About 14 months ago my gf & I drove back from a free fest late at night & parked in the dark down my road, coz there were no spaces outside my flat. We left the car there, because we have a parking permit for the area. A couple days later I walked past the car & found the fucking thing bristling with PCNs! It seems we'd parked in a bay reserved for Business Permit Holders, not us Resident Permit Holders. The charge was £330, £110 for each day the car was there.
Needless to say we were aghast! There are no businesses down my road at all, & although my road does join up with a street full of shops, the Business Bay is at the far end, well away from the High Street. There are no Business Bays up our end, near to businesses. We fought the fine as far as we could, refused to pay the reduced half-fine of £155 within the alotted time & we liable to the full fine when we took it to the Appeals process. We complained about the lighting on the sign (there is none), we complained about the inadquate line painting & tried to find out WHY exactly a Business Parking Bay even existed here if not in order to con us resisdents out of money. We even turned up at the council at 9am but no-one from the parking department would even come down to talk to us.
After many months & an awful lot of fucking around & wasted paper, we won the fucking appeal because the council apparently can only fine you once for such an infringement. But we still had to pay that one fine, because of course, we had parked in the wrong place regardless of why the Business Bay is there or what the signs or lines say. So we had to pay £110 even though, had we been fined legally, we would have only had to pay half that, because we would not have apealed, we'd have paid straight away.
Then! A couple weeks ago we found a website dedicated to helping people with this sort of problem. We were told to find out what the "Parking Control Order" or some shit for that Bay says & upon enquiry it turned out the council was unable to supply one. Then last week it turned out, whoops, they do have an order but it turns out that the order stipulates that Residents may also park there! We got our money back late last week, & this week the fuckers are changing the sign to allow both Residents & Business Permit Holders park there! Our council actually issues & charges for more parking spaces than actually exist in my town so why on earth they were wasting space for a non-existant business I guess we'll never know. We've now dropped leaflets into all the homes on my road, because over the last year we've seen loads of people get done there! They too can get their fucking money back!
I reckon if we bitch about the drugs laws long & loud enough & we make sense, we'll get change there too!
Needless to say we were aghast! There are no businesses down my road at all, & although my road does join up with a street full of shops, the Business Bay is at the far end, well away from the High Street. There are no Business Bays up our end, near to businesses. We fought the fine as far as we could, refused to pay the reduced half-fine of £155 within the alotted time & we liable to the full fine when we took it to the Appeals process. We complained about the lighting on the sign (there is none), we complained about the inadquate line painting & tried to find out WHY exactly a Business Parking Bay even existed here if not in order to con us resisdents out of money. We even turned up at the council at 9am but no-one from the parking department would even come down to talk to us.
After many months & an awful lot of fucking around & wasted paper, we won the fucking appeal because the council apparently can only fine you once for such an infringement. But we still had to pay that one fine, because of course, we had parked in the wrong place regardless of why the Business Bay is there or what the signs or lines say. So we had to pay £110 even though, had we been fined legally, we would have only had to pay half that, because we would not have apealed, we'd have paid straight away.
Then! A couple weeks ago we found a website dedicated to helping people with this sort of problem. We were told to find out what the "Parking Control Order" or some shit for that Bay says & upon enquiry it turned out the council was unable to supply one. Then last week it turned out, whoops, they do have an order but it turns out that the order stipulates that Residents may also park there! We got our money back late last week, & this week the fuckers are changing the sign to allow both Residents & Business Permit Holders park there! Our council actually issues & charges for more parking spaces than actually exist in my town so why on earth they were wasting space for a non-existant business I guess we'll never know. We've now dropped leaflets into all the homes on my road, because over the last year we've seen loads of people get done there! They too can get their fucking money back!
I reckon if we bitch about the drugs laws long & loud enough & we make sense, we'll get change there too!
