So one can go to the shop, from outside call and ask if they have watermelons and ask for one to be reserved... Sort of. But this is again Sean Stanton-Dunne.
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Case reference 2250090822
Appellant Jonathan Payne
Authority London Borough of Southwark
VRM LV18SKJ
PCN Details
PCN JK14373422
Contravention date 03 Dec 2024
Contravention time 08:56:00
Contravention location Shawbury Road
Penalty amount GBP 130.00
Contravention Parked in a loading place without loading
Referral date -
Decision Date 21 May 2025
Adjudicator Sean Stanton-Dunne
Appeal decision Appeal allowed
Direction cancel the Penalty Charge Notice and the Notice to Owner.
Reasons Mr Payne was scheduled for a personal hearing by video link on 30 April 2025 but did not attend and so the appeal was considered on the evidence presented.
Mr Payne's evidence showed that he was stopped in Shawbury Road to pick up 4 sheets of protection board from Leyland. A cash sale receipt for the purchase was submitted in evidence. There was no question, therefore, that the vehicle was stopped for loading purposes. There was an observation period of only 2 minutes before the PCN was issued at 8.56am and the sale for the protection board was transacted at 9.03am.
It was not, however, clear from the evidence whether the board was pre-ordered and there was no evidence as to the circumstances of the purchase. I adjourned the hearing to give Mr Payne an opportunity to provide this further evidence.
Mr Payne has attended the hearing today by video link and Mr Luke Warden has attended for the Council, also by video link. Mr Payne has explained that he is a regular customer at Leyland which he says is directly opposite the road from where he parked. He says that he telephoned Leyland before going there to make sure that the board was in stock and that he asked for the 4 sheets to be put aside. Mr Payne says that he went into Leyland only to collect and pay for the board.
I am satisfied from the evidence of Mr Payne that he was collecting pre-ordered goods and that the vehicle was properly stopped for loading purposes.
There appears to be inconsistency within the adjudicators - in this case the adjudicator invited the appellant to tell him that the boards were pre-ordered, and that was seemingly the deciding factor, whereas in the case that gave rise to this thread, pre-ordering was deemed not to make any difference.
The law has generally preferred certainty to the more nebulous concept of justice.
If the loading exemption applies to collecting (and paying for) pre-ordered items that could not easily be carried a significant distance that is a reasonably well defined pigeon-hole. I do not know the nature of the boards in question, but 4 boards sounds like something that you wouldn't want to drag half way across town. A watermelon, less so IMHO.
Where there is a reasonably well defined exemption, there will generally be ways to game the system to stretch the exemption - this is box ticking as opposed to weighing up the merits. If you can tick the relevant box you win, regardless of whether another case with no less merit would lose.
However, you seem to be suggesting that one could "legitimately" game the system for using the parking exemption to park up while making a phone call to pre-order the item. If pre-ordered is a relevant box to tick, using the loading exemption to collect and pay for the item would seem to qualify, but I would suggest that making the phone call would not - you cannot use the loading exemption for making the phone call.
I'm suggesting that each case turns on its facts and given there is nothing in the legislation that defines loading we only have some case law (old I think) and adjudicator panel thinking to go on.
Within that it seems to me this adjudicator was entitled to find as he did and a judicial review would fail, and bringing a case on a watermelon for a palliative care patient would probably make the appellant a laughing stock.
"Entitled to find as he did" is an ambiguous term. In the TfL appeal/JR mentioned earlier, TfL sought to argue that the adjudicators were not entitled to misdirect themselves as to the law (were not entitled to make an error of law), whereas it was held that for the purposes of a review, they were merely not entitled to go outside the bounds of their authority (
ultra vires).
Whether [binding] case law is old or not has no direct bearing on its applicability - although if it has become outdated in terms of what is and is not an accepted practice, then a court with the authority to do so may well revisit it (e.g.
R v R).
As far as I can ascertain, the case law applicable to loading bays is potentially
per incuriam as the more recent Divisional Court decision did not consider authorities that I arguably ought to have been referred to.
The applicable case law appears to have been set out in
BosworthAny judicial review of the watermelon case would likely consider the existing authorities and clarify what the intended meaning of loading is in law, and indicate what are findings of fact and degree that the appellate courts would not interfere with (assuming that they had been properly reached), and what the adjudicators ought to and ought not to consider when determining whether the exemption was made out.