Free Traffic Legal Advice

Yes, it was a separate offense (so your mum shouldn't do it again) but this doesn't matter as far as this PCN is concerned. The recipient of a PCN only has to defend themselves against the specific allegation made on the PCN. The authority only has one go at getting this right, they can't go back and issue a second PCN if they messed up.

How you should proceed for now is as suggested, a very simple one line response pointing out that their own photo shows the vehicle was not on the carriageway and therefore the PCN must be cancelled.

Everything else you've said is potentially useful later on if the Council don't fold immediately, but at the moment you're dealing with junior level council staff who probably have to hit a tough target for number of PCN responses processed. Your objective is to get them to realise the traffic warden messed up, so they press the button that spits out a standard form 'on this occasion we've decided to let you off' letter. If they don't, then you can go in all guns blazing at the adjudicator stage, armed with a ridiculous rejection of an obviously winning argument.

No. As Incandescent explained, you need to wait until the debt is registered at the Traffic Enforcement Centre, at which point you can submit a Witness Statement that you submitted representations, but didn't get a reply.

This gets you back to the PCN stage.

In the meantime, please help us to help you by providing a copy of all pages of all the documents you have, including everything you sent them. We can't help you fight a PCN we haven't seen!

Agreed - another FOI asking for the written instructions given to camera operators that indicate which vehicles they should issue PCNs to and which they should not would be pretty easy to do.

I also recommend using whatdotheyknow.com (as long as you're ok with your real name being published), as the Council's responses will be published online where htey can be read by the public. This is useful if you want to get journalists interested. Sometimes Councils claim copyright on their FOI responses, saying you can't share them with journalists - which probably isn't legally true, but you probably don't want to risk.

As an aside, and something that might make a nice flame pit debate, I suspect that if the Council does have a policy to not enforce against commercial vehicles, they might not actually be doing anything legally wrong (even if it is morally wrong or unfair). One thing this forum takes advantage of to win tickets is the rule that states that the council has discretion to cancel at any time. Often they fetter this discretion meaning they lost PCNs at the tribunal, but I'm not aware of any rule that stops them overusing this discretion to allow certain categories of vehicle to flout the rules.

The Council must communicate a restriction in a way that a diligent motorist has a fighting chance of understanding. The Council must do this with compliant signage, it cannot invent a secret code based on the presence of hinges in signs and expect this to be understood.

I can't see why the bottom panel would be of any relevance, as the Tuesday in question was neither a Sunday nor a Bank Holiday.

The top panel refers to "match and event days", and I'm in agreement with HCA that it's meaningless. How is a motorist supposed to determine if there is both a "match" and an "event" on any given day (the Council may well have intended 'match or event', but they wrote "match and event", so hold them to it)?

I propose a variant on the strategy of last resort, a highly pedantic appeal that demands the council provide evidence all sorts of things that they won't bother doing, with a note that they will be held to strict proof of them all at the tribunal stage.
Admit nothing, use their bad  photo against them: I can't read the restriction in your photo, what does it say (in full, all sides)? is it variable? what does the other side say? What proof do you have of the state of the sign when I parked? Do you only flip on match days? At midnight exactly? What about event days? What's your proof that it was a match day? How was I supposed to know that? What's your definition of an match day? How was I supposed to know that? What's your proof that your definition of what  match day is was available to me at the time I parked? etc. etc.

I'll be honest and say I would probably side with the council here. If (as seems to be the case in a lot of places) they operate a system where a few very expensive cameras are moved between a lot of often empty observation points, revealing this data might well let you work out their rota.

If you're angry about which vehicles they are targeting, it might be better to ask for a copy of all written instructions given to camera operators that indicate which vehicles they should issue PCNs to and which they should not.

I pointed it out because we need to be accurate in what we say.

Indeed - I just wanted to be sure the OP wasn't getting the wrong message about their (very, very high) chances of winning because the regulars were having a technical discussion.

On the subject o helping the OP... as Incandescent says, all you need to do is prove this particular PCN isn't valid. There's a pretty rigid legal process for PCNs, Councils have to be precise when issuing them, in the same way you have to be precise about responding in time. If both sides carry with the process (you not paying and them not accepting your argument), eventually the case goes to an independent adjudicator who will make a ruling, and they won't let councils get away with any sloppiness like getting the location wrong or reissuing a ticket because they messed up.

It doesn't really matter how you write the representation as long as you get the key point across, which is that their own photos prove you were not parked in Warehead Road at the time stated on the PCN. It's unlikely the council  will reject this  (I wouldn't be surprised if the warden gets a bit of a telling off actually, as their mistake cost the council a few quid!). If they do reject you'll just have to stick with the process until either they fold or an adjudicator tells them off on your behalf.

You are very lucky!

Councils only have one go at getting PCNs right, so on the rare occasion that they mess up, they lose and you get away with whatever you were doing wrong - in this case parking on the pavement in London, which has been banned for years.

Your defence is that you can prove you were not in Waremead Road as alleged, because the CE's pictures show you were parked outside 56 Crescent Road at the time.

They can't have a second go at getting the PCN right, you'll get away with no penalty. You might have to go through a few more stages of the appeal, but if you follow the process promptly you've been handed a win.

Here's the GSV for other readers.