Can I appeal against my Parking Ticket?

Bazman

Hey there,

Just wanted to run a situation by you, would love to hear the thoughts of fellow MSE'ers who have been in a similar situation.

I live in Lewisham London and received a parking ticket today.

1.) There were signs up signalling pavement parking was permitted.

2.) However when I came back I was issued a ticket because I was not in the marked off area of the pavement. (Contravention code 62 (Parked with one or more wheels on or over a footpath or any part of the road other than a carriageway).

3.) To be fair when I looked again there are marked off areas, but I simply did not notice that they were marked off and there seemed to be no signs signalling that is was restricted to the marked off areas.

4.) Indeed on the section I parked on there were no marking at all, but nor were there any signs signalling that parking was not permitted there?
Moreover there are no marked off area in front of my flat (which is close by) (well there were but they are so worn you can only see them if you bend down) so I was used to having free parking with no markings.

Have you encountered situations like this before?

Do I have reasonable grounds for appeal?

forgotmyname

Anyone can appeal, Whether you win or not is another matter.

No signs saying you should not park there. Well it doesnt have to, There was no sign saying you could park there either.

Sign says park in the marked bays, You didnt.

But anyone can appeal.

Mindless_Clone

There's a parking find section of the forum here, where you might get more response of you re-post this over there: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=163

If possible, can you take pictures of the signs, where you were parked in relation to them, the road markings etc.
And also scan in your parking ticket (front and back) removing all identifying information from it.

They folks over will likely tell you that pepipoo forums will be better placed to help you but they might be able to advise whether it's worth perusing anyway.

NBLondon

Bazman wrote: »

I live in Lewisham London and received a parking ticket today.

1.) There were signs up signalling pavement parking was permitted.

AFAIK it's normal to not park on the pavement unless the signs indicate so. These signs are usually at the start of a section of marked 'on pavement' parking.

You might stand a chance of appealing if the signs were incorrect or the end of the markings wasn't clear - i.e. you thought you were still in the marked zone. However, you've just said you didn't see the markings. So did you think that because a sign said you could park on the pavement then it meant anywhere in Lewisham :undecided.

Bazman

Yeah its prolly just my own stupid mistake :-(

There was a sign behind and in font indictaing pavemene parking, but one indicatd teh end of the pavement parking zone behind me, and the other the beginning of the zone in front.

Thing is both signs were facing towards me, and I was in a rush so I misinterpreted.

Fool pretty stupid it has to be said, and do think the signposting could be clearer.

Mindless_Clone

You might still have grounds to appeal on a technicality. If you take pictures and take them over to pepipoo they will be able to tell you what, if anything, is worth appealing about it.

AlexMac

You will probably lose an appeal. In Greenwich, the next borough to Lewisham, they seem to be using the 'not parked within the marked bay' rule increasingly to issue fixed penalties even when you pay the fee. I had an interesting exchange with an attendant last month who refused to say what the margin of error is when my car was sloppily parked with one wheel over the offside of the painted bay by about 8 inches- although she did make the point that she was doing me a favour by warning me as I parked rather than waiting til I walked off and ticketing me.

So I'd just cough up within the discount period before the penalty doubles. But then, if you are still feeling sore, take 2 minutes to email your local Lewisham ward councillors via the excellent 'writetothem. com' website to complain about the inflexibility of their 'Economic Prevention' department (aka parking control) and say that in future, you'll be shopping at Bluewater 15 minutes down the A2, where parking is free, instead of in their borough