For the record and in case it's of any benefit should one of these 'stopping' matters ever come to court this is the latest statement from Liverpool Council in response to my ongoing complaint about the illegality of the signs.

October 19th 2016


Earlier this year Liverpool Council (who were not prepared to grant advertising consent for the application then in place - 15A/0657), suggested that LJLA employ design consultants to redesign the signs.
It beggars belief that having confirmed in writing that the current signs are illegal (and by implication will need to be removed), the council still drag their heels and refuse to ask LJLA to remove them until such time as new signs are granted Advertising Consent. It's also seems unlikely that a big organisation like Peel Ports (LJLA) couldn't find funding for sign redesigns earlier.

Chronology
2012, July - Signs erected by LJLA without consent
2015, July - First application for advertising consent
2015, September - Liverpool Council's first indication that discussions with LJLA about the signs are taking place
2016, January - Liverpool Council indicate that the signs have been submitted to the Dept. of Transport to check that they meet the relevant standards.
2016, April - Liverpool Council say "revised signage proposals may come forward as a result of initial feedback that has been given to the applicant"
2016, April 4th - Liverpool Council say "the airport have presented a revised design for the signs which has been checked the Highways department, however there were still some flaws in the design. Highways have now recommended that the Airport employ the services of a specialist consultant to do the redesign. The scheme is back in the airport’s hands at the moment.
2016, May 18th. LJLA withdraw the Advertising Consent application. My guess is that the Council had intimated that they were under pressure to determine the application and would have to reject it.

This post has been edited by hexaflexagon: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 - 10:28

'Grace periods' only apply to parking and NOT stopping.

The 'fine' is NOT a fine. Only the police and local councils can 'fine you.

VCS are a private company and not a public authority.

This makes one hell of a difference in the legal sense.

A number of judges have disagreed that not having planning consent renders the charge unenforceable.

This post has been edited by The Rookie: Fri, 13 Apr 2018 - 16:21

John,

Is your PCN for a stopping or parking offence at LJLA?

If the former then this one seems to have crept in under the radar without any previous discussion here - or am I mistaken. If so that's a pity since there has been acres of discussion on VCS 'stopping offences' at LJLA and there are a couple of cases being heard in the next month or so both of which I believe are being defended using arguments discussed here.

First of all the fact that the signs didn't have planning permission is generally accepted as being irrelevant to any defence so you're unlikely to make any headway with that.

Are you indeed looking for help with this? If so what have you said in any response to the Court, VCS or their solicitors and what does the original PCN actually say.

If they've changed the dates I presume you have an easy defence? You simply weren't there on the date alleged.

Just a point of order for the Admins

Should the John5707 #260 posting not be in a thread of its own?

This post has been edited by hexaflexagon: Fri, 13 Apr 2018 - 17:42

Hi Hex
Got a reply from dvla.

If you have a slot I can pm you?

Yes, sure Dave. I think there's space in my inbox.

John was advised to pay following receipt of the witness statement from VCS, as his defence would not have held up as he'd identified himself as driver and the initial defence was misconceived.
As a point of information and having seen part of the witness statement, VCS are using the Crutchley judgement for the red route signs.

Thanks for the update. Given that VCS were going to use the Crutchley judgment in John's case it seems important to draw as many distinguishing features as possible when considering airport matters. Here's a starter for 10.

1. The status of the land. Is it subject to bylaws or not. LJLA is, I don't believe the BP is.

2. The judge described the BP as being 'clearly demarcated as a private business park'. At LJLA that certainly doesn't appear to be the case and certainy not before May 2017. In fact this was one of the reasons that caused Liverpool Council to create a condition when granting advertising consent in May 2017 for the signs, that 10m of the approach road south of Dunlop road be painted blue in order to identify it as private land. I haven't got the precise words they used to hand at the moment, but somewhere in the correspondence between LJLA and Liverpool Council there's a comment about precisely this point. So Liverpool Council certainly were of the opinion that it wasn't 'clearly demarcated'. Even so with the road now a fetching shade of blue it's moot whether the man on the Clapham Omnibus would know what a blue coloured section of road means. I'd certainly not associate it with being private. Is this laid down in any Highways Regulations?

3. I'm not sure of the geography of the BP and at what point one is expected to become aware of signage and whether this coincides with any redroute markings. But at LJLA the red route markings start immediately after the signs so a motorist approaching the signs and wanting to stop to read them would have already committed an infringement. It seems to me that this distinguishes it from the ‘mutual promise’ argument used in para 27 & 28 of Critchely. Leaving aside (as the judge did) any offer/acceptance/consideration) it is still presumably axiomatic that for a ‘mutual promise’ to exist both parties must have read and understood what is being promised.

4. In Critchely the judge thought it useful to mention (para 32) the rights that were being maintained. Presumably because he thought it was of some relevance otherwise why would he mention it. At the BP the judge commented that the roads are not particularly wide implying that stopping then become a probem for other traffic. At LJLA the road is a dual carriageway.

The main point in Crutchley was the HHJ pointing out that Beavis was all about controlling "nuisance" which is spot on. There is already a mechanism in place to control nuisance which is the byelaws so Crutchley is redundant and cannot replace [existing and unchanged] secondary legislation. Only parliament or a Sec of State can change it.

Adopting Devils Advocate mode:-

1. - I'm not convinced this matters for anything other than a PoFA defence and not relevant land. The Airport have already said a) they are note enforcing them as they are out of date b) they don't relate to the current location as the airport had moved from the location at Speke where the were first enacted in early 1960s.

So, is there any obligation for them to enforce them rather than relying on alternative means to manage the land? Perhaps someone should be finding out how many bylaws prosecutions there have been both public and airside since 1998 to find out the truth of the matter. I suspect there have been some, eg for drunk passengers trying to get on a plane. That would see off the argument they don't enforce them, but the question of why can't the use VCS to manage approach roads remains. Unlike train stations and Indigo, they are not relying on bylaws, but a civil contract.

Airport moved? yes it has, but there is nothing in the bylaws related to actual location. It deals with the specific entity known as Liverpool Airport. Airport moves, bylaws move. Otherwise, the business park on the old airport site has bylaws still applying to it as they haven't been rescinded. Anyway, the new, current runway was built at the new location barely 4 years after the original bylaws were drawn up. Its inconceivable that the bylaws didn't apply at that location. Similarly the current terminal building was built barely 4 years after the 1982 bylaw revision and, again, its inconceivable the terminal operated for all that period without bylaws at that location.


2. The aspect they are using the Crutchley judgement for appears to be an attempt to see off a forbidding signage argument by the same argument of repetition was sufficient. Crutchley judgement held that he could have pulled in at the gate and read the smaller signs if he had to. There doesn't appear to be an opportunity to do this at JLA. They are also using Beavis signage argument that it was large and prominent and so should be sufficient warning. Liverpool Council appeared to disagree about this deeming them to be dangerous, but there's no record of any actual correspondence that could be submitted as evidence to back this up. Something else to look into. Also they submitted both old and new signage images in an attempt to make it look as if both sets of signs were in place. None of the photos were dated. The new signs weren't put up until after John got his ticket.

Some points to ponder.

They do though.

Airports are operated under licence from the CAA. The byelaws cover many, many aspects of the operation of an Airport (airside and landside) and not just parking. It's like saying that because a plane landed on this new piece of land, that Byelaws/Airport police can't operate which would make the CAA licence a nonsense.

CAP168 Licensing of Aerodromes is the relevant document. Its a condition, in 1.16-1.18 that they have a map showing current boundaries. However, it makes no reference to bylaws at all or anything landside. It requires that the operator has a Manual of the Airport stating how they intend to deal with a large number of issues related to safety airside and that this manual will be audited by CAA to ensure they meet the requirements. There's nothing in it about landside operations.

The airport hasn't moved, they have simply moved the terminal building. The runway they use was built in 1966 which was always part of the airfield. The original airfield was opened in 1933, then extended in 1937 to include the new area and the building of the Rootes shadow factory.

It is the way it is because it had to be built around the Speke Hall estate.

The actual road they now use to scam people was the road they used to move planes built and modified at this factory onto the airfield.

Their argument that it is not the same airport is incorrect. The only new part added is the hotel, car park, and cargo warehouses which were built on land purchased in 1986 along Hale road.

This post has been edited by Esmerobbo: Tue, 1 May 2018 - 04:08

You must have missed this bit

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/31/section/63

There are no hackney carriages airside as far as I know so it applies airside/landside.

I'm talking about the current CAA operating license for airports. Besides you missed the word "may" in those regulations.

Just a basic question.
Is LJLA a 'designated airport' under the Airports Act 1986? I have not managed to find any Regulation issued by the Secretary of State which specifically lists it as such. It would be useful to have an authoritative link to a source that confirms this for obvious reasons.

The only reference I've found is a 2004 paper by Bath University on the subject of Economic Regulation of Airports in the UK.
In this document Table 1 on Page 5 lists the airports being studied and puts four airports (Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted ) in a 'Designated' category with the rest, including Liverpool being categorised as 'Others'

See link Bath Unversity Study of Airport Economic Regulation

This post has been edited by hexaflexagon: Tue, 1 May 2018 - 08:53

Any help http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/380/made?view=plain

That helps enormously! Thanks. It confirms that Liverpool is a designated airport.
Can't understand how I missed that.

The only thing now is that regulation says

"Section 63(1) of the Airports Act 1986 provides that where an airport is either designated for the purposes of that section or is managed by the Secretary of State, the airport operator (whether the Secretary of State or some other person) may make byelaws for regulating the use and operation of the airport and the conduct of all persons while within the airport. This Order designates the airports listed in the Schedule for the purposes of section 63."

We know that LJLA have not yet made bylaws - they've been trying to agree a new set with the DfT since 2012.
So presumably, and as we've always thought that still leaves the original Liverpool Council bylaws as the defining set until such time as the DfT agrees a new set. At which time the current bylaws will presumably have to be rescinded.

Its also confirmed by the FOIA request which confirmed the byelaws were still in place and current.