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- 4Ruling
Case 12 of 19 · Level 2
A council parking ticket · waiting where loading is banned
The fare that never came
The thick file · about 10 minutes
The complaint
A licensed private-hire driver, who takes bookings through an app, stopped one weekday morning on double yellow lines outside a pub to collect a passenger who had booked a ride. He stayed in the car. The passenger did not appear, the booking was cancelled, and he drove off. A penalty charge notice followed, issued from camera footage. He appealed: he was waiting for a booked fare, as he had done at that pub many times without trouble; he never left the car; a taxi is allowed a few minutes to pick up and set down; the council turned his representations down without asking him for anything; and the time on the notice did not match the cancellation record he had. He needs his licence to earn a living.
The council's answer
The council says the car waited for more than three minutes at a kerb where waiting and loading are both banned at all times, beside a mandatory cycle lane. Its camera shows the car stationary from 08:52 to 08:55 and nobody approaching it or getting in. The council accepts that a taxi may stop briefly on these lines to pick up a passenger, but says no passenger was there to be picked up. It has considered his circumstances and declines to waive the penalty charge of £70.
Evidence in the file
Exhibit A · The penalty charge notice
Issued from camera footage, for being parked or loading in a restricted street where waiting and loading are both prohibited. Penalty charge £70.
Exhibit B · The camera footage
The car pulls in at 08:52 and stays at the kerb until 08:55, about three minutes. Nobody walks up to it; nobody gets in or out. It then drives away.
Exhibit C · The road
Double yellow lines: no waiting at any time. Double yellow marks on the kerb: no loading or unloading at any time. A mandatory cycle lane runs alongside.
Exhibit D · The driver's account
A booked passenger, to be collected from the pub; he waited in the car as he always does there; the fare was cancelled; a few minutes is allowed for picking up. He thinks the council should have asked him for more before rejecting him.
Exhibit E · The council's rejection
The exemption for picking up needs a passenger to be picked up. The footage shows none. The council has looked at whether to waive the charge and has decided not to.
The booking record
The driver produced it after the council's reply: a trip booked from the pub through the app at about 08:39, later cancelled. The booking was about a quarter of an hour old before the camera first shows the car, and the passenger never came out.
The council's reasons for not waiving
It did. The council considered his explanation and his livelihood and decided that a wait of more than three minutes with no passenger present was not a case for waiving the charge. Whether to waive is the council's decision alone.
The picking-up exemption
Background, not from this file: where waiting and loading are banned, a vehicle may still stop for as long as it takes a passenger to get in or out, and no longer. It is for the driver to show that the exemption applied. Mitigation, a reason why the driver should be let off, is not a ground of appeal: an adjudicator decides whether the contravention occurred, and only the council can let a driver off.
The passenger's account
Not in the file. Nothing from the person who booked the ride is among the papers.
A statement from the pub
Not in the file. No statement from the pub is part of this case.
Which way do you decide?
The ruling
Given by the adjudicator
Appeal refused
Why
The footage established that the car waited for more than three minutes where waiting and loading were prohibited. The adjudicator accepted that the driver had been due to collect a passenger that morning. But the exemption for picking up a passenger does not extend to waiting for a passenger who is clearly not there to arrive: where the passenger is absent, the driver must find a place where parking is permitted to wait, or, if there is none, drive around the block until the passenger appears. No passenger came to the car during the observed period, so it waited longer than necessary, and the exemption did not apply. The argument that he was still waiting for a cancelled fare was mitigation, which is not a ground for appeal to the adjudicator. The council had declined to waive the charge, and that decision was the council's alone; given the length of the wait with no passenger present, the adjudicator saw no compelling reason to recommend that it think again.
What had to be done
Nothing. The penalty charge of £70 stands and is payable to the council.
What an adjudicator takes from this. An adjudicator asks only whether the contravention occurred and whether an exemption applied; hardship, habit and good faith are for the council, at the representations stage, and the time to raise them is then. The booking record was the driver's own evidence, and its time undid him: the exemption lasts as long as a passenger takes to get in, not as long as a driver is willing to wait.
Rewritten in our own words from a decision the tribunal published.
Read the guide: Challenging a parking charge notice: who hears it, and when
What is fair and reasonable is a judgement. The ombudsman gives one; people who read the same file often give another, and this game is about how people weigh the same facts, not about being right. Built from cases the Financial Ombudsman Service and other bodies have published, and from Docketory's own files, rewritten in our own words with every name removed. Docketory is not connected with any of them, and this game is not advice on your own case.
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