Footway parking

It seems that I am not the only one fighting the London councils on their petty parking tickets. Unfortunately for this guy, having taken it all the way up to the High Court, he had his over–literal interpretation of the wording of the infringement rejected by Lord Justice Moore–Bick and found himself liable to pay some 100 parking tickets plus costs.

I believe that I have fallen foul of the prohibition in question myself. It sounds very much like Penalty Charge Notice Code 62, which prohibits parking on the pavement. Only in London is there this general prohibition on parking on the pavement. Elsewhere, parking on the pavement is allowed unless specifically prohibited or an obstruction is being caused. This means that on a reasonably wide pavement out of London, you are usually OK to park a motorcycle, but in London you will get a ticket if a warden passes by.

It sounds like this bloke must have run a defence based upon a literal interpretation of the wording of the infringement, which is “Parked with one or more wheels on any part of an urban road other than a carriageway (footway parking)”. Because his bike was up on the stand, with both wheels off the ground, I assume he argued that there was no infringement. However, the judge apparently decided that the “motorcycle can quite properly be said to be parked on the pavement, even if neither wheel is directly in contact with it”.

As a matter of interpretation, that is clearly the only common sense approach. Otherwise, one could park on the pavement with impunity by jacking the car up, or even by making sure that there was a sheet of newspaper under each tyre. Still, one has to admire the balls of this guy for running up a hundred parking tickets (£10 grand’s–worth) and fighting all the way up to the High Court based upon his conviction that such a technical defence would suceeed.

Incidentally, my own route to seeking to get off was to obtain plans from the Land Registry in the hope of showing that, although parked, I was not “on any part of an urban road” but rather on private property. Sadly, the plans availed me not on that occasion, showing that the wall against which I was parked marked the limit of the private land, so I decided to pay up at the 50% discount for early settlement and live to fight another day.

Labels: driving, law, london, motorcycles