Dear LPG,

I have a little time to go before I become a pensioner, and I am not a Lewisham resident anymore, although my routes are all there.   I was born in Lewisham Hospital and was brought up less than five minutes’ walk away (depending on how fast you walk).

The other day I went to visit my mother in the house where I grew up, and left my white Ford Fiesta round the corner below a parking meter with its ticket on display, and just under an hour later I returned to find that I was one of three people complaining because we had received parking fines for not observing a temporary parking restriction notice some 52 yards further down the road. 

When I first arrived, mum came to meet me and waved from the corner and I bought a parking ticket which tells me that it was issued at 09:00.  Having displayed my ticket clearly in the driver’s side window, we chatted for a bit before leaving the car.  We then walked to her house.  This may have taken about 5 minutes. The ticket was issued at 09:06 even though as we walked away there was no sign of a parking warden.

I was really upset, as were the other two drivers that came back to see their own parking notices, because under the restriction sign there were a few bollards and a notice denoting how far up the road you were not allowed to park although the bollards fell far short of the restricted parking area. The notice referred to a restriction that stretched more than 50 yards away and beyond the uncovered parking sign.

I contacted Lewisham Council, the people I thought were responsible for the notice but, of course, NSL now handle parking in Lewisham and say that I have to pay the full fee even if I feel that I have grounds to appeal against the fine, unless, of course, it is upheld.   I have to ask how this is fair if I have made contact within two weeks but, in spite of their rules and even though it may cost me the full fine, I have decided to contest this because I feel it unfair that drivers are being misled in this way.  When a driver finds a parking space surely it has to be unreasonable to expect him to use the already limited time allowed to walk around just in case there is a misleading parking notice further up or down the road.

It is more than obvious to me that motorists are being blatantly exploited and the rules are in place to discourage drivers from contesting them so that the powers that be can get as much out of us as they can in order to augment their funds in yet another barely legal way. 

I have found online evidence which informs that some 65% of parking fine appeals are upheld and I plan to contest this particular fine. 

I found some interesting information about contesting parking fines and suggest that more of us do this if we feel that the fine is unjust. The councils can only get away with this because we let them. So I strongly believe this to be another illustration of the sort of discrimination that the public take for granted and suggest that more of us follow the advice of GK of Brockley (►►►) regardless of our age.  A little time and effort could make the system fairer for future people who are caught in the same way.

I know that this predicament is being experienced by drivers all over the country, and typically our first reactions are annoyance and indignation, followed by anger and finally resignation at which point we just pay because of all the time and effort involved in fighting such injustice, but this is exactly what the councils expect from drivers and why they can make so much money out of us.  

Well, in my case, not this time!  Once the process is complete I will get back to LPG to let you know how I got on.

IC, Kent.

IC offers some related online information…

(►►►)   (►►►)