Make sure you ask the council (copied to your MP and the Evening Standard) why when the council make a mistake it is your problem? Ask them for compensation for the time cost, inconvenience and emotional disstress their mistake has caused. Ask what guarantee there is that they will not make the same mistake again?
Don’t ask them to cancel it - tell em! Say you are going straight to appeal at the Parking Services appeal lot. (as they are the only ones who can award damages!. I think Westminster has to pay damages if directed by the Service.)
Sorry to hear of this. I can’t believe Westminster Council is getting away with this. What happens if you don’t have a mobile phone, or if the battery’s dead or you have no credits, or you have ridden from out of town or abroad and don’t have one of their silly accounts? I have emailed them 2 weeks ago with these questions but no response as yet.
Exactly - the local authorities and their contractors will only stop this when the law makes them responsible for getting things right. The law at the moment makes the victim responsible for rectifying mistakes - write to your MP and the press about it. It is the only way anything will ever change.
I think the other half and her colleges are resigned to the fact that the parking attendants are ar£**oles and have just built the paperwork into mountain of other forms they have to fill in.
At the end of the day if the police are getting done what chance do the rest of us have.
Last year I wanted to park my bike somewhere and I made the mistake of asking a traffic warden (old term I know but I still think of them that way) if it was ok.
She said it was fine and when I came back there was a ticket on it timed just after I’d asked her. She must have waited for me to go around the corner and then stuck it on. There were no lines or anything there and it was hard to tell if it was for bicycles or bikes.
I phoned up and the advice was to never ask the warden cus they will take advantage. UGH!!!
That is the most annoying part, the person you call doesn’t have any power or authority to actually do anything about it, you have to take it somewhere else.
I am sure that local councils deliberately make sure that the procedures are so convoluted that it actually discourages people from pursuing a wrongful enforcement.
my last appeal took 4 months, 4 letters, pictures, two trips to where I was ticketed and about 5 phone calls for them to finally admit they were wrong…what do I get …nothing. Yet if I dont pay in 14 days they get to double their charge ???
In this case, I suggest others just ignore the PCN. Wait for a summons. Take your proof to court. Laugh when the case is summarily dismissed.
You can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that they have spent a significant portion of the revenue they get from the scandalous motorcycle parking charge pursuing court action.
I agree. I had a few fines in the past when I had a car and never paid them (we’re talking about 8 years ago now). They sent me letters to threaten me to take the matter to court but never did it. The reason was that it would have cost them a lot more money to take the case to court than the amount they would have received if I had paid the fines. When I have a parking ticket (which is rare), I tend to ignore it unless it’s totally unfair.
My understanding is that these days they don’t need to spend much getting back at you. Their powers to engage bailiffs and to impound vehicles to recover unpaid penalties are much greater than they were 8 years ago.
