Brighton Council car park fine.

goldstone97

Hi

A car was parked in Stanmer Park carpark and the fee was paid by app. On return a PCN was found for the Contravention code :86 Not parked correctly within the markings of a bay or space.

 The carpark was busy and all the marked bays were full and the driver parked on a bit of wasteland heavily rutted by previous traffic.

 The terms and conditions of the carpark, viewed online make no mention of the claimed offence, they do not require the vehicle to be in a marked bay BUT they do mention parking on grass verges. 
 The area the car was on had no grass and was similar to a sister carpark next door that basically is cinders with no marked bays at all.

 This was obviously a revenue raid by enforcement officers, knowing the carpark is used by people visiting the nearby Amex Stadium as the time the PCN was issued was 17:10. 5 minutes before K.O. of a game Saturday afternoon. Several cars were targeted for any conceivable "offence"

 Does the driver have a defence that the claimed contravention wasn't a breach of the terms and conditions ( regardless of the "grass verge " condition) ?


The location was Stanmer Park- Lower Lodges ( West) Car Park.


Thank you for reading this and any help you can offer.

goldstone97

Also, the back of the PCN appears to include a clause removing the 50% discount for payment withing 14 days .
 It states under.

if the PCN is not paid or challenged 

If the PCN is not paid or challenged on or before the end of the 28 day period as specified on this notice or if an Initial challenge is rejected we will serve a Notice to Owner on the owner,keeper or hirer of the vehicle requesting payment at the full amount.

 Are they allowed to do that? The full charge is £50, the discount reduces that to £25. It doesn't seem fair that an appeal should remove the discount.

Umkomaas

As we major on private parking tickets here, Free Traffic Legal Advice (FTLA) forum will be your best bet for council penalty charges. Register there but please note that a Hotmail address may not work - try using a throwaway Gmail account instead if you do have trouble registering, and post a new thread; here's your link:

https://www.ftla.uk/index.php?board=3.0

Read the sticky 'Read this first before posting your case' as well as reading through some of the other threads there ahead of posting your own details, to get the hang of what information they need from you in your opening post - but as a minimum you will need to post redacted photos/scans of all correspondence you've received from the council (both sides, if appropriate), as they need to see all the small print.

Coupon-mad

goldstone97 said:

Also, the back of the PCN appears to include a clause removing the 50% discount for payment withing 14 days .
 It states under.

if the PCN is not paid or challenged 

If the PCN is not paid or challenged on or before the end of the 28 day period as specified on this notice or if an Initial challenge is rejected we will serve a Notice to Owner on the owner,keeper or hirer of the vehicle requesting payment at the full amount.

 Are they allowed to do that? The full charge is £50, the discount reduces that to £25. It doesn't seem fair that an appeal should remove the discount.

Yes Council always do that. You can't pay and appeal and can't keep the discount in play throughout. You don't seem to have a winning appeal point.

I'd pay it.

Seeeeeeeeeagulls!!!!!

(...use the park & ride instead).

prowla

My experience is that, provided you don't mind the risk of losing the initial "discount", it's an idea to always challenge things.

I had a parking ticket in Brighton where they wouldn't accept the appeal (fluttering ticket which their photos showed on the central console face down but with its unique code displayed, plus they acknowledged the required fee had been paid), but they failed to follow their procedure correctly and when I pointed that out, they cancelled it.

I had another item for a road traffic alleged contravention and they rejected the appeal but we escalated to a tribunal who instructed them to cancel it on the basis "It is very alarming that the author of the enforcement authority (EA)'s case summary (4 pages of verbiage) and notice of rejection of the appellant's representations fundamentally misunderstands the regulation concerning the requirements of a box junction.".

goldstone97

Thank you all for your advice.