This was going to be a huffy, hysterical rant about the so-called War on Motorists. Twenty mile-an-hour speed limits. Bus lanes that if you so much slip into for a second you receive a fixed penalty by return. The indignity of paying £100 for a speed awareness course after going 22 miles an hour — ie slower than a galloping yearling, faster than a horse and cart — through Penge, which I submitted to (and not for the first time — I find the courses oddly enjoyable).
Having to pay the congestion charge. Forgetting to pay the congestion charge. Setting up auto-pay to pay the congestion charge then receiving a fine anyway as my credit card had expired. I could go on. So I will.
Buying a Volvo diesel XC70 after the Government told us to buy diesels, then having to sell it when it was no longer Ulez-compliant (and buying a second-hand, black XC60 which is fine, as Volvos go, but doesn’t have a sunroof). Speed bumps. Traffic calming measures. Cycle lines that turn London into an omni-jam.
Above all, I was going to let rip about how the motorist had become a cash cow for the state, and how we are being milked at every turn (quite literally — I was fined for turning right from a main road in Queen’s Park into a side road at the wrong time the other day). Parking wardens being set targets to issue tickets.
In London, a record 7.6 million PCNs (penalty charge notices) were issued in a year, according to most recent figures, and fines outside London have gone from nine million five years ago to 11 million. The number of notices being followed up by the bailiffs has almost doubled to four million.
I pay more than £250 a year for resident’s parking in the Royal Borough, which is where I “reside”. Which is where this rant begins.
One Sunday in June I came home from Portobello Market to find my Volvo adorned with a parking ticket. I was in a pay-and-display bay, but they are free on Sundays, and Saturday afternoons. The bay was next to a workman’s hut (kitchenette and toilet cubicle type prefab), as there were roadworks going on in the next door street. There were no workers working because, as above, it was a Sunday. No workers were working apart from, that is, the parking wardens.
I had decided. This was the hill I was going to die on. I always pay reasonable fines promptly, but this one felt unfair
I grabbed the ticket in fury. What could my offence be? It told me the bay was suspended. I searched for a yellow sign indicating this. There was none. Apart from one. Completely obscured by the workman’s hut. From every angle.
I composed a furious challenge to the council explaining that 1) It was a Sunday where there is free parking. 2) If the bay had been suspended, how would anyone know as the sign was obscured.
I then tried to upload the photographs I’d taken of the hidden yellow sign but the system wouldn’t accept the format and wanted me to convert it to JPEG (note to RBKC — please allow normal iPhone images to upload as that is what we all use now).
Then I waited. I had decided. This was the hill I was going to die on. I always pay reasonable fines promptly, and have only ever challenged a couple and failed. But this one felt unfair. I mentally readied myself for my day in court.
And then, this week, an email from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. I braced myself to open it.
A gentleman inevitably called Mr T Parker explained in clear and careful paragraphs why I’d got a fine. Someone had paid for that bay to be suspended, he wrote, and a vehicle in it “at any time” would be fined “instantly”. It was on me to somehow see through the temporary structure shielding the sign from view. But he had on this occasion considered the circs and cancelled, though, as he warned me, this was not a precedent-setting decision.
In a further act of unwanted compassion, he warned me that my residents’ parking permit had expired and to renew it in order to continue parking in the borough.
After this, I could hardly blame cash-strapped councils — half say they could run out of money within five years — let alone mine, for fleecing drivers at every turn.
Post-austerity, and pre-net zero, maybe it’s time to accept that the motorist is never right.
