Council parking ticket - suspension boards on other side of road!

simon_hzero

Hi All,

I parked my car on a road that normally doesn't have any parking restrictions apart from yellow lines at the junctions and a couple of disabled bay up and down it. I drove down to park where i would normally park my car, noticing suspension boards on the other side (none on mine) and parked in a convenient spot where there was no lines and no sign to say i couldn't park there. There was a disabled bay behind me and i knew not to park there. Unknown to me, the suspension boards on the other side said "No.1 and 10 A to D" where i ended up parking outside no. 1 and the 2 boards were on the other side of the road at roughly outside 10A and 10 D.

When I came back, i saw I had a PCN on my car. I took some photos

See my photos and those of the parking attendant here :
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=9134C0F7ADA5B96C%21117

where the photos show that signs were at the Audi and the VW Passat on the other side of the road and nothing on my side.

Anyway, I appealed at the informal stage with these arguments:

There was insufficient signage
I was unable to determine what the relevant parking restrictions were because there was no clear signage to explain what they were.

Paragraph 6.34 on Temporary Prohibition of Waiting and Loading in Chapter 3 of the Traffic Signs Manual (Regulatory Signs) 2008 states:
"Signs, other than the “no waiting on verge or footway” sign to diagram 637.1 (see para 6.37), should be erected parallel to the kerb, facing the carriageway and sited at approximately 60 m intervals (on each side, where the restriction applies to both sides of the road). This will normally be achieved by fixing the signs on every lamp column within the restricted length of road. Where there are no lamp columns or other suitable mounting points, posts will need to be erected."

Paragraph 6.35 states "Signs should be erected within 15 m of the start and end of the prohibition."

None of the photos that CEO 458 has taken show Suspension Signs on the side of the road that I was parked on (see the photos showing the front and rear of my car) even though there was a disabled parking sign outside no.3 and a tree outside no.1 The sign that he has taken is on the other side of the road (outside possibly no.4) which you can determine by the direction that the vehicles are parked on this one-way street. Therefore there was no signs erected to show that there was a prohibtion of Waiting and Loading on the side of the road that I was parked on.

So..... last week, I got a rejection letter saying that under Section 16 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, they felt that there was enough signage to inform people of the temporary changes.

I have to Weds (28th Jan) to decide whether I pay the reduced amount or to wait till the formal NTO letter. I feel that i should contest it, but £130 is quite a bit of spare change!.

What do i do?
Thanks in advance

bod1467

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