisted" video, then paste the link here. You can then make private or delete them at a later date if you wish. There is a rudimentary video editor on there also.

If you have exceptionally poor internet, use a video editor on your PC first. Windows 10 and 11 have "Microsoft ClipChamp".