Mr Mustard Parking Ticket Guide v2 April 14

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Mr Mustards guide to contesting a parking ticket - V2.0 - April 2014

Mr Mustard's guide to contesting your parking ticket(Penalty Charge Notice)

in the

London Borough of Barnet

which may be of help in other local authority locations.

This guide is the personal opinion of Mr Mustard and is provided free of charge and withoutresponsibility on his part. It is impossible to accurately predict the outcome of any particularbattle but armed with this Guide you will be better off than before you read it.

If you find what you think is an error in this guide, please email [email protected]


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Glossary

Appeal - What you do when filing your Appeal Form at PATASATW - Affixed to windscreenCEO - Civil Enforcement Officer ( traffic warden )Challenge - what you send in to the council within 28 days of a PCN being fixed to yourwindscreen (or put in your hand)

Contravention - the thing you are said to have done wrongCPZ - Controlled parking zoneHTD - handed to driverNoR - Notice of Rejection - a letter which rejects the formal representations you made within28 days of receiving the NtONSL - NSL Ltd - the private company which issues & processes parking ticketsNtO - Notice to OwnerPATAS - Parking and Traffic Appeals Service (for London only)PCN - Penalty Charge Notice (parking ticket)Representations - What you do within 28 days in response to a Notice to Owner.


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Contesting in

3 easy stagesTechnically the first stage is known as an informal challenge, the second stage as formalrepresentations and the third stage as an Appeal.


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Contesting is a 3 stage process.

1. informal2. formal3. PATAS - the independent adjudicator.

Informal challenge

Don't be disheartened when the first approach fails - they usually do. You will be offeredanother 14 days in which to pay at the 50% off rate.

Formal representations

If you don't send in an informal challenge, or it is rejected, then at some point up to 6months after the parking ticket was issued you will receive a Notice to Owner.

You can then make formal representations or pay the full charge. There is no point in payingat this stage as the PCN value does not increase until 28 days after a PATAS decision andonly then if you haven't paid up if you lose.

PATAS

Stage 3 costs you nothing and costs the council about 40. Every rejected formalrepresentation should be sent to PATAS as it represents an extra chance of winning and ifenough people do this the whole system might come grinding to a halt. Currently in Barnetabout 3,500 to 5,000 cases a year go to PATAS out of about 150,000 parking tickets. I amtold that an employee can only manage to produce 3 or 4 evidence packs a day so currentlyit takes one member of staff who doesn't manage to do them all. It is a time consuming

process and if anything gets missed that must be in the evidence pack, or it arrives too late,then that will be a procedural impropriety and grounds for your parking ticket to becancelled. If 10,000 cases a year were going to PATAS the system would start to jam up asNSL probably wouldn't be able to divert and train staff quickly enough.

If you lose at PATAS you still get the chance to pay the ticket at the full charge before itincreases 28 days later by 50% if you don't pay it.

A PATAS appeal is just a bit of form filling. You can have the matter dealt with by post butyou are possibly more likely to win if you attend the informal hearing in Islington (adjacent

to Angel tube station) if it is a case of your word against the traffic warden's sparse notes asthe traffic warden will not be there. It is rare for the council to send anyone to appear atPATAS, they rely on their paperwork.


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At the roadside


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You are about to receive a parking ticket - what should you do?

The best advice I can give you is to drive away before the ticket gets affixed to thewindscreen or handed to you. If the traffic warden asks you to wait, ignore them and justdrive off. Don't get into an argument, just get in your car and go. If there are nophotographs of your car with a parking ticket on it that weakens the council's case.

The warden may well write in his notes that the parking ticket was HTD, handed to driver,but you will have a convincing argument to rebut that with, the truth. The traffic warden isalso expected to make a note of any conversation with you and a description of what youlook like. If you say nothing that makes your life easier and if you scarper fast the trafficwarden won't have time to write down much other than that you are a man or a woman.

What should happen next is that the council go off and look up your details at the DVLA andthen post either the PCN (under Regulation 10, a PCN affixed to your vehicle is underregulation 9) or a Notice to Owner to you. They can't always be bothered which means youdon't hear anything or they may not do it in time which gives you grounds for appeal. Thedocument they should send you is the parking ticket but if they are pretending to haveaffixed to the windscreen then you will get the NtO first and lose the opportunity to pay atthe 50% discount rate so you might as well argue to the end. If you were ticketed in ashopping street it might be worthwhile to spend 10 getting a video of your visit from thecouncil's cctv record which could support your argument that the PCN was not affixed to thewindscreen.

You have received a parking ticket - what should you do?

Firstly, don't get mad as it doesn't help. Make yourself a cup of tea and look closely at theparking ticket. Does it have all of the correct variable details on it?

Is the date correct i.e. is it the day on which the parking ticket was stuck on yourwindscreen.

Is the offence code correct? or is the offence you perhaps actually did commit different tothe one that it is believed you committed as even if you made mistake B you can't be given aparking ticket for mistake A.

Is the location of the Contravention correct and complete? For a postal PCN, if you didn'tfind the parking ticket on your windscreen, a description of "High Road" alone is grounds for

appeal and if a long road changes name then the council may choose the wrong one andthis is grounds for appeal.

If your parking ticket is before about 13 December 2012 it will contain invalid wording. Seethis blog

http://v.gd/pcninvalid

What you must always do is to act within the timetable set out in every document youreceive as if not you become guilty by default even if innocent.


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Stages 1,2 & 3


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Stage 1 - Informal challenge.

This is the informal stage which is the period inbetween receiving the PCN and the NtO.

The first step is to go and look at the photos on the council website.

Link to photos

If there aren't any that helps (you might need to allow 24 hours for them to appear) as thecouncil will have to rely on the computerised notes of the traffic warden and they are notalways clear or comprehensive. If the photos show any grounds for cancellation such as thelines being very faded then save that information as grounds of representation for the nextstage. If you click on each photo to enlarge it and then right click you can save the picture toyour own computer as a jpg file. Give them new names as you do so. I tend to use yourinitials plus 1, 2, 3 etc. I suggest you create a sub-directory on your hard disk with theparking ticket number, probably starting AG, as the sub-directory name and you can put allrelated documents in there. Do the same in your email programme or label each email withthe AG number.

At this stage I tend to only make a challenge based upon the council's ability to exercisediscretion in your favour. You will ask for mitigation, basically a begging letter asking thecouncil to let you off. This could be on the grounds of medical urgency, that thecontravention was very minimal, that something went wrong with the pay-by-phone system,whatever you can think of.

Be polite, be clear, be concise. Remember that the person reading your letter or email doeshundreds of these a week and so what you want to do is to make it easy for them to cancelyour ticket. If you can get them on your side then so much the better. It is quite helpful if

NSL ignore you at this stage! This is because the parking ticket says that an informalchallenge will be considered and so if it isn't that is a point that PATAS should find is aprocedural impropriety and cancel your parking ticket.

The parking ticket says you can send your appeal to PO Box 197 Lowton Way, Hellaby,Sheffield, S98 1LW. This is where your documents will be scanned by PARSEQ and added toyour parking ticket file in the ICES software. Do use the "Signed For" service of Royal Mail.

You can also file your challenge on-line using the webform on the council website. I don'tlike this method as it isn't so easy to keep a copy of what you have sent - webforms hand

control to the council so it is probably better not to do this.

It doesn't say so on the parking ticket but challenges are also accepted by email [email protected] is the quickest and cheapest method especially if like meyou have a signature set up which adds your name and address to emails. You also need toquote your vehicle registration and the PCN reference in every communication. You can writeas often as you like if you think of extra points. The council tell you not to write again butthat is not a rule that they have any right to impose.

The council have an internal target of 14 days to answer informal challenges which they

don't always meet. At some point you will either get a letter refusing to cancel the parkingticket or a Notice to Owner which takes you onto the next stage.


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Stage 2 - Formal representations

This stage is covered by legislation. The council are obliged to respond within 56 days ofreceipt and if not done that automatically means by law that your representations have beenaccepted although the council will probably grind on regardless. That would be grounds toask for costs from PATAS although they are only awarded very rarely.

At this stage you can repeat all of the arguments that have already been rejected as thecouncil have to consider them afresh.

Then add in all the other grounds you can think of which will mainly be why you say thecontravention did not occur, and any procedural errors that the council have made, such asyour parking ticket contains the wrong words (for tickets prior to about 13 December 2012)or the location is wrongly stated. The colour of your car being wrongly stated on the PCNdoes not matter.

Other favourites are that the signs and lines are not clear or that the photograph of the signis not the one next to your vehicle. Putting into question that the council have shown exactlywhere your car was and its relationship to the photographed sign might give the council aproblem to prove that the contravention occurred once you reach PATAS.

For a Controlled Parking Zone you can claim that the zone is not properly signed and thenthe council will have to prove it was; this applies to tickets given out for parking on a singleyellow line which do not have their own time-plate as they are controlled by the signs at theentrances to the zone. In general there should be two, one each side of the road and someare missing e.g. on Barnet Hill near High Barnet tube there has only been one sign for years.

My method is to try and find 5 or 6 grounds of representation and then send in my email

with numbered paragraphs, one for each point. If the council fail to answer any of them thatis a procedural impropriety which should enable PATAS to cancel your parking ticket.

Another common error is that the council are not sufficiently precise about the contraventionor the location. This on its own may not be enough to convince PATAS, but once there are acollection of small points of doubt, that can tip the whole process in your favour. Adescription of "High Rd" or "Station Road" could refer to many locations.

A lot of parking tickets go missing off windscreens because, possibly, the traffic warden hasnot put the ticket on the screen in the first place or photographed an empty yellow envelope

or removed the whole thing after taking photos. A parking ticket should be "affixed"according to the legislation which is why yellow sticky backed plastic envelopes exist, so thatif you do not come back to your car for a week the ticket will still be there, dry and readable.I would appeal that the ticket was not affixed if it was simply tucked under the wiper. Idoubt the adjudicator would cancel a ticket for that reason alone but we do need to educatetraffic wardens to follow the rules.

If your representations are accepted the council might just go quiet. You can check on-lineby going to look at the photos again and seeing if the sum due is now 0.00 (Link to photos)

If your formal representations are rejected you will be sent a Notice of Rejection whichshould have with it an appeal form to send to PATAS.


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You can see how to complete the simple Appeal form on this blog post.


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Stage 3 - PATAS

PATAS do not have any jurisdiction over the exercise of discretion so if the council are notkind to you by not "letting you off" PATAS cannot make them except where there arecompelling reasons and even then they can only recommend that the council reconsider. Asthe council have to put all of your communications in the evidence pack, PATAS will seethem anyway.

Therefore at this stage you drop the requests to be kind and concentrate on legallyacceptable grounds of appeal which are that the contravention did not occur or that therehas been a procedural impropriety on the part of the council, and there often is. Thedefective wording of the parking ticket is such an impropriety. Also, until recently, the NtOwas defective in that it did not give the date of service of the PCN (this was corrected afterMr Mustard blogged about it in November 12) and that enabled PATAS to cancel parkingtickets.

This is where you can bring out the Pay By Phone arguments. You need to claim that thesigns are unclear and that the instructions are also unclear and incomplete and then thecouncil will have to show that they are adequate. You should also appeal on the groundsthat the tall sign with instructions on how to pay is not approved by the Secretary of State asit should be as it is a non-standard sign and not in the Traffic Signs Regulations and GeneralDirections 2002.

The possible grounds of your appeal can be found on the PATAS website here and quicklystated are:

contravention did not occur,car not owned by me on that day,

someone else put it there without my consent,council asking for wrong amount,vehicle out on hire,council cock-up,Traffic Management Order invalid (very rare this one),PCN served by post when it could have been put on windscreen,already paid it (one would expect this to be sorted already).

The PATAS appeal form is straightforward and you can expect a postal hearing after amonth, perhaps a bit longer for a personal hearing if your free days are limited.

PATAS are independent. The council pays them to hold the appeal hearing and so theindependent adjudicator is truly independent; it does not matter to them whether theycancel the PCN or not as PATAS are paid a fixed fee. This is the exact opposite of the councilwho stand to gain by rejecting your argument.

If you attend a personal hearing you are likely to know on the day what the outcome is andif by post you will hear a few days afterwards. You can also look the result up on the PATASwebsite here. The hearing is informal, although chaired by a legally qualified person with lotsof experience in parking legislation, and so is not a daunting prospect for the lay person i.e.you and me and could be treated as an interesting half day out.


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Contravention

codesand

relevant

arguments


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Code 1 - Parking in a restricted street during prescribed hours.

What you did wrong.

More PCN were issued for this alleged contravention in the year to 31 March 13 than anyother.

This means you were on a single or double yellow line when you should not have been.

You cannot park on double yellow at any time on any day. (Christmas Day is the one day onwhich Barnet Council dont, at the time of writing this guide, enforce single or double yellowlines; as they do on Boxing Day and at Easter etc)

If a single yellow line is inside a CPZ the hours at which you cannot park will be on the CPZentry signs, like this one, so keep your eyes peeled whilst driving and memorise the times,

unless there is a sign on a pole adjacent to the line which has other times on it, whichoverride the CPZ times. Outside a CPZ there has to be a sign for a single yellow. There is noneed for a sign for double yellow lines as they apply at all times.

Grounds on which you can contest the PCN:

Double yellow:

The lines are faded beyond the point of being substantially compliant.

You were setting down or picking up passengers. If the passengers were young, old ordisabled then you are allowed more time than for the able bodied.

You were loading and/or unloading (except where signs and kerb marks indicate that it is notpermitted).

You were displaying your Blue Badge and clock, there was not a prohibition on loading andyou were not parked for more than 3 hours.

Single yellow:


You were setting down or picking up passengers. If the passengers were young, old ordisabled then you are allowed more time than for the able bodied.

You were loading and/or unloading, except where signs and kerb marks indicate that you

couldnt.


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You were displaying your Blue Badge and clock and there was not a prohibition on loadingand you were not parked for more than 3 hours.

You were inside a CPZ zone, the single yellow line was not governed by a local time plate,and one of the zone entry signs was missing, damaged or facing the wrong way.

The time plate, or CPZ sign, did not forbid parking at the time that the PCN was issued(traffic wardens do make mistakes).


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Code 2: Parked or loading/unloading in a restricted street where waiting and loadingrestrictions are in force.

So this is the same contravention as Code 1 except that waiting (which is a form of parking)is even more restricted; blue badge holders cannot park where loading is not allowed and isa mistake they often make. The loading restriction is required to be indicated by both a signand marks on the kerb at right angles to the road.

Grounds on which you can contest:

That there isnt both a "no loading" sign plate and the kerb marks which should be about25cm long and are at right angles to the road (roughly a foot long and they should be spacedat 2 to 4 metre intervals so that there is always one alongside your car).

That the lines and/or kerb marks are faded beyond the point of being substantially compliant.

That you werent parked at a time that the restrictions applied (single yellow or less than a 24hour loading restriction only).

Note:

It is possible to have a CPZ in which "No Loading" is also shown on the entry sign andprohibits loading throughout the CPZ. I have not seen one of those in Barnet but bewareelsewhere.


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5. Parked after the expiry of paid for time.

This is for when you are parked on the street. (Code 82 in car parks.)

It is clear what you have done. You have parked for longer than you paid for. Check that youhavent been short-changed by the parking meter or the PayByPhone system.


It was not a location at which you were required to pay for an initial period of time. There aredual use bays in some of our town centres where you are allowed 15 minutes of free parking.If you stay for 30 minutes and get a PCN for this contravention you have not committed it. Itis true that you stayed too long but if you didnt pay for any time at all then you cannot haveparked after the expiry of paid for time.


The traffic warden did not observe your car for 5 minutes before issuing a PCN. The contract

with NSL requires an observation period of 5 minutes. If this was not done then NSL are inbreach of contract and the PCN should not have been issued. The council should not profitfrom breaches of contract by NSL.

You had paid for longer but for some reason the parking meter or PayByPhone system gaveyou a shorter time period than you had paid for.

The sign about payment is missing, wrong, damaged or facing the wrong way.


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11. Parked without payment of the parking charge.

This will usually be a result of the PayByPhone system not functioning very well. Often youwill be in the process of making your payment when the traffic warden gives you a parkingticket. You are allowed a reasonable time to register for the first time and then makepayment.

It might be that you purchased parking our of a meter and had a receipt which you placed inthe windscreen and it blew away or slipped down the windscreen behind the obscured part ofit.


You were in the process of making payment. The councils contractor Verrus have a fullrecord of all your calls, texts and key presses and can produce them if you ask the council todo so.

You had already paid.

You paid but the receipt slipped out of sight due to reasons beyond your control. (Produce acopy of the receipt).

You paid but the Verrus PayByPhone system recorded an incorrect vehicle registration orparking location. Blame Verrus, you know your vehicle registration number, they dont andthey must have made the error.


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27. Parked adjacent to a dropped footway

This was ticketed for nearly 8,000 times in a year. You cannot park next to a droppedfootway which has been lowered to meet the level of the carriageway for the purpose of (andthis is a cut down version of S.86 Traffic Management Act 2004)

(i) assisting pedestrians crossing the carriageway,(ii) assisting cyclists entering or leaving the carriageway, or(iii) assisting vehicles entering or leaving the carriageway across the footway, cycle track orverge; or

the carriageway has been raised to meet the level of the footway, cycle track or verge.

This is subject to the following exceptions:

The first exception is where the vehicle is parked wholly within a designated parking place orany other part of the carriageway where parking is specifically authorised (this can happeninside a CPZ)

The second exception is where the vehicle is parked outside residential premises by or withthe consent (but not consent given for reward) of the occupier of the premises (but not insidea CPZ where there is a single yellow lines across the dropped kerb).

This second exception does not apply in the case of a shared driveway.

The fourth exception is where the vehicle is being used for the purposes of delivering goodsto, or collecting goods from, any premises, or is being loaded from or unloaded to anypremises,

(b) the delivery, collection, loading or unloading cannot reasonably be carried out in relationto those premises without the vehicle being parked as mentioned and the vehicle is soparked for no longer than is necessary and for no more than 20 minutes.

The fifth exception is where the vehicle is being used in connection with undertaking anybuilding operation, demolition or excavation,

References in this section to parking include waiting, but do not include stopping where:

(a) the driver is prevented from proceeding by circumstances beyond his control or it isnecessary for him to stop to avoid an accident, or

(b) the vehicle is stopped, for no longer than is necessary, for the purpose of allowing peopleto board or alight from it.

Most of the time a dropped kerb is obvious so you should be able to recognise and avoid it.There might be tactile paving (the slabs with dimples on them) for the benefit of the blindwhich you would not then park alongside. There might be some different coloured paintwhich highlights the cycle lane although there are not many of those in Barnet. There mightbe a house or a block of flats and what is obviously a vehicle entry which you will stay wellclear of so as not to obstruct a drivers view.


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There is almost always a dropped kerb at a junction so that pedestrians can cross the roadeasily especially those pushing a wheelchair or a pram. Park somewhere else for safetyssake.


The footway and the carriageway are not level. This is currently the case with the droppedkerb in Western Parade near Barnet Odeon. One cannot expect the pavement and theroadway to be absolutely level to 1mm or less and different adjudicators will take differentviews on what is more or less level. Mr Mustard suggests taking a photograph with yourcamera placed on the road to show the height difference at its most realistic.

The footway is not lowered for one of the 3 statutory purposes i.e.

1. there is not a dropped kerb on the opposite side of the road,2. there isnt a cycle lane there and3. it isnt a vehicle entrance.

There is a dropped kerb in Grahame Park Way which doesnt meet one of the 3 purposes butBarnet Council keep issuing PCN there regardless.

Outside of a CPZ a council should only enforce a dropped kerb which serves a singlehousehold if someone from that property asks them to. If you were visiting a friend or familymember and had express or implied permission to park across the dropped kerb ask thecouncil for evidence that enforcement was requested. That request alone may be enough tonudge the council into abandoning the PCN.


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Code 62: Parked with one or more wheels on or over a footpath or any part of a road otherthan the carriageway. (Footway parking)

This contravention is really best avoided as it is the hardest to overturn. If the place that youplan to park does not look like the road, or private property which is clearly private, beingcordoned off in some way, do not park there.

Most of the PCN of this type are for people who are untidy in their parking habits and dontrealise they have put a wheel on the kerbstone which is sufficient to warrant a PCN or thosepeople who think they are being helpful in a narrow road by parking with 2 wheels on thepavement to make more room for traffic, except that makes less for prams and wheelchairs.Dont do it. It is acceptable to narrow a road down to the width of one line of traffic, they canpass in turn.

Some pavements are marked out to accommodate part or all of the vehicle on them. Thereshould be clear lines marking out the start and finish and the entire width of the bay. In non-marked sections you must park wholly on the road even though that may leave your carsticking out as the first one to be hit by passing traffic.


You did not have a whole wheel on the pavement so the contravention is de minimis (i.e.trivial and the law does not concern itself with trivialities).

The road has been marked out for pavement parking in a manner that misleads. At the timeof writing (April 14) Gervase Road is such a location and has been for a year or two withtraffic wardens still frequently ticketing despite the council knowing the lines are simply notgood enough.

The road has been exempted from enforcement. Colney Hatch Lane was minuted as onesuch road in January 2014. The council should publish a list of them in the interests oftransparency and fairness.

You were parked on the road but your car was knocked there in an accident (whether yousaw it or not).

You broke down unexpectantly and had to stop there so as not to cause an obstruction.Dont argue this if the road is really wide.


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What happens

if you fail to actor thepaperwork

goes missing


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Charge Certificates

If you do nothing in response to the Notice to Owner you will get one of these documents.


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There are only 2 choices at this stage

1. pay up2. wait for the Order for Recovery to arrive.

This is what an Order for Recovery looks like.


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If you have no intention of contesting the PCN then it is best to pay it at the ChargeCertificate stage (even earlier would have been better but you are where you are) asalthough the penalty has increased by 50% it is a whole lot cheaper than ending up with abailiff clamping your car and demanding 400 to 800.

You will see that there is a clear date by which you need to act to take your PCN back intime. It is far easier and cheaper to stick to the timetable.

This is what a TE3 looks like:


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Send your form TE3 in by email to [email protected]

It will be dealt with very quickly, usually before the end of the next business day.

You must only tick one box or your application will be rejected.

The first box "I did not receive the Notice to Owner/Penalty Charge Notice" could bemisunderstood. In this context the form is referring only to a Regulation 10 PCN which wassent to you by post and acts as the Notice to Owner. You can tick this box if you did not getthe Notice to Owner. If you wrote to the council in response to a Notice to Owner then thisbox does not apply. If you did nothing then you might not have received the Notice to Ownerand as they are sent by normal post they can easily go astray.

The next box "I made representations..." is used when you did write to or email the council inresponse to the Notice to Owner and did not receive the response (whether or not the councilsent it does not matter). This sometimes happens because your representations get put onthe wrong file or were lost in the post. Always keep a copy of what you send.

The next box "I appealed against the ..." is saying that you sent your Appeal form in toPATAS and then heard nothing. PATAS are efficient and you can look up your PCN on theirwebsite at this link here. I dont expect this to be the case very often. If you send an appeal into PATAS and dont get a letter from them within 7 days give them a call on 020 7520 7200.

The final box "The penalty charge has been paid..." shouldnt see much use either. If you paya PCN and keep getting letters from the council try and sort it out with the council on thephone before this stage and save a lot of bother. If you do tick this box you will be asked toprove payment.

If you tick the first box the procedure will be wound back and you will be sent a fresh Notice

to Owner and then you will be able to make your formal representations. The opportunity topay at the 50% rate will have gone but with a good challenge you might not have to pay atall.

If you tick the second or third boxes PATAS will ask you to produce the copies of yourrepresentations or completed PATAS form (you did keep a copy I hope and proof of postingthem would be handy) and then an adjudicator will decide what to do. If you can producecopies of what you sent in then more than likely you will get a chance for a PATAS hearingand will receive the councils evidence pack to respond to. If you dont respond to PATAS orcant produce any evidence of what you say you did you will probably receive a decisionwithout further ado that you have to pay the PCN.

If you are out of time (i.e. late) and miss the date on the TE3 you are entering a nightmareland. You will also have to fill in form TE7 (to go with the TE9) explaining why you are late.Saying you forgot will not be acceptable. You need a good reason to explain why you appearto have done nothing. Perhaps the council have your address slightly wrong, or your postgoes to a communal area and is regularly stolen or you were in hospital or out of the countryfor a long time. Whatever the reason it needs to be good and the truth.

What happens next is rather one-sided. Your application to be allowed to contest your PCNout of time is sent to the council to consider. They get 19 days to accept or reject and so far Ihave only ever seen them rejected. If the council decide to reject your application they (NSL

on behalf of the council) file a witness statement which from the ones that I have seencompletely fail to deal with any issues raised by the motorist. An employee at the TEC, not a


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judge, will look at the application, of which there must be hundreds every day, and simplyrubber stamp the councils decision (is what the process appears to be).

If the council and TEC turn you down, you can appeal to your local County Court for a DistrictJudge to review the decision. All they are deciding is whether you have a good reason forbeing late, although on the one Court case that I have attended they started by pointing outthe photo of the PCN on the car. That was not in dispute, the receipt of the paperwork was.

You can opt for a review of the papers or a hearing in front of a District Judge. It costs moreto stand in front of the judge, 80 (at March 14) but is well worth it as your honesty will showthrough better and you can direct the District Judge to the salient points. The hearing willmost likely just be you and the District Judge so isnt intimidating at all; you can take a friendwith you for moral support.

If the first that you heard of the PCN was that a bailiff clamped your car you are possibly infor a long wait without any transport as in one case of this kind, that Mr Mustard dealt with,the clamp was applied in June and we only got in front of a District Judge in the November.The car was left to rot in a car pound for 5 months.

Seriously, dont miss any council deadlines, use either [email protected] or theonline service (a webform which I detest and avoid) or send by post to the address on thecouncil document

currently:

Barnet ParkingPO Box 197Lowton WayHellaby

SheffieldS98 1LW

and use a signed for service as documents have been to be "lost".

Dont misuse the TE9 procedure. If you have missed a deadline, pay that PCN and fight thenext one all the way.

Mr Mustard Parking Ticket Guide v2 April 14

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