Should I pay?

Thisisnotasmile

First post here, I signed up just for this. So anyway:

I have a parking permit (which costs £93 per year) from my local council to park in bays within the city marked with the parking code "R15SC". There are three roads in the city on which there are R15SC bays that I can park in, ond only one of them is really close to me at all, so that's where I park.

The other week, the council put up signs next to some of the bays in the road saying that parking will be suspended for a few hours on the 25/08/10 for a gully clean. There were signs on both sides of the road: 2-3 on one side with R15 bays that I cannot park in and 1 on the side with 4 R15SC bays that I can park in.

I saw these signs and decided to obey them, so I parked in a bay without a parking suspension sign, as did at least three other permit holders that I know of. I got a parking ticket for this for the reason "Parked in a suspended bay or space or part of bay or space".

Cleraly, Iobjected this ticket on the grounds that the bay I parked in was NOT suspended, but I have just received a reply from the council stating that the suspension applied to the whole of the road and therefore the bay I was parked in was suspended.

My question to you guys is, should I pay the ticket at the early-payment reduced rate or should I appeal further, in which case the reduced rate will no longer be available to me if I still fail to successfully get the ticket cancelled?

I personally feel that the council are ripping me off for parking in a bay I had a permit to park in and chose specifically to park in BECAUSE parking elsewhere would cause me to commit a parking offence. I've obeyed the rules and still been punished for it.

I'd love to take this as far as possible for the simple fact that the whole time I believed I was doing the right thing, and don't see why I should be punished for that, but I'm a recent graduate who is unemployed and finding it hard to get by. Paying the lower fine will hurt my wallet enough, but I think the higher fine will just make it impossible for me to live anymore. I can't afford to take this further unless I can be sure I will win this.

Thanks in advance for any help guys, and if you'd like a map of the road and where the bays are and what signage was put up and where, I will happily draw one for you.

peter_the_piper

Pics of both sides of the ticket would help. Remove personal details, leave dates. Host on tinypic and copy the url. paste the url into here and remove the http:// bit.
Do you have pics of the suspension signs as most of them are known to be illegal.

Coupon-mad

Suspended Bay signs have to have special clearance, 99% of those mentioned in threads on pepipoo do not, and so the motorist can in most cases get off the penalty on appeal. Prepare yourself to learn about the game of bluff that is the Council parking appeals system!

Get yourself registered on pepipoo.com forums (it's free like this forum is):

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showforum=30

Look how many cases of unlawful suspended bays there are on there - read lots of relevant threads first so you can see what sort of wording other people use in their appeals. Pretty much all of the threads in this search will be like yours:

Search result - pepipoo (keyword 'suspended')

Then post your own thread on pepipoo with pics (see their FAQs and stickies 'how to post pictures' etc. which are the top threads on the first overall forum link).

HTH

Thisisnotasmile

Sorry about this but the ticket's rather long and I only had a phne camera so I took it in many parts to make sure the text came out.

Ticket front:
img801.imageshack.us/i/pcnfront1.jpg/
img704.imageshack.us/i/pcnfront2.jpg/
img401.imageshack.us/i/pcnfront3.jpg/
img713.imageshack.us/i/pcnfront4.jpg/

Ticket back:
img841.imageshack.us/i/pcnback1.jpg/
img84.imageshack.us/i/pcnback2.jpg/
img830.imageshack.us/i/pcnback3.jpg/
img812.imageshack.us/i/pcnback4.jpg/
img693.imageshack.us/i/pcnback5.jpg/

Signage (courtesy of their own evidence):
img153.imageshack.us/i/signage.jpg/


It might be worth noting that the sign they provided as evidence was on the opposite side of the road to where I was parked, where different parking restrictions usually apply (different permit required). There was a similar sign on the side of the road that I parked on, but as I said it was a good 100m at least down the road by a seperate parking bay.

Coupon-mad

Thisisnotasmile wrote: »

Ticket front:
http://img801.imageshack.us/i/pcnfront1.jpg/
http://img704.imageshack.us/i/pcnfront2.jpg/
http://img401.imageshack.us/i/pcnfront3.jpg/
http://img713.imageshack.us/i/pcnfront4.jpg/

Ticket back:
http://img841.imageshack.us/i/pcnback1.jpg/
http://img84.imageshack.us/i/pcnback2.jpg/
http://img830.imageshack.us/i/pcnback3.jpg/
http://img812.imageshack.us/i/pcnback4.jpg/
http://img693.imageshack.us/i/pcnback5.jpg/

Signage (courtesy of their own evidence):
http://img153.imageshack.us/i/signage.jpg/


It might be worth noting that the sign they provided as evidence was on the opposite side of the road to where I was parked, where different parking restrictions usually apply (different permit required). There was a similar sign on the side of the road that I parked on, but as I said it was a good 100m at least down the road by a separate parking bay.

Sounds like a good point for your appeal (in bold), are you saying there was no sign at all for your bay? There should have been, I reckon, and either way almost all suspended bay signs are not authorised as we have said already.

I have converted your links so they should hopefully work. But you need to copy & paste them over onto a new thread on pepipoo asap because they are the PCN experts and can get most people a valid appeal together to get most tickets cancelled. Did you see all those pepipoo suspended bay cases I linked above, loads of cases have been won on suspended bay signage being a pile of rubbish.

Thisisnotasmile

Thanks, I'll go and get this on pepipoo now. I assumed I could park there because there was no suspension sign on the bay I was parked in, and that was my grounds for my original objection. The rejected it stating that the signs said the whole road was closed, which they do, they just weren't posted in enough places.