Very grateful for any advice or opinion that anyone can give me on the following:
Parked next to Hither Green Station in January, with the intention of using the automated Ringo service advertised on the ticket machine to pay over the phone for a full day's parking (£10 plus a 20p admin charge for using Ringo), as I don't generally carry £10 worth of change around with me. You need to pay to park there between 9am and 7pm. I arrived at 8am.
Was a bit short of time when I parked up at Hither Green, so scribbled down the phone number and location code and went to get my train. As soon as I got on the train, I phoned the Ringo number to pay for a full day's parking and was quoted £14.20, £4 more than the correct price. About a month previously, I had parked in the same location, had the same problem and had to spend an age on the phone to Lewisham Council Parking Office getting it put through manually - during the course of that conversation they had promised to get the price corrected.
I was quite annoyed to find that it hadn't been corrected and didn't have time to look up the Parking Office phone number and waste another half an hour on the phone to them. Obviously I was also unwilling to get a train back to Hither Green, go to the cashpoint, get a note changed up and pay manually. So I decided to leave it at that, knowing that I would probably get a ticket but feeling that I had a pretty rock solid basis for appealing it.
Inevitably I did get a ticket, and sent off an appeal letter explaining the above, and offering to pay the £10 I owed them for parking there all day. I didn't hear anything back and presumed they had accepted my appeal, until yesterday, almost 4 months after I wrote to them, they finally replied to tell me that they had rejected my appeal.
They claim that it is my responsibility to make sure that my vehicle is legally parked ( I would say it is their responsibility to make sure that the services they offer are operating correctly). The letter also incorrectly refers to my being quoted £13.20 (rather than £14.20), and claims that the issue has now been rectified and Ringo is now quoting the correct price. I phoned it this morning and guess what, still £14.20.
Have I got reasonable grounds to appeal against their decision?
In particular, does the fact that I had previously made them aware of this problem have any bearing on the strength of my appeal? Is it ok for them to take nearly 4 months to reply to me (I thought these organisations usually had a code of conduct covering stuff like that)? Does the fact they claim to have corrected it but haven't have any bearing on my appeal?
Am tempted to go in all guns blazing, copy in the mayor, local MPs, local papers, etc, pointing out their continuing incompetence, but also mindful of the fact that, whilst I'm willing to send them plenty more angry letters, I don't want to end up facing them in court.
Many thanks for any help any of you can provide.
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Comments
Katrien.Meire@cafc.co.uk
But what a waste of time and effort having to deal with these 'public servants' who are too useless to find a job that doesn't depend on tax payers funding their salaries, holidays and pensions, the clichéd jobsworths.
Two more points, to me, it's always better to pay what might be a bit over the odds, as galling as that might be and 'fight the case' later without having to defend your position after a summons/demand has been issued. Lastly, I would certainly write to newspapers, councillors; whoever and explain the situation, that basically the parking procedures undertaken by Lewisham LB at Hither Green are not fit for purpose and need sorting. Good luck
On the evidence here - you should win, but the point that Lewisham will make is:
"you parked and paid nothing" - this is tricky to argue against.
Yes, they quoted you the wrong price (more than once), and YES they accept that there was an "issue" that "has now been rectified" (but it hasn't).
However, the Lewisham stance will be "you parked and paid zilch - so you parked illegally, so the ticket was correctly issued".
Good Luck.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/private-parking-tickets
I ways also given advice to request under the FOI act the number of appeals that have been declined along the the reasons why. It's too much work for them and they end up granting the appeal. I did this when I overstayed by 10 minutes in Stone Lake Retail Park (Opposite The Valley) and I won my appeal.
Just remember that only councils, courts and TFL can enforce a fine. Private car park companies cannot. They are merely invoices dressed up to look like fines.
parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk
The forums on pepipoo.com are probably your best bet.
And then there's http://parkingcowboys.co.uk but I think that's for penalty notices rather than fines and from what you've said I'm assuming yours is the latter?
Let me know and I'll see if I can help
I do think it's a little bit lacking in generosity for the council to decline your challenge - they are required to deal fairly with customers - but to be frank I think your stance is considerably weakened by you not paying anything. Councils are less impressed by offers to pay the parking fee as, unlike private companies (who charge you for costs associated with breach of contract), Councils can levy a fine.
You do have an appeal left, and that I believe is heard independently. I wonder if there's a technical issue here that may get you off. I mean, if the only option open to you was to be overcharged that doesn't seem entirely reasonable does it?
I would write to CEO of Lewisham Council and copy your MP. Ask why the problem with the payment system has not been corrected and why should you have subsidised the Council with no expectation of getting it back.
More importantly ask the CEO what is the policy of the Council where they have caused you to breach the parking conditions through inability to pay the correct tariff and refusal to accept the correct tariff when offered, instead preferring to hide behind legal powers to impose a fine.
Be very outraged but polite.
As I desperately try to get some sense out of NPower, BT and similar miserable companies, I will console myself with the fact that their employees have managed to get a job doing nothing without any help rom the government!
Thanks very much for all the genuinely helpful comments, much appreciated.
The second is to pay it. A lot of people will, even if they know they are in the right as 1) they can't be bothered to fight it and 2) they get frightened by the fact the council will double the fine if they lose their appeal.
The third option - and one I would seriously recommend you consider doing - is appeal to the London Tribunals - See http://www.londontribunals.gov.uk/
This section of their website has a helpful guide how to proceed http://www.londontribunals.gov.uk/eat/appeals-process-explained
You can appeal by post or ask for a personal hearing to put forward your representations. The council will likewise be asked for their views.
If you've got the time, and are really determined to fight it, ask for a personal hearing. Almost certainly, the council will not send anyone along. You will then have a chance to explain your side of the story fully to an adjudicator. And you will find the hearing very informal - it's not a court of law, you just chat to the adjudicator in a room. Just make sure you have the facts to hand - don't go along on the basis that it's unfair.
You will find the adjudicators scrupulously fair. There is absolutely no bias from them towards the council. (Indeed in 13/14, 56,166 appeals were determined and 25,959 appeals were allowed, of which 10,915 were not contested).
The not contested figure is interesting. You'll see that in 13/14. councils did not contest about 20% of appeals, either because it wasn't worth their while to do so as regards time and effort or frankly they knew the grounds the ticket were issued on were weak. You never know that might happen here.
I'm not a solicitor and can't advise you on whether you have reasonable grounds for an appeal. All I would say is that if the council were trying to charge you £4 more than advertised on the sign, that is clearly not right. The weakness in your case might, however, be that you maybe should have paid the fee quoted rather than nothing. As I say, you need to weigh up how strongly you feel about the matter and the risks of going to appeal - which at the end of the day even if you lose is only that the fine gets doubled. (Costs won't be awarded against you unless the adjudicator feels your appeal is vexatious. And that only happens very rarely).
Have a look on the internet and see if you can find any previous cases fought on your basis. That can sometimes be helpful in seeing whether the appeal was upheld.
Good luck if you do decide to appeal.
Thanks very much for taking the time to write all that down, greatly appreciated. Never heard of London Tribunals before, that would appear to be the direction to go in though. Thanks again.
On one occasion in Camden I had a residents permit and mistakenly parked in a pay only bay (there were both on the same road). I came back to the car a week later and there were 7 tickets on it. I appealed, this was refused, I appealed again and they offered that if I pay the reduced rate on the first one, they would rescind the others. I took them up on this as I didn't have the time to fight it and they were correct in that I wasn't showing the correct ticket for that space. I didn't feel I had a strong enough case.
On a separate occasion I parked in Greenwich on a single yellow line on a Sunday. Up in Blackheath this is acceptable.
I appealed.
I was told Greenwich has its own controlled parking zone. They say there are signs as you enter saying this but I have never seen them.
Again, I felt that although it was a genuine error on my part, I wasn't obeying the rules so paid the basic amount.
Using ringo for the first time I set the fields up wrong and put the car type in the registration number field. I paid for parking and could show the receipt. They accepted it was a genuine error and rescinded the ticket.
Long winded way of saying I wouldn't appeal of you hadn't paid even though you tried to and it was priced wrongly, you didn't pay, didn't have a ticket and therefore legally (although the fuckers should use some discretion) I can't see you have a leg to stand on unfortunately.
I would suggest it's better to get the Council to not pursue the case. The Council are not bound by law to pursue you for the penalty, they just have the power to do so. Once they exercise that power the Tribunal can only look at the legally prescribed grounds for upholding an appeal; the Council confusing you with the wrong information probably isn't on the list.
You didn't actually buy a ticket even though you had good reason, but that might be all the Tribunal lawyer can do.
True story - I got a ticket many years ago in the City. Realised on the 14th day I hadn't paid the fine so had to be paid in cash that day at the City of London Magistrates office (before days of online banking). Problem was I had to be in Birmingham by 10am so drove by early in the morning before it was open and left the cash in an envelope and slid it under the door. Then got letter saying my penalty was now £100 as i hadn't paid. Obviously got pocketed instead of being handed over by someone.
Went to Tribunal and lost. They said legally I hadn't paid the money TO the office. Left the Tribunal fuming and went straight to the Magistrates payment office and completely lost it with the counter staff, telling them what a load of thieving arseholes they were and they weren't getting another penny out of me. They waived the penalty.