Do the council have to watch a car for a certain period before issuing a ticket?

Jamie91

Hi,

A bit of a back story; the houses on our street have always parked on the road but the bus company that services our city has been fighting for the council to put yellow lines on our street which they completed about 4 months ago.

The street is now no parking 7 days a week, 24 hours a day but since we continued parking on it without a fuss from anyone we have all just been parking on it even in the middle of the day!

Anyway since Monday we've noticed some council cars driving around and today I parked outside our house on the double yellow lines as usual (the nearest road to park on is at least a 5 minute walk, seriously) went upstairs and about an hour later (it was about 5:30 just gone) I noticed a council car drive past and heard a door slam.

I went outside and noticed a sneaky traffic warden sat on the wall on the end of our street (obviously "observing" my car as I'm the only one on the street home at that time). Anyway I went out and moved it (he wasn't impressed by the look on his face!). By the time I'd got back he had gone.

So is there a certain time period that these council traffic wardens have to "observe" a car for before they can issue a ticket? Is it 10 minutes or something? In that I could do this every day for ever, waste his time for 9 minutes and then drive off until they get sick of it? Is there anything else that they can do?

Also what do they legally class as a parked car? My neighbour had just got home the other day, her car was stopped but her engine was on. They said that they couldn't give her a ticket as she wasn't parked. What's the score?

Cheers,
Jamie

enfield_freddy

I think the correct wording is "observed" , and if he drove past one , then again he did in fact "observe" it had been parked from time "a" to time "b"

esmerobbo

There are differing observation times for various contraventions, some have nil time some have a period depending on the contravention.

For instance parking in a disabled bay without the necessary does not need an observation period. Whereas other contraventions would require an observation period.

If your neighbour had their engine running, was not dropping someone off, or picking someone up in a reasonable time, and exceeded the observation time they were parked engine running or not.

However luckily with council tickets everything has to be done correctly so appeals win unlike our PPC friends.

If you do eventually get a council PCN Pepipoo is your friend.