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Contravention did not occur;
Procedural impropriety.

You rely upon your formal representations. In addition, the following procedural errors in the authority's NOR:

Failure to advise me of the appeals procedure as required under regulation 6(a)(iii) of the the Civil Enforcement of Road Traffic Contraventions (Representations and Appeals) (England) Regulations 2022, the 'Appeals' regulations, i.e. the adjudicator's power to register an appeal submitted late (Para. 2(4) of Part 2 of Schedule 1 (Procedure in adjudication proceedings) to the 'Appeals' regulation refers):

(4) If the notice of appeal is delivered to the proper officer after the end of the period specified in regulation 7(2)(a), 10(2)(a) or 13(2)(a) (as the case may be) (“the appeal period”)—

(a)the appellant must include in the notice a statement of the reasons which are relied upon for justifying the delay, and

(b)the adjudicator must treat any such statement of reasons for delay as a request to extend that period.

OP, they've attempted to rewrite the issue of the SoS's Stat Guidance and I think the adjudicator would take a dim view of this. Authorities are required under the Act 'to have regard to' the guidance. Ignoring is not having regard to.

You make reps on grounds 'contravention did not occur' and 'procedural impropriety'.

As regards the contravention, you rely upon the exemption to the prohibition which states:

3)A person shall not be convicted of an offence [now a contravention] under this section with respect to a vehicle if he proves to the satisfaction of the court [now the enforcement authority] that the vehicle was parked—

.....


(c)for the purpose of rendering assistance at the scene of an accident or a bona fide breakdown involving one or more vehicles,

You believed that as the vehicle was behaving in an unusual and worrying manner this placed you, your passengers and other road users in prospective danger, you therefore pulled off the road at the earliest opportunity and immediately checked the car for visible signs which might explain the cause e.g. tyres, debris etc.
...then your words...

The CEO saw you while you were checking the vehicle(checks which were incomplete and continued after the PCN had been issued because having a PCN could not cure your vehicle's problems). You had to stop your checks in order to talk to the CEO who showed no concern for your dilemma. You do not believe this was correct procedure because being broken down is an exemption and they made no efforts at all to discuss this with you but simply started to issue the PCN. They could not have satisfied themselves that a contravention had occurred unless they had considered and eliminated the exception.

Procedural Impropriety
The PCN was issued on ***** and the subsequent NTO on ****. A period of *** days.

The authority should be aware of the Secretary of State's guidance which states that *******.

When issuing the NTO the authority did not offer any explanation regarding this inordinate delay and failure to meet the recommended timescale and therefore should these grounds of representation be rejected they are obliged to give an explanation and satisfactory reason why they have failed to comply with the SoS's guidance.

Just some thoughts..

Quote from: H C Andersen on August 14, 2024, 04:08:49 pm

Thanks. Last day for reps is 25 Aug.

Still need more info on the emergency e.g. what did you check, how long did this take, were these checks interrupted by the CEO, did you continue to complete your inspection after PCN....

But above this is a procedural issue.

From the Secretary of State's Statutory Guidance:
The NtO may be issued 28 days after serving the penalty charge, and we expect authorities to send them within 56 days. The ultimate time limit, in exceptional circumstances, is 6 months [footnote 33] from the ‘relevant date’. There should be a very good reason for waiting that long to serve an NtO.

Presumably the NTO was not accompanied by a statement of these 'exceptional circumstances'?

IMO, in any reps I would look to compare the authority's stance as regards rejecting your initial reps to their duty to have regard to the SoS's Guidance, perhaps...while the authority were not prepared to accept my prior representations, presumably because they did not consider that the circumstances were sufficiently exceptional for the statutory exemptions to apply then, in the absence of any convincing statement of reasons by the authority as to what 'exceptional circumstances' should permit it to send the NTO more than 150 days after the relevant date and 100 days beyond the date in the Secretary of State's statutory guidance, I submit that this is a procedural impropriety and should these grounds not be accepted then the authority are required to give detailed and compelling reasons for such a rejection.


Unless something happened between them responding to your initial reps and the NTO. Did it?

Hi thank you for your detailed advice. And yes, there was no communication after 7th March, when they sent me an email rejecting my first rep.

To your other Qs:

what did you check: Since I felt some vibration (little like wobble, as if there was very low air pressure), I got down and checked all four tyres.

how long did this take: literally less than a few minutes.

were these checks interrupted by the CEO: He arrived within a minute of me stopping the car.  He didn't speak to me, and just started clicking car pics, and thats when I approached him to explain, but he didn't listen a thing. In fact, I saw him while I was pulling over to the side and partly on the curb, but I didn't think that he will give me a ticket

did you continue to complete your inspection after PCN: I took a few minute or so to check the tyre pressure (I had a 12V air pump in my boot, so used that to check the pressure), and then I continued on my way.

Hope this provides the details you mentioned. Thank you for your time and help.

Thanks.


Post the NTO pl, we must know what the time imperatives are.

How old is the car and pl confirm that you are the registered keeper.

Quote from: stv_dvr on August 13, 2024, 10:31:21 am

Quote from: stamfordman on August 13, 2024, 10:27:14 am

Is that your initial challenge in the first post?

My informal appeal was rejected, and now I will be responding to Notice to Owner, which is the formal appeal.

Yes but what was your informal challenge - I thought it was as in post 1.

Pics show you clearly enough and they omitted those from their rejection, which is the usual go away and pay letter.

I'd be inclined to go with this, although we need to bear in mind that footway parking is an instant issue in the absence of attended loading. But fairness with issuing here and the failure to consider would be my tack.

See what others say.

Looks like a failure to consider your challenge on car safety.

Exactly my point... should i mention that in the formal appeal as well?