Council ticketing us on land we own?

dandy-candy

My husband has a shop with its own forecourt. We have owned the property for over 20 years and every day parked in the forecourt. The last 3 weeks the traffic camera nearby has started issuing us tickets - sometime more than one a day - with the offense that we have been parking on the pavement. The photo's show we aren't on the pavement but on our forecourt. We don't cross a pavement to reach our for court either - we have a proper legal driveway what we share with the pub next door. I told the council and the guy on the phone said that as we haven't a fence around our forecourt it counts as a public right of way so they can ticket us. I said "If it has a fence around it how can we park on it" and he said "You can't" When I said "But loads of shops have forecourts they park on" he actually hung up on me! Surely this can't be right - if we own the land what right has the council to ticket us? I have tried Googling about laws regarding forecourts and have had no joy. Anyone know where to look this up?

peter_the_piper

I have seen this argument successfully used somewhere before unfortunately. I would suggest this needs a lot of expertise to win so would suggest that you also post on pepipoo.com.

sarahg1969

Try the parking forum on pepipoo.com - there are lots of experienced members who'll be able to assist you.

peter_the_piper

In the mean time get pics of the site, driveway etc. (To edit my post above as you access by official driveway its not likely to be an infringement.) Take copies of back and front of pcn, host on tinypic and copy url onto here and there. By the way they cannot give more than one ticket in any one day (midnight to midnight) Do not expect them to admit error on first appeal, they always carry on in the hope you'll cough up.

daveyjp

Happened to a colleagues wife and her colleagues who had parked on a piece of land adjacent to their school for about 30 years. Then the Council needed to raise its revenue and started ticketing them as the road has double lines.

On investigation it was found the Council sold the land 3 years earlier so the Council land ended at back of pavement and all tickets were cancelled - the papers were interested.

OP the Council's standard line is 'if you have a ticket pay it or appeal'. They won't admit an error and as you have found they lie - the fence issue is nonsense.