PCN for incorrectly completed visitor parking voucher

mtj104

Hi. My sister recently received a PCN from Barnet Council as she had scratched the wrong month on a visitor parking voucher. The council have rejected the informal appeal in which we used the "de minimis" argument. I've copied below the main details of the informal appeal and Barnet's reply. Is it worth going to a formal appeal or should we just pay the discounted rate while we still can? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Informal appeal
On Saturday 3rd of August I was visiting..... Knowing the parking restrictions, I had duly completed a visitor's parking voucher on my arrival. Just before 2.55pm I noticed a traffic warden looking at my car and went outside to find out what was happening. She informed me that the voucher had been incorrectly completed (from her perspective) because I had inadvertently scratched out the month of July instead of August. The rest of the voucher had been correctly completed. I tried to explain that it had been a genuine mistake and that the 3rd of July 2019 had not been a Saturday, so I had not been trying to fraudulently re-use the recently-purchased voucher, which had been her implication. Despite my plea for common sense to prevail, she preceded to issue the penalty notice.

Please also note the Chief Adjudicator's report on a similar recent Brighton council appeal, which I have copied below. In reference to my case, the last time the 3rd of July fell on a Saturday was back in 2010, which was a long time before these parking vouchers were issued, therefore (applying the same logic) a similar "de minimis" mistake has occurred which does not invalidate the voucher.

"The PCN was issued for parking in a resident’s permit space without displaying a valid permit. The appellant was a visitor. She obtained and displayed a visitor’s scratch-card voucher. This required her to scratch off the day of the week,date,month and year. She made a mistake with the date, scratching off 21 instead of 22; all the other details were correct. The council claimed that this error invalidated the voucher.
Held: This was the wrong approach. No contravention had occurred. The mistake was de minimis and did not invalidate the voucher. Given the
combination of correct information given, the voucher could not have been used on any other day. While the adjudicator did not necessarily criticise the enforcement officer for issuing the PCN, the council should have appreciated that a minor and genuine error had occurred and cancelled it.
Appeal allowed."

Barnet Council reply
Contravention: Parked in a residents` or shared use parking place or zone without a valid virtual permit or clearly displaying a valid physical permit or voucher or pay and display ticket issued for that place where required, or without payment of the parking charge.
We have carefully considered the evidence you have supplied and decided not to cancel your PCN. The reasons for this decision are stated below. The Civil Enforcement Officer (CEO) observed your vehicle parked in a residents' parking place without any form of valid permit that allowed it to be parked there. I must advise you that vehicles are not permitted to stop within a residents' parking space without a valid permit as this is deemed to be a contravention and therefore a PCN will be issued.
I have noted the comments made in your correspondence regarding the incorrectly completed voucher. Please be advised that if any part of a voucher is incorrectly completed and displayed in the vehicle, it is invalid and a PCN will be correctly issued. It is the responsibility of the driver to ensure that the correct details are scratched off on a voucher prior to displaying in the vehicle.
I have also noted the comments made in your correspondence regarding another case that was cancelled. Please be advised that each case is dealt with separately and the decisions made on other case have no effect on the outcome of this case.

Fruitcake

As we specialise in private parking charges here on MSE, you would be better taking this over to our friends on pepipoo.com as they are the council and police parking and motoring specialists.

You will need to sign up on pepipoo with a non-Hotmail email address then read the FAQs before posting both sides of your redacted PCN with your query.

mtj104

Thanks for the advice Fruitcake. I've raised it on the pepipoo site.