 |
| If you run out of fuel your appeal will fail |
What a busy and varied week it was at PATAS from Monday 10 June. There were 90 appeals of which the council won 40 and the motorist 50 some 56%. The council will have paid out £3,600 in fees to London Councils for the PATAS service and will get back about £3,900 if they collect on every ticket, which they won't manage to do. When faced with a resistant motorist who is making their second appeal it might be a quicker and better outcome to cancel the PCN before the PATAS stage is reached, especially for lower rate contraventions where the upside is only £60.
Well done to motorists everywhere for getting 90 appeals in. If that keeps up that would be about 4,500 in a full year out of c.150,000 or 3% which is a much higher rate than in other London boroughs. The more the PATAS appeals mount the more the council will have to think about scaling back the number of PCN they issue and the less economic the contract will become for NSL.
Interesting cases which were won by the motorist:
A notice of suspension sign was only put out 24 hours before it came into effect. At least 5 days was required and even that I think inadequate as you could be on a week's holiday, or longer if you are lucky.
Someone tried 7 times to PayByPhone and the location code was rejected so they had done their best.
An example of our caring sharing council:
The Appellant is the London Ambulance Service. It submitted that the vehicle was an ambulance and being used for an ambulance purpose. The Authority submitted that the exception only applied to ambulances on emergency calls.
The Authority has not provided any justification for its submission. The Appellant has referred to another decision in their favour but the Authority's response was that each case must be decided on its own merit. While this is correct as a general statement of principle, where one case does not appear to be different to another, one would look for reasons to justify a different conclusion. The point here is that the Appellant have argued that their interpretation of the nature of an exemption has been accepted by an Adjudicator (and I am aware that this has been has indeed been accepted by more than one Adjudicator), the Authority should therefore put itself in a position to say why such an interpretation should not apply in the instant case.
The Appellant submitted that the exception is for all vehicles used for ambulance purposes. The Authority had not accepted or challenged the wording of the exception. It has not supplied the relevant extract of the Traffic Management Order. It has not submitted why, if the wording is as described by the Appellant, a requirement of emergency can be read into the exception. In other words, it has not in any way drawn any distinction between the instant appeal and other appeals which had been resolved in the Appellant's favour, but it wants a different conclusion. I am not bound by those previous decisions, but I am certainly in agreement.
Unloading exemption granted. The PCN dated from 2 June 2011 and was probably being pursued invalidly due to the lapse of time.
The Authority has not provided any justification for its submission. The Appellant has referred to another decision in their favour but the Authority's response was that each case must be decided on its own merit. While this is correct as a general statement of principle, where one case does not appear to be different to another, one would look for reasons to justify a different conclusion. The point here is that the Appellant have argued that their interpretation of the nature of an exemption has been accepted by an Adjudicator (and I am aware that this has been has indeed been accepted by more than one Adjudicator), the Authority should therefore put itself in a position to say why such an interpretation should not apply in the instant case.
The Appellant submitted that the exception is for all vehicles used for ambulance purposes. The Authority had not accepted or challenged the wording of the exception. It has not supplied the relevant extract of the Traffic Management Order. It has not submitted why, if the wording is as described by the Appellant, a requirement of emergency can be read into the exception. In other words, it has not in any way drawn any distinction between the instant appeal and other appeals which had been resolved in the Appellant's favour, but it wants a different conclusion. I am not bound by those previous decisions, but I am certainly in agreement.
Unloading exemption granted. The PCN dated from 2 June 2011 and was probably being pursued invalidly due to the lapse of time.
A receipt was produced for a new battery and as it was a sudden failure, and not an issue of lack of maintenance, this came under the breakdown exemption.
Only the bumper was adjacent to a dropped kerb, or crossover, and even then only next to the sloping part of the kerb which is fine. PCN cancelled.
The traffic warden's notes said that the PCN was both affixed to the windscreen and handed to driver which patently could not be true.
PayByPhone allowed a vehicle registration of GSWGK to be registered which is an obvious error on the council's part so the PCN was cancelled.
Signage for a suspended bay was found to be inadequate.
A parking ticket was issued for the wrong contravention. The motorist may have been guilty but you have to be penalised for what you actually did wrong, not what you didn't.
The next case is brilliant and again I reproduce some of the notes from the independent adjudicator.
The Appellant says that she paid to park, by phone, having followed the instructions to do so on the post next to which she parked her car. She received a confirmation of the payment to park and so left her vehicle. She has produced photographs of her vehicle, the post next to her vehicle, which was not signed with any suspension, and shown the distance between the sign (headed "advanced warning sign") relied on by the local authority and her car.
I have carefully considered all of the evidence from which I am not satisfied that the contravention occurred of that the signage was adequate.
I find as a fact that the Appellant paid to park, and that this was accepted. The local authority cannot both accept payment to park and say that the right to park on payment is suspended. Further, the point of paying by text is that a motorist looks only to that sign and can sit in the car to do so. It is the nearest sign, and no other sign would influence what the motorist would do. I find that the signage was not adequate to alert the motorist to the purported suspension of this sign.
I therefore allow the appeal.
I have carefully considered all of the evidence from which I am not satisfied that the contravention occurred of that the signage was adequate.
I find as a fact that the Appellant paid to park, and that this was accepted. The local authority cannot both accept payment to park and say that the right to park on payment is suspended. Further, the point of paying by text is that a motorist looks only to that sign and can sit in the car to do so. It is the nearest sign, and no other sign would influence what the motorist would do. I find that the signage was not adequate to alert the motorist to the purported suspension of this sign.
I therefore allow the appeal.
Then a complete horlicks was made of another case:
I allow this appeal for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the allegation made in the Penalty Charge Notice appears to be contradicted by other information contained within it, so that the allegation is unclear and misleading. I say this because it is alleged that at 15:59 the vehicle was parked for longer than permitted, and then it is said that the vehicle was observed from 15:59 to 16:25. It leaves me in doubt as to the time of the alleged contravention - which is the crux of the issue.
Secondly, the local authority rely on a photograph of the location at which the vehicle was said to be parked - which has double yellow lines - but which contradicts other evidence which suggests that it was parked within a marked white box.
Thirdly, the Appellant made detailed representations in response to the Notice to Owner, and the local authority failed to address them at all in the Notice of Rejection, which is a statutory obligation and amount to a procedural impropriety to not do so.
I therefore allow the appeal.
Firstly, the allegation made in the Penalty Charge Notice appears to be contradicted by other information contained within it, so that the allegation is unclear and misleading. I say this because it is alleged that at 15:59 the vehicle was parked for longer than permitted, and then it is said that the vehicle was observed from 15:59 to 16:25. It leaves me in doubt as to the time of the alleged contravention - which is the crux of the issue.
Secondly, the local authority rely on a photograph of the location at which the vehicle was said to be parked - which has double yellow lines - but which contradicts other evidence which suggests that it was parked within a marked white box.
Thirdly, the Appellant made detailed representations in response to the Notice to Owner, and the local authority failed to address them at all in the Notice of Rejection, which is a statutory obligation and amount to a procedural impropriety to not do so.
I therefore allow the appeal.
Let us see if we can get over 100 appeals a week going in to give NSL something to do.
Yours appealingly
Miss Feezance
No comments:
Post a Comment