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TfL Red Route PCN
Carthesis
Posts: 565 Forumite
Ok. This one is curious, and I know it isn't strictly the PPC invoices this forum normally deals with, but a lot of you are sensible, intelligent people, some of whom have some legal training / knowledge (or so it appears), so i'm hoping for some general guidance:
I got home from work to find a Penalty Charge Notice from TfL claiming that my car had been seen parked on a Red Route in Shoreditch High Street at 07:58 on 18-Aug-2016. Now I know for a *FACT* this isn't the case, as I haven't been to London since January in any capacity, and my car hasn't ever been to Shoreditch since I've got it from new - the closest was probably a trip to Wembley Stadium about 3 years ago. Sadly, I have no proof of this, because the day in question was an otherwise uneventful Thursday in August - no meetings, no other senior staff were in the office that day so I can't get a letter from them stating i was in work; no bank charges / ATM withdrawals showing me to be elsewhere at the time. And I suspect I'd struggle to get access to the Sheffield Council CCTV/ANPR images showing me driving to work without an FoI request, which could take forever. or anything else to demonstrate where I was...
...EXCEPT for the Google Location History from my phone, which shows me at my house in Sheffield until 08:19 in the morning, and then driving to work. I've then managed to get hold of the door logs at the office which shows I entered the building at 08:55. So obviously, I couldn't have been in Shoreditch. I'm hoping that this is enough to get TfL to cancel the charge. I've sent off the basic appeal on the back of the PCN form with print-outs of the various bits of data, and a signed letter from our facilities management team stating the door logs are accurate. But otherwise, I'm a bit screwed as I have no way of proving it wasn't me.
I suspect that the traffic womble has either:
a) written down the wrong reg plate / misread the reg plate at the time / misread the reg plate from his notes when he got back to the office, or;
b) been duped by a cloned plate of some kind.
Either way, I've also asked for confirmation from the traffic womble's notes (and NOT from the DVLA data) of the make, model and colour of the car. I know for a solid fact it wasn't me - and that isn't internet bravado. That's me knowing that at the time of the incident, my car was outside my house while I was in my bathroom having a shower before work 150 miles away!
To answer some other questions people will no doubt have:
Photo of car: There is no image of the vehicle at all (that I have seen or that they refer to). Simply a PCN based on a reg number from the traffic womble who was allegedly about to stick the ticket on the windscreen but the car drove off before he could. In some ways, I guess i'm lucky it happened this way round, as if they had stuck the ticket on and just logged the reg number, I'd then have to prove I never saw the windscreen ticket and the first I'd've known about it would be a summons through the letterbox. This is currently my second biggest hope.
Fake logs: It would be fairly trivial to fake the logs, certainly in terms of the paper-copy-only submissions they accept. Conveniently, both my personal mobile and my work iPhone have logged the same data, and it is presentable electronically if they ask. Further, the door logs from work came with a signed letter verifying their accuracy and veracity. I can probably get a copy of the AD and web proxy logs too, which should prove which part of the subnet i was connected to, thus my physical location to some extent. My office manager has also said she can provide CCTV footage if required of me sat at my desk the entire day, as I happen to sit adjacent to one of the cameras. TfL have been informed of this.
Keeper, not driver: This is a bit of a worry, as even if they accept the evidence, it only proves I wasn't there, not the car. As it turns out, I was the only person with access to the vehicle at the time, as my GF (who only very rarely drives my car at the best of times) was out of the country at the time. And as I drove the car to work that day, it would have been tricky for someone to nick it, drive to Shoreditch, park illegally, and then return it to the car park at work without me noticing...
Other ANPR: This would be absolutely ideal to get hold of, but I've no idea how I would do so before the thing went to court. I also have no idea how long Sheffield Council will keep ANPR / other camera footage when it isn't being used for enforcement purposes.
Other details about car: As noted above, I have requested that TfL supply me with information regarding the make, model and colour of the vehicle observed by the traffic womble, and expressly NOT the information they will have rec'd from DVLA so I can confirm. If it's a "cleverly" cloned plate, it won't prove anything; but if it's a simply typo / error then it might help.
What else?: It has also been pointed out to me that if the traffic womble was close enough to slap a ticket on, they were close enough to see the driver and should be able to provide a rough description. It might help if the driver was obviously not the same ethnicity as me, but as I am otherwise an averaged sized, 25-45, white, dark haired British male, it might not be the distinguishing characteristic I'd hope for.
Can anyone offer any advice whatsoever? I've also stuck this up on PePiPoo hoping they will be able to provide some guidance.
I got home from work to find a Penalty Charge Notice from TfL claiming that my car had been seen parked on a Red Route in Shoreditch High Street at 07:58 on 18-Aug-2016. Now I know for a *FACT* this isn't the case, as I haven't been to London since January in any capacity, and my car hasn't ever been to Shoreditch since I've got it from new - the closest was probably a trip to Wembley Stadium about 3 years ago. Sadly, I have no proof of this, because the day in question was an otherwise uneventful Thursday in August - no meetings, no other senior staff were in the office that day so I can't get a letter from them stating i was in work; no bank charges / ATM withdrawals showing me to be elsewhere at the time. And I suspect I'd struggle to get access to the Sheffield Council CCTV/ANPR images showing me driving to work without an FoI request, which could take forever. or anything else to demonstrate where I was...
...EXCEPT for the Google Location History from my phone, which shows me at my house in Sheffield until 08:19 in the morning, and then driving to work. I've then managed to get hold of the door logs at the office which shows I entered the building at 08:55. So obviously, I couldn't have been in Shoreditch. I'm hoping that this is enough to get TfL to cancel the charge. I've sent off the basic appeal on the back of the PCN form with print-outs of the various bits of data, and a signed letter from our facilities management team stating the door logs are accurate. But otherwise, I'm a bit screwed as I have no way of proving it wasn't me.
I suspect that the traffic womble has either:
a) written down the wrong reg plate / misread the reg plate at the time / misread the reg plate from his notes when he got back to the office, or;
b) been duped by a cloned plate of some kind.
Either way, I've also asked for confirmation from the traffic womble's notes (and NOT from the DVLA data) of the make, model and colour of the car. I know for a solid fact it wasn't me - and that isn't internet bravado. That's me knowing that at the time of the incident, my car was outside my house while I was in my bathroom having a shower before work 150 miles away!
To answer some other questions people will no doubt have:
Photo of car: There is no image of the vehicle at all (that I have seen or that they refer to). Simply a PCN based on a reg number from the traffic womble who was allegedly about to stick the ticket on the windscreen but the car drove off before he could. In some ways, I guess i'm lucky it happened this way round, as if they had stuck the ticket on and just logged the reg number, I'd then have to prove I never saw the windscreen ticket and the first I'd've known about it would be a summons through the letterbox. This is currently my second biggest hope.
Fake logs: It would be fairly trivial to fake the logs, certainly in terms of the paper-copy-only submissions they accept. Conveniently, both my personal mobile and my work iPhone have logged the same data, and it is presentable electronically if they ask. Further, the door logs from work came with a signed letter verifying their accuracy and veracity. I can probably get a copy of the AD and web proxy logs too, which should prove which part of the subnet i was connected to, thus my physical location to some extent. My office manager has also said she can provide CCTV footage if required of me sat at my desk the entire day, as I happen to sit adjacent to one of the cameras. TfL have been informed of this.
Keeper, not driver: This is a bit of a worry, as even if they accept the evidence, it only proves I wasn't there, not the car. As it turns out, I was the only person with access to the vehicle at the time, as my GF (who only very rarely drives my car at the best of times) was out of the country at the time. And as I drove the car to work that day, it would have been tricky for someone to nick it, drive to Shoreditch, park illegally, and then return it to the car park at work without me noticing...
Other ANPR: This would be absolutely ideal to get hold of, but I've no idea how I would do so before the thing went to court. I also have no idea how long Sheffield Council will keep ANPR / other camera footage when it isn't being used for enforcement purposes.
Other details about car: As noted above, I have requested that TfL supply me with information regarding the make, model and colour of the vehicle observed by the traffic womble, and expressly NOT the information they will have rec'd from DVLA so I can confirm. If it's a "cleverly" cloned plate, it won't prove anything; but if it's a simply typo / error then it might help.
What else?: It has also been pointed out to me that if the traffic womble was close enough to slap a ticket on, they were close enough to see the driver and should be able to provide a rough description. It might help if the driver was obviously not the same ethnicity as me, but as I am otherwise an averaged sized, 25-45, white, dark haired British male, it might not be the distinguishing characteristic I'd hope for.
Can anyone offer any advice whatsoever? I've also stuck this up on PePiPoo hoping they will be able to provide some guidance.
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Comments
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Hah! Yes. As I said in the post, I figured I'd ask here because there are people on here very knowledgeable and very helpful.
I was just stuck because - effectively - I'm being asked to prove a negative, and how does one do that? How many people are able to prove they weren't in a particular place at a particular time?
Anyway, as it turns out, I've just tried ringing TfL and spoken to a chap on the phone who tells me that, having reviewed the photograph of the car that they didn't bother including on the PCN in the first place (for some reason), that someone has misread the last character of the reg plate on the image, and that the photo shows it as an 'A' not an 'E' as in my reg. They've received my appeal already, and are going to send me both a copy of the photograph and a cancellation letter apologising for the mix-up.
So assuming that turns up as promised, then all sorted.0 -
I would imagine with your evidence, and with their lack of it, an adjudicator would find in your favour.0
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