Fined even though I tried to pay!

mrhallorann

Hi everyone,

I've just received the first (expected) letter of rejection to my appeal from my Local Authority and I'm looking for some legal advice on the matter.

On 11th July I parked at my local wildlife park. I attempted to buy a ticket at the machine, as it's only £1 for a day's duration. However, the machine refused to accept the only £1 coin I had on me. Judging from other cars in the car park, it would appear that the fault was with my coin, rather than the meter, as other cars had recent tickets. So I returned to my car and left a message in the window saying that I had attempted to pay but the machine had not issued a ticket, but of course this was ignored and I'm now facing a £25/£50 fine :mad:

However, my query relates to the legality of the fact that I attempted to enter into 'contract' with the Local Authority; my money passed through their machine on several attempts and was rejected. I did try to pay the charge!

Of course, this is not something I have any evidence for, the £1 coin in question has since been spent and it is my word against theirs.

Do I have any legal standing given that I did try to pay? Is it worth persuing to the independant adjudicator and appealing on the extenuating circumstances? Would it be worth consulting with my Local Councillor?

Look forwards to hearing your thoughts.

mrhallorann

molerat

Read the stickies at the top of the forum. Post up scans of the ticket so the experts can take a look at them. You probably not being fined for not "buying" a ticket but more than likely "not displaying" a ticket. It is interesting how different councils operate. Blackpool are pretty quick to fine but have a phone number on all machines and a man in a van comes out quite quickly if the machine is playing up !!

seagull09

Interesting one, here are my non-expert thoughts:

As you did park in the car park you did enter the contract and agree to it, being happy enough to pay the £1 for the day.
Where it gets messy is that there are now two ways to look at this, the first being:
- your £1 to fulfil your side of the contract basically was invalid, in the same way if I went to a supermarket checkout with £20 worth of goods and presented what was discovered to be a fake £20 note (even if I had thought it was genuine). In those circumstances the supermarket would, quite rightly, not allow me to depart with those goods unless I came up with another, valid, £20 note, or way of payment. So similarly it could be argued that you should have left the car park as you couldn't pay for your stay. (That's not to say I wouldn't have done exactly what you did on the spur of the moment )

OR, the second way:
- your £1 was actually perfectly ok, but the machine was defective in some way - nothing to prevent the machine having become defective since issuing the tickets to the other cars there. In that situation of course the Council may argue that you should have reported the machine as defective which would then at least have given you a fall-back in the case of being issued with a PCN.

Neither of which does anything to give you extra grounds for appeal of course, I hope that someone here might have a good idea about that! I wonder if the PCN itself might have fatal flaws which render it unenforceable, might be worth getting opinion on that.

mrhallorann

I'll get the ticket scanned and post it up this evening, see if anyone thinks that will make a difference.

The council in question is Wigan.

seagull, I take your points. Next time this sort of thing happens, I will leave the carpark rather than risk it, frustrating as that will be!

thanks for your interest and input so far,
mrhallorann

mrhallorann

Hi, here's my parking ticket for you to have a look over:

http: //i90.photobucket.com/albums/k273/mrhallorann/ParkingFinefrontandback.jpg

Look forwards to hearing your thoughts,
mrhallorann

*edit: I've had to break the url as MSE kept telling me I couldn't include links due to being a new user?

Quentin

Link: http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k273/mrhallorann/ParkingFinefrontandback.jpg

As feared the "contravention" they are fining you for is not displaying.

mrhallorann

So it would appear the ticket is all correct?

Looks like I better be cutting my losses then

Thanks for everyone's input,
mrhallorann