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Parking Ticket Appeal
Less than 1% of parking tickets are appealed, mainly because motorists don’t know how. Two thirds of appeals are successful and 30% of those appealed never go to arbitration and one third of tickets should never have been issued. When you appeal, the Local Authority is likely to feed you meaningless and confusing information in order to get you to give up on your appeal. They may even tell you to pay the fine and then appeal, knowing full well that you can’t appeal after the fine is paid and they may well tell you that additional charges and costs will be added if you don’t pay immediately. Their objective is to part you from your money and they may even issue an automatic rejection of the appeal and fail to follow the appeals procedure which they are required to follow.
In some cases, the Council knowingly reject your valid grounds for appeal, hoping that you will give up and pay them. If you continue with your appeal, then 40% of the time, the Council will not turn up for the adjudication and so they lose automatically.
Many parking tickets are invalid and the appeal will be immediately successful because of this. The people issuing tickets are instructed to issue so many each day that they are very rushed when writing out each ticket. Each ticket must show:
1. Your vehicle registration. If this is wrong, they will not be able to determine your address and so the ticket can just be ignored.
2. The make of your vehicle. A copy of your V5 form demonstrates that the ticket is invalid.
3. The precise location of the alleged offence must be shown on the ticket, that is, the house number outside which it was parked, or some other exact location described. If only a road name is given, then ask the Council to specify exactly where your vehicle was supposed to have been.
4. Date and Time. If these are not shown correctly, then write to the Council stating that your vehicle was not at that location at that time, and if they can’t prove otherwise, then the ticket has to be cancelled.
5. If there is an entry describing the colour of your vehicle and that entry is clearly wrong as the stated colour could not easily be mistaken for the actual colour, then the ticket is invalid.
6. If the stated offence is not correct, then the ticket is not valid.
7. If the amount of the fine is incorrect, then the ticket is invalid.
8. The traffic Management Act 2004 requires that tickets which have been placed on vehicles must state:
a. The date on which the notice is served.
b. The name of the enforcement authority.
c. The vehicle registration.
d. The date and time of the offence.
e. The grounds on which the fine is thought to be payable.
f. The amount of the penalty charge.
g. A statement that the charge must be paid not later than the last day of the period of 28 days beginning with the date on which the ticket was served.
h. That if the fine is paid within fourteen days starting on the issue date, that there will be a reduction of any applicable discount.
i. The manner in which the charge must be paid.
j. If the fine is not paid within the period of g. above, then a notice to the owner may be served by the enforcement authority on the owner of the vehicle.
If any of these are wrong or are omitted, or if the ticket is issued more than six months after the alleged offence, then the ticket is invalid and unenforceable. Interestingly, they will not admit that the actual owner of ‘your’ vehicle is the DVLA and that you are only the "registered keeper” of that vehicle.
The exact wording is critical and the ticket becomes invalid if the prescribed wording is not there. The required wording is:
1. The date of the notice, which must be the date on which it is posted and this must be on the main body of the ticket as the tear-off section at the bottom does not form part of the actual Penalty Charge Notice. It has to say "Date of Notice” and if it doesn’t, then it is invalid.
2. That the penalty charge must be paid not later than the last day of the period of 28 days beginning with the date on which the penalty charge notice is served.
3. That if the penalty charge is paid not later than the applicable date, the penalty charge will be reduced by the amount of any applicable discount.
4. That if after the last day of the period referred to in 2. above, then (i) no representations have been made in accordance with regulation 4 of the Representations and Appeals Regulations; and (ii) the penalty charge has not been paid, the enforcement authority may increase the penalty charge by the amount of any applicable surcharge and take steps to enforce payment of the charge as so increased;
5. The amount of the increased penalty charge; and
6. That the penalty charge notice is being served by post for one of the following reasons:
(i) that the penalty charge notice is being served by post on the basis of a record produced by an approved device;
(ii) that it is being so served, because a civil enforcement officer attempted to serve a penalty charge notice by affixing it to the vehicle or giving it to the person in charge of the vehicle but was prevented from doing so by some person; or
(iii) that it is being so served because a civil enforcement officer had begun to prepare a penalty charge notice for service in accordance with regulation 9, but the vehicle was driven away from the place in which it was stationary before the civil enforcement officer had finished preparing the penalty charge notice or had served it in accordance with regulation 9
Failure to ensure correct wording is printed on the PCN means that the ticket does not conform to legally recognised standards and so is unenforceable. For example, if the ticket refers to "a sum” rather than "a penalty” then the that is enough to invalidate the ticket. There is more detail on this along with successful appeal cases which can be quoted and templates for letters of appeal at www.NoMoreParkingTickets.com. Remember that the Council is doing a volume business here and is not inclined to put very much effort into any one ticket if it is disputed. A recent news item remarked that one Council has twelve million pounds outstanding in unpaid parking fines. Now that is definitely a volume business - one which is rigged against the motorist in many different ways and which relies almost entirely on the motorist’s ignorance of the exact details.
Yellow lines and parking restriction notices have to be clearly marked and in good condition for them to be enforceable. If they are not and a ticket is issued, then photograph them to support your appeal.
A vehicle may not be clamped or towed away from a ‘paid for’ marked bay during the thirty minutes following the expiry of the ‘paid for’ period.
If all of the ticket issuing machines in a Pay and Display area are not working, you can park there without paying, but leave a note on the vehicle saying that all of the ticket machines areout of order.
You may legally stop for loading in a Pay and Display marked bay without displaying a ticket.
Parking on Private Land
Private parking tickets are only notices issued by a company saying that they intend to take you to court for trespassing on their land or alternatively, breaching your "contract” with them and they are offering you the option of paying them and settling out of court.
Only the driver can be subject to any charges - the owner is not involved in any way nor does the driver have any legal obligation to identify the driver. If you don’t pay, then the company has to take the matter through the small claims court where they will be required to prove that the driver entered into a contract with them and then breached that contract. There is no criminal element involved in any of this.
If you were not the driver and receive a reminder through the post, just inform them that you do not know who the driver was at that time and tell them never to contact you again. If you were the driver, then ask them to provide proof of who the driver was at that time. If they make a claim, then they have to prove who the driver was and you do not need to prove that you were not the driver. Much more detail is available in an eBook from thewww.NoMoreParkingTickets.com web site.
Source: http://www.yourstrawman.com/ |
| Category: Articles | Added by: JennaRose (2013-04-07)
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| Views: 1503
| Rating: 0.0/0 |
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