Car towed without sufficient notice? Options

[lcrob9]

Hello,

My car (and those of many other people on my street) was towed by Haringey council with what I believe to be improper notice.

A neighbour knocked on my door to let me know that my car had been taken (hers had been taken too) after she had spent 10 minutes searching the street for hers and eventually found the yellow notice sign.

On the part of the street that was affected there are around 40 houses. The council had put one sign at the beginning of the street and one right at the end i.e. 40 houses down. I live dead in the middle of the street so the nearest sign to me was 20 doors away. Additionally, both signs were labelled 'no loading' (and one was next to a loading bay), so even if I had seen them I wouldn't have paid them any attention. There were no letters through the door and frustratingly I was in the house all day so could have easily moved my car had I been aware what was going on.

Interestingly the council seem to have given up towing cars when they got halfway down the street and just stuck penalty notices on them instead. Afterwards the street was full with cars with penalty notices on them right now so clearly almost no one saw the sign.

I have had to travel miles out of town in a taxi and pay £265 to release my car and I'm furious. I have attached images of the PCN and the signage.

Grateful for any help anyone can provide!

The PCN




The signs












This post has been edited by lcrob9: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 - 18:29

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[stamfordman]

two initial thoughts:

- Obviously inadequate signage.

- Contravention code should be 02 not 01.

[Incandescent]

Grossly inadequate signage on the face of it. As you have now already paid all there is to pay, it is a total no-brainer to take them all the way to London Tribunals, there is nothing more to lose. However to get to LT, you first have to submit reps to the council and get them rejected first.

[cp8759]

This is not a normal suspension, rather it's a temporary traffic management order under section 14 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. This means that for the order to be lawful, the council must abide by the requirements of regulation 3 of The Road Traffic (Temporary Restrictions) Procedure Regulations 1992 here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1992/12...gulation/3/made

If they haven't complied with the requirements, the TMO is invalid and so is the PCN.

Post a draft of any representations on here before sending them to the council.

[lcrob9]

Thank you all for responding and sorry for taking so long to reply.

Here is my draft representation, please can you let me know if it looks okay? I'm not sure if it's more effective to forget about the lack of signage and just mention that all the signs said 'no loading' not 'no parking', or to include all the facts.

-----------------------------

As a resident of (street where the car was parked) I believe that the signage was grossly inadequate. Firstly, there were just four notices posted covering the entire area of the street that was affected. Two of these were at the start of the street: 1 outside the bakery at (no.2 on my street) and the other at the (pub directly opposite). The only other 2 signs were around 150 metres away at the junction with x road and x road. As someone who lives exactly in between these two locations, there was very little chance that I would have seen the signs.

Secondly and most pertinently, as per my pictures attached all of the notices were mounted on large yellow boards that said 'no loading'. To make matters more confusing, 2 of these (at the start of x road) were in fact next to the loading bays outside the pub. 'No loading' is certainly a very different message from no parking, and had I seen the signage I would naturally have assumed that since I was parking and not loading, and was parked nowhere near the loading bays, that there was no action required on my part.

I would also like to add that I work from home and was thus at home all day on the day that my car was towed, and I would happily have moved it had I been made aware of what was going on.

--------------------------------------------------

This is not a normal suspension, rather it's a temporary traffic management order under section 14 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. This means that for the order to be lawful, the council must abide by the requirements of regulation 3 of The Road Traffic (Temporary Restrictions) Procedure Regulations 1992 here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1992/12...gulation/3/made

If they haven't complied with the requirements, the TMO is invalid and so is the PCN.

Post a draft of any representations on here before sending them to the council.

Thanks - I've looked at the traffic order you posted and the only requirement seems to be that the council post a message in a local newspaper (crazy in this day and age!) giving advance warning. There is only one local paper in the area I've not been able to find a notice on the website and frustratingly the newest online edition of the actual paper they have is from 30 November 2018, so I'm assuming they've stopped producing it.

[hcandersen]

Will you please get off this 'loading' angle, it's leading nowhere.

The blue circular sign is the no waiting sign and doesn't need to spell out waiting or parking...waiting and parking are synonymous for these purposes.

I've no idea whether the council complied with the order-making requirements of the regs and neither do you, so hardly the strongest defence but you should require them to confirm their conformity..and not just by asking an open question: require them to prove which publication and when and provide a copy of the notice etc.

IMO, your strongest grounds are inadequate signage. So you need to produce a simple plan showing where the notices and amending traffic signs were placed. Also, are there existing restrictions in the road and if so were these signs covered or carried notices or what?

Presumably the PCN was dated 15th - for some reason you've obscured this in the PCN - and that you recovered the vehicle the same day. So:

You have until 12 May to make reps, and
Postthe documents you were given at the pound.

[cp8759]

Thanks - I've looked at the traffic order you posted and the only requirement seems to be that the council post a message in a local newspaper (crazy in this day and age!) giving advance warning. There is only one local paper in the area I've not been able to find a notice on the website and frustratingly the newest online edition of the actual paper they have is from 30 November 2018, so I'm assuming they've stopped producing it.

You don't seem to understand - this is a mandatory legal requirement. There will be a paper they can use, even if it's the Metro or the the Evening Standard. Nothing says the paper must circulate only in the area concerned. There is also the question of whether they informed the commissioner of the Met and the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade. They may or may not have complied, but if you challenge them on this and they fail to respond, you could win if they have complied (because the tribunal will want evidence and won't just take their word for it).

I agree with hcandersen on the loading angle, you're expected to know what the circular blue no waiting sign means.