Penalty Charge Notice From Brighton & Hove City Council

[q.q.qlp]

Hi,

 

Hope you can help, this is my first Penalty Charge Notice.

 

I park on the same road for 6hrs 3 x week for work and have done for years.

I have always paid and for at least 1yr have been using the pay by phone app so it is easy for me to prove that I always pay, regular as clockwork on these 3 days at the same time every week.

 

On this day I was frazzled and tired and rushing to work and received an important phone call at exactly the time I was paying by phone. After the call I forgot to pay.

 

I told the council all of this and I immediately offered to pay the usual parking fee owed as I always do and they still want me to pay a fine!

 

 

I think this is really unfair and it sticks in my craw as it was an honest mistake so I really don't want to pay the fine.

 

Do I have any chance/way of winning an appeal or is there no way around it and should I just (very begrudgingly) pay?

 

They say they only observed my car from 14:07 til 14:12- only 5mins, is this a way to win an appeal?

 

Many thanks for any help.

[Jamberson]

Sounds like the ticket is legit if you didn't pay that day. The only option in situations like this is to appeal for a discretionary cancel, which you have already tried.

 

Five minutes' observation is fine for them to enforce if it's pay and display.

[unimatrix1066]

Check the local councils guidance on the observation time, I got a ticket in Enfield on lpay and display issued within 5mins and appealed as there policy was 10mins and won

Google the docs

[q.q.qlp]

Good idea... Unfortunately checked their guidance and their minimum observation time is 5 mins so no joy there.

 

I was hoping that if they take me to court over it I would win since it was obviously a one off mistake and I can demonstrate both a long record of regular payment and a willingness to pay the normal fee immediately when I realised my mistake (only mistake in 5 or so years!). Does anyone know about this?

[Tony P]

A "one off mistake" is not something they would usually consider (imagine a murderer proving he only did it once, claiming they should therefore let him off without penalty!)

 

A letter pleading exceptional circumstances MIGHT just sway them - but don't count on it.

[Jamberson]

You don't get taken to court for refusing to pay. What happens is, they wait a certain period, lump on extra charges, then obtain a bailiff warrant, with the bailiffs coming to clamp the car.

 

Your way out is to win an appeal - but you don't have a strong hand, as the contravention definitely did occur. If it were me, I would pay while the discount still applies.

[q.q.qlp]

A "one off mistake" is not something they would usually consider (imagine a murderer proving he only did it once, claiming they should therefore let him off without penalty!

 

Comparing me to a murderer Tony?! That's a bit harsh!

(and I don't think really analogous to this situation)

 

Hmmm yes jamberson you may be right. Unless I get a better idea I may just do that and whinge at them a bit (and forever be bitterly resentful).

 

Is it worth telling my local MP?

 

I just can't beleive their totally bad attitude. Not a way to engender a feeling of community

[Tony P]

Comparing me to a murderer Tony?!

 

No. Far from it.

However the money seeking Council will almost certainly apply the same analogous principle in an unbending manner.

 

Clearly you feel they should let you off a 'one off' parking misdemeanor, but at what point would you cease to agree with the authorities taking a similar lenient approach against someone else accused, for the first time, of (say) shoplifting, or animal cruelty, or domestic assault, or fraud, or exceeding the drink driving limit, or pedophilia, or murder, and so on?

 

There must surely a dividing line in your expectation - were is it with you?

 

But I refer you to the last sentence in my previous post.

[q.q.qlp]

Id say that it's more analogous to having a subscription service that you pay for regularly and then miss one payment due to exceptional circumstances and then continue to pay regularly than your examples which are serious crimes rather than oversights (except perhaps shoplifting if you are a prominent British morning TV presenter )

[ericsbrother]

parking and murder are absolute offences, you cant say you didnt know or mitigate it away so the comparison is valid. Obviously when hanging is brought back it will only be for parking offenders and not murderers who will get counselling and anger management courses instead.

[q.q.qlp]

But you can say you forgot / were victim of a payment app error (I received a phone call as app payment was processing and payment didn't go through and I didn't realise) once in hundreds of regular payments same time, same place spanning years.

 

Irony is if the machine accepted £5 notes I wouldn't need the app and wouldn't have missed the payment! I pay 30p extra to use the app since their crappy machines rejected half of the £1 coins I had to use so I had to carry around about £10 in change all the time to be sure I could pay the £5. All in all very frustrating.

[ericsbrother]

With most councils it is about income not fairness or right and wrong. Brighton illegally transfers money from parking fines to other cost centres but no-one in authority (Govt minister for example) gives a rats. Nearly all of the London Boroughs are at it and even when Croydon were ordered by a court to obey the law they just ignored it.

I used to live undar a council that never botherd with parking fines as it has no traffic wardens to enforce ( council saved money by not employing any) but the Govt forced another local council's goons on them and the money went to the pair of the councils in an uneven split. Result? What you would expect, people being clobbered for minor parking offences and appeals being unsuccessful as they went to the council, supplying the goons rather than the one making the traffic orders. Example being my son in law getting a ticket for obstructing my driveway when he couldnt get his van on my drive because we were working on the guttering and it is damned difficult to balance a ladder on a VW. Council didnt care though, they insisted that I was obstructing myself