Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi good people of the forum,

I need your help. The keeper of the vehicle received a Parking Charge Notice from UKCPS because of alleged parking without a valid permit. The driver was driving on York Rd from west to east. By taking a right at the intersection with Magnolia Rd., the driver entered Magnolia Rd. The driver saw double yellow stripes on the left hand side of the road. After the double yellow stripes, the driver saw a parking space that appeared to be reserved for Enterprise Car Club because of road markings. After the ECC parking space no indication of parking restrictions were present (neither road markings nor sign posting), so that the driver parked the vehicle there, on the left hand side of the road by the curb. Essentially, the driver left the car where the black Ford in parking on Google Street View.

Google Maps Link

The driver returned to the vehicle after about 1 hour and drove away.

On the following day the driver essentially repeated what was done on the previous day (except for leaving the vehicle longer, for about 3 hours.)

Sign posting with regards to parking on Magnolia Rd is consistent with the Google Maps Street View between the intersection of York Rd-Magnolia Rd and the intersection of Magnolia Rd-Daisy Place. Since the Google Street View recording, however, a sign with indication of Private land and Parking restrictions was put onto the lamp post after the intersection of Magnolia Rd-Daisy Place. (Lamp post closest to the ‘Showhomes Now Open’ sign.). The indication of Private land and Parking restriction sign hanging on the lamp post was about 50 yards from the parking vehicle, and after an intersection, and alas the driver noticed it only after returning to the scene to investigate. A new street photo is below.




Note that no yellow stickybags were left on the vehicle.


The keeper of the vehicle received two PCNs via post 3 days after each parking. The content is the same, except for the dates and the parking charge reference (thus only the first PCN is uploaded). No communication towards UKCPS was made to this point.





I do not know if it is a good thing or a bad thing, but UKCPS does not seem to be a member of BPA. And I also do not understand how DVLA could give them information.


Your help is much appreciated.

Thank you so much for the reply!

The driver entered Magnolia Rd. through this intersection:



The driver saw the double yellow stripe road marking, so did not park there:



The driver kept driving:


The driver parked in front of the red Vauxhall. Note that there are no road markings in front of the red car, and there were no sign posts so far.


The view from the reverse direction, from the intersection of Magnolia Rd. and Daisy Place:


There was a Private Land / Parking restriction sign fixed to the lamp post. (The lamp post is more or less located where the previous photo was taken. Now I can see that the text cannot be read on the photo. If needed I will go back to this place and take another photo.):


And there are these few photos, taken from the other side of Magnolia Rd.:






And below is a sketch of the street layout. P.H. stands for parked here; ECC is the Enterprise Car Club parking place, on the previous photos this is occupied by the red Vauxhall; LP stands for lamp post, bearing the private land/parking restriction sign.


Note that Daisy Place was not fenced during the parking incidents. There is some construction going on at this site.

Cheers

We are in the process of putting together an appeal to dispute these PCNs. As b789 suggested (thank you for the reply!), we will build the appeal around the fact that no contract was formed between the parking company and the driver. And this is because the parking company failed to adequately indicate private land and parking restrictions. And eventually the driver did not have the chance to consider the terms and conditions.
Which is the law or code of practice that describes the requirements on how to indicate such restrictions, e.g. note and T&C at entrance etc.? So that we could refer to it.

Photos of the parking vehicle were taken by a personnel, i.e. not by cctv.  Did the parking company not miss sticking a yellow bag onto the windshield? Is the yellow bag required or not? Because that would have warned the driver about parking restrictions, at least on the second day. The whole practice feels rather predatory.

Cheers