PCN challenge – signage says 2hrs free (parked <1hr at 4pm), unclear council photos

prowla

We had an issue about a year ago where TfL alleged an offence; we contested it and they insisted it was valid.

We pointed out the law (The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions, TSRGD) and that it had not been broken.

Instead, they cherry-picked partial sentences from the TSRGD to assemble new ones to make their point.

We escalated it to the Tribunal and TfL issued a document stating their case, which we went through line-by-line pointing out the errors, inaccuracies, and blatant lies they had written.

The Tribunal upheld our appeal and stated "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...".

The lessons from that are:

• The Authorities may not understand the legal requirements of road signage and rules which they are tasked with upholding.
• The Authorities may double-down in their attempts to enforce their decision and even make things up in an attempt to support their case.
• The Authorities have a sequence of price escalations which are intended to pressure you into paying; the clock is supposed to stop whilst they are responding to your information (eg. providing video evidence of the alleged transgression), but we had to point out that they hadn't followed their process in that regard (which should've been enough for them to cancel it anyway).
• It is worth reading the law (TSRGD) and determining whether the signage complies.
• The process, going through appeals took about 6 months.
• also, as per previous post, Reading have form for incorrectly issuing fines.

In the end, you can decide whether you want to go forward with appealing or just buckle and pay.

I found the process quite interesting and educational, but my respect for public bodies who are supposedly there to work in our interests was greatly diminished as a result.

In our case, we believed the fine was wrong from the start and then at a certain point we came to the realisation that we were right and could prove it; after that it just became an intriguing challenge to see through to its logical conclusion.

We also had the satisfaction of having caused them more work and expense than the amount of the fine, which was quite gratifying.

Good luck with whichever road you take.