IF you can prove you are a resident, do you legally have to have a permit ?

After selling our property, we decided to rent for six months, in an area where the properties have no off-street parking. On-street parking is allowed by way of a residence permit...£ 30 each vehicle £ 20 visitor permit. These properties are situated near to a very large government building, that employs many thousands of civil servants with cars!! You can prehaps guess the need for permits, but not necessarily why the residents are penalised.

We decided to apply for a permit, even though it went against the grain. We dually received the application at our previous address the day before we were moving. Well guess what, during our stressful move we did not sent the application off immediately, very naughty. NO PARKING between 10am & 11am and 2pm & 3pm. Then one fateful day I made the mistake of parking there while waiting for the telewest guy to do his job:-) . Wham, ticket 1.

I immediately rang the council and told them that we had the requested application and that we were residence, but with the stress of moving we forgot to send it off. Reaction of council member....Tough. This really upset me and I started to question the fairness of having to obtain a permit....after all....it is the civil servants that are creating the problem. Even the local pubs lock the car parks.

CAN anyone HELP ME on the legal side. The tickets we have received are "FIXED DAILY CHARGE NOTICES" It simply states the "Date" not "Date of Issue"

and along with the usual vehicle & Place details it states the following......

"TO THE DRIVER OF THE VEHICLE DESCRIBED BELOW

At the time and the place stated an Authorised Officer

of the council noticed that the driver had parked

in the parking place and had therefore elected

to pay this Fixed Daily Charge"

Thanks for reading ...please feel free to amend any spelling errors. CHEERS

Send them this letter:

Dear Sir,

Re:PCN XXXXXVehicle: XXXXX

I question the validity of the PCN as the PCN in question does not have the "Date of Issue" clearly marked as per the instructions of Section 66 (3) Road Traffic Act 1991 and does not adhere to the standards demonstrated clearly by the DoT model ticket.

I refer you to the judicial review Moses v Barnet Council in the High Court on 2nd August 2006. This test case decision by Mr. Justice Jackson ruled that Barnet's parking tickets were invalid as they did not have two dates on them, one a date of contravention and the other a date of issue. He also said that any parking ticket needs those two dates to be valid

Therefore, I would be grateful if you would cancel the above PCN.

Yours sincerely,

Sorry , I'm new to this form thing. thanks for your reply. However I am confused about the difference between the following , if any:

(a) Offence under the Road Traffic Act 1984

(b) Offense under the Road Traffic Act 1991, does this supercede the above.

© Does the need to clearly show the "Date of Issue" etc., on the ticket, apply when the PCN refers only to the Road Traffic Act 1984? although the Instructions for Payment : ........21st day following the date of issue shown overleaf

Thanks

I don't know the difference or whether one supercedes the other, but I do know that the ticket must have the 2 dates to be valid and the above letter made Redbridge Council cancel a ticket, which previously they were adamant was valid.

Hi I think you will find that these are two seperate acts, the RTA 1984 is used for highways by the Police, the RTA 1991 I believe is for car parks and alike which under the act were decriminalized and councils took on the responsibility of governing them as council car parks and restricted areas, however, I'm not too sure on this but the actual council has to apply for the decriminalization in their area before they can use the RTA1991. Both are of similar wording but are different acts. Check other threads for similar instances, they may be able to throw more light on it than I can.

Just to give you some background to this. I was very heavily involved with the design and implementation of a residents parking scheme a few years ago.

Technically parking on the public highway is an obstruction. This is irrespective of whether there are yellow lines etc or not. The only way (unless this has changed) to bring in a residents scheme is to put yellow lines in the road and add parking bays. This means that you move from the relatively informal regime of no yellow lines roads to something that has to have a structure and most likely a penalty system.

The other key thing to remember is that you have no more right to park in the road outside your house than Joe Bloggs unless there is some sort of controlled parking scheme. Similarly, if you don't participate in the scheme because you don't want to, then you are likely to be subject to the same penalty regime as other non-members.