Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi all, 


My first post here. My apologies if I make any mistakes.


A bit of background: My wife's battling stage 4 stomach cancer. In April she had major surgery at Hammersmith Hospital to have a total gastrectomy. She also ended up having a splenectomy, 2/3 of her pancreas and dozens of lymph nodes removed. She ended up staying in hospital a whole month instead of the planned 7-10 days.


In the meantime, the cancer has spread to her liver and we're currently awaiting the start of palliative care/treatment.


Anyway, while she was an inpatient at Hammersmith Hospital, I was visiting her every day. I quickly found that I was often stuck in traffic for ~20 mins to cross the the A40 from the south side to the north to get to the hospital and a similar time on the way back.


I found that if I parked on Bryony Road and walked, I could save those precious 30-40 mins being stuck in traffic everyday and actually spend that additional time with my wife instead. I probably parked on this road for nearly 3 weeks almost every day.


More than 2 weeks after some of the days, I started to receive PCN's for:


"alleged traffic contravention - 52M - failing to comply With a prohibition on certain types of vehicle (m) motor vehicles"


"In (place) RMV Bryony Rd Westbnd nr Jct Bloemfontein Rd (va)"


It turns out, the council has effectively turned a public road into a private residents only road and by merely driving in/out of this road, I had allegedly committed the aforementioned offence. Multiple times.


All in all, I've received 4 PCNs of £160 each (£640 total!) so far (£80 each or £320 total if paid within 14 days).


I appealed the PCN's on the grounds that:


a) the signs are not clear. There are 4 signs at the entrance to the road split across both sides and there's way too much information on them to be able to absorb it all at normal (legal) driving speeds.


b) The restrictions are supposedly designed to stop people using the road as a cut through and to help improve air quality in the area. I wasn't using the road as a cut through, I was merely parking there and by doing so, I was spending up to 40 mins less on the road so was helping improve air quality even more!


My appeal has been rejected on the grounds that the signs supposedly confirm to Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD) 2016, although I maintain that they fail the requirement that combined messages should can be easily assimilated by a road user driving at speeds appropriate to the road they're on.



My fear is if I pay these, they could send me more PCNs covering the whole 3 weeks and I'd potentially end up having to cough up £3,360!


The path to tribunal seems pointless as none of the grounds for appeal include the option that the signs were unclear or that my actions actually helped improve air quality even more than "following the rules".


I could really do without this extra stress at this time.


Just wondering if there's a path that would help the council see that the signs are not fit for purpose and the set-up as it stands penalises innocent drivers unfairly.


I've uploaded the CCTV footage from the PCN here:

Hammersmith are one of the most generous when it comes to cancellations in my experience.

I think I would take a totally different approach for the PCNs for which representations have not yet been made to the council. Don't mention the contravention at all and ask only for a discretionary cancellation due to the medical circumstances and provide documentary proof. I'm thinking ahead to a possible tribunal Appeal and this case

I'm not sure it matters much but is the car registered to husband or wife?

One problem is that the council are entitled to remove the discount after 14 days whether you make a representation or not.

We need to see one of the rejection letters, assuming they are all the same, cover up only your name and address.

At the tribunal I would argue that signage is inadequate in that although it is perfectly ok to only have one sign at a location, to put different signs on each side of the road makes it likely that a driver will only take one in. Against you is the fact that you didn't see the 'flying motorbike' sign c. 15 times. I also recently blogged about this sign

A separate tack: do you live within the borough and so could go to your local councillor to ask them to advocate with parking on your behalf? (whilst meeting all PCN processing deadlines at the same time).