Thanks so much lamma! Very solid advice - I wished I'd found this out 4 weeks ago when I first got the JBW letter. I have spent the last 24 hours chasing around to find someone to witness the declaration, but finally have it sorted and faxed and have emailed for confirmation. Is this still relevant though as I actually ended up paying the £450 on Monday night in my panic, and now hope to reclaim the money from the council, rather than stopping the bailliffs in their tracks....

Hi there, 3 weeks ago (late March 2010) I received a letter from JBW Group informing me of a traffic violation from August 2009 (driving the wrong way down a one-way; I don't recall doing it, but it is quite possible as the time and place are likely), and asking for payment of about £250. I immediately phoned them up to find out more about the contravention and ask why it was my first notice of it. They said I was to phone Islington council for details. I phoned several times and left at least THREE voicemails over the following weeks, seeking proof of the contravention and trying to unde

Hi all, I have to say a big THANK YOU to you all for your help! Having appealed using a good deal of copy-and-paste from your comments, I have just received a response to say that ... "I have now thoroughly investigated your case and can confirm that where you were parked is not part of the footway and this is indeed the carriageway. I apologise that you were initially advised otherwise. I have now cancelled the PCN and I apologise for any inconvenience caused. " Thanks again everyone.

Thanks for your help here guys. For clarity it was a Sunday and definitely outside the hours of operation, but either way I'd agree that the signage was misleading. I'd also agree that it wasn't a conventional place to park, but was more a case of "when needs must" as there were no other free spaces on the square at the time (and I didn't want to park illegally on a DYL!). I'll be using your arguments to fight this - thanks again for your help.

Thanks for your thoughts guys. The photos are the CEO’s photos; I didn’t have a camera with me at the time. My problem with the “obstructing a footway” reasoning though is that by walking around my car a pedestrian would have had more direct access to cross to the narrower piece of road (Carthusian St) exiting the square – the pavements are not aligned (you can see this if you swivel the google streetview around to face east up the road). The entire road-area at this junction is raised to pavement-level because people do not cross at right-angles in order to stay on the same nor

Yes people would have had to walk around the car, in the same way a car will always cause an obstruction parked when parked on a road. Surely if it wasn't intended for parking on they would have put a double-yellow in place?

Yes. Just by the bike, but on the near-side of the fence.

I have recently been given a PCN for contravention code 624 (parking on a footway), but I don’t think it was actually a footway because it was a single yellow line (on a Sunday). Could someone please clarify? Maybe I am wrong, but I thought it would be a double-yellow line if it was not meant to be parked on? I parked opposite 42 Charterhouse Square, London which, when facing it, has a series of Pay and Display bays to the left/West followed by a single yellow line which follows around the corner and all the way up to a black fence (part of the gates leading into the rest of the squ