Change of free parking times

Don_Bidyre

In the past, when visiting family in Southend on Sea, I have occasionally used a nearby carpark when there was no parking left by the house.
This was always free parking on Sumdays & little used so there was always space.

However, after our last visit, I received a PCN & after looking very closely at the charges board I noticed some hardly obvious changes applied with blackout tape to cover the part of the charging period with the included days of the week. The Council additionally sent a photo of a little sticker on one of the machines saying that "Sunday charging now applicable".

However when you are used to free Sundag parking, you don't carefully examine the board or go to the payment machine each time you use the carpark. There was no sort of obvious warning of the changed rules at the carpark entrance.

I objected to the PCN on the grounds that they should have made the change more obvious & predictably this was not accepted with the reasons given totally missing the point.

Technically I realise that I did breach the current parking rules & being a Council run carpark they were entitled to issue the PCN; the question is, do I have a valid argument that they should have made the change more obvious & would that be strong enough to use at a formal representation?

Coupon-mad

Yes that sounds like good grounds for a formal appeal at NTO stage. But there may be more.

Bear in mind that most Councils reject first challenges in almost every case - because they can - and rely on the fact that most people then think 'oh I have no case so I had better rush to take advantage of the discount'.

I'm glad you are not thinking like that. Most Council PCNs can be beaten in fact, at these later stages including at adjudication and on pepipoo Council parking tickets forum, they have over 90% success, so post here:

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showforum=30

The experts are there and will assist you, as long as you post a pic of BOTH SIDES of the PCN in your first post. Do not use a hotmail email addy and do not post without pics.

Don_Bidyre

Great thanks, I'll give them a try.