Is it worth appealing0

kittycao0705

Hi guys, I wonder whether you can help me here. I live on a busy road in greater London. There are few houses have driveways but the rest of them have not. Most of them just park on the street) as it’s not a permit parking area. (e.g. half on the pavement/kerb and half on the road. Whenever I have a visitor, the parking advice I give is to either park right in front of my drive (where the kerb has been lowered) or to park anywhere on the road as long as it does not block any of my neighbours’ driveways or obstruct traffic.
Last week my friend came to visit me and I gave the same advice. She parked her car in front of a neighbour’s house. The majority of the car was on the kerb but the head of the car does cover the flattened part of the kerb where it meets the pavement. It covers a small section of my neighbour’s drive but still allows the car go into the drive.
She got a parking ticket on the day. Actually she only realised it over the weekend as the ticket was attached to where the tax disc was. She had a baby at the time so didn’t pay too much attention. Therefore she did not take any pictures or evidence.
She appealed to the council on the basis that she did not block the drive. However Council got back saying “the contravention only occurs if any part of the vehicle is adjacent to the flat section of the dropped kerb-this does not include the angled section of the kerb. On this occasion when the officer observed your vehicle it was parked adjacent to a dropped kerb”. Which means it has nothing to do with blocking drive or not. It’s all to do with the car parked adjacent to a dropped kerb.
I felt the penalty was given very harshly as it’s a common practice to park like that on my road as I have been living on that road for more than 3 years. On a lot of occasions I advised my friends/families to park right in front of my drive where the kerb has been lowered. I didn’t mind as I wasn’t going to get out. Does that mean I can’t do so any more as long as the cars were on the flat section of the dropped kerb? Sometimes my neighbours’ car might also park slightly over my section of driveway (where the curb is lowered) but as long as I have been able to manoeuvre my car successfully, I have not made a fuss about it.
She only stayed at my house for 3 hrs during the day time and then she got a ticket worth of 55 pounds…Sincethen we found out you are really not supposed to park on the flattened kerb but does it really deserve 55 pounds of fine?(which is going to go up to 110 if we do appeal)
Do you think it’s worth to take it further and appeal??

Quentin

You need to start a thread at pepipoo about this.