Parking ticket - invalid??

sarah1980

Hi everyone. My house is beside a relatively quiet A-road. 2 houses up from us is a local primary school. The Primary School is obviously set way back from the road, with a kind of drop off/pick up lane in front of it. In front of THAT lane is a row of trees, and in front of the trees is a 3m wide "pavement".

People park on this "pavement" day and night, and because I have a driveway do not usually do this. However, last Thursday was bin collection day. I was about to turn into my driveway when I realised the bin men had left the wheelie bin right on the entrance to our driveway. So I drove on, pulled up on this pavement bit and walked down to move the bin to the back of the house.

I was due to go back out as I had an appointment in around 30 mins, so I stayed in the house for that time. When I went back out I had received a PCN from the Local Authority. There are NO signs to indicate parking restrictions, NO yellow or white lines (double or single) on the road adjacent to the pavement and people have been parking there for years without a problem.

Here's the interesting bit: On the PCN it gives the following reason:

"Parked in a restricted street during prescribed hours".

A) This wasn't a street, it was a pavement.
There were no signs to indicate any restrictions (let alone "prescribed hours")
C) Even if I were to go on common sense, this would tell me that the busiest hours were school pick/up and drop/off times. And I was parked between 10am and 10.07am.

Do you think this is worth contesting? I genuinely had no idea I was not allowed to park there, and this being the case I would like to try and avoid the fine - and the invalid reason printed on the PCN seems to give me a valid argument.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

bargepole

It seems that they have given you a ticket for the wrong reasons. If there are no yellow lines, the offence is "contravention code 624 Parked with one or more wheels on any of an urban road other than a carriageway", not the one they put on your ticket.

Whether or not this invalidates the charge, is a question you should ask in the Parking forum at www.pepipoo.com

Edit: I see you already have!