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Case 11 of 19 · Level 2
A council parking ticket · a voucher bay
Three minutes in the shop
The thick file · about 10 minutes
The complaint
The driver parked in a voucher bay to go to the shop across the road. A sign said vouchers could be bought from any participating shop, and that shop had a P in its window. Inside, the assistants were serving other customers; after a short wait he asked for a voucher, an assistant fetched one and filled in the details, including the time, and he went back to the car. A parking attendant was standing by it, writing. The attendant said the voucher was too late and that drivers are allowed five minutes. He said he had been in the shop about three minutes. He went back into the shop to ask the staff how long he had been there; when he came out, a penalty charge notice was on the windscreen and the attendant had gone. He appealed: he had done exactly what the sign told him to do.
The council's answer
The council says the car was parked in a pay and display voucher bay without a valid voucher on display when the attendant saw it, and that the notice was issued after the attendant had watched the car for five minutes. It says a motorist using a voucher bay should keep a supply of vouchers in the car, so there is no need to leave the car unpaid for while one is bought. The penalty charge is £80.
Evidence in the file
Exhibit A · The penalty charge notice
Issued at 2.57 in the afternoon for parking in a pay and display or voucher bay without paying. Penalty charge £80.
Exhibit B · The sign and the shop
The bay's sign says vouchers can be bought from any participating shop. The shop across the road shows a P in its window: it sells them.
Exhibit C · The driver's account
He went straight into the shop, waited while the assistants served other customers, asked for a voucher, had it filled in, and came back to the car. About three minutes, he says.
Exhibit D · What the attendant told him
That the voucher was too late, that drivers are allowed five minutes, and that he had been longer than that. The attendant disputed his three minutes.
Exhibit E · The council's case
A voucher bay is paid for by displaying a voucher. A motorist should keep a supply of vouchers in the car; this car was unpaid for while the driver was away buying one, and the attendant allowed five minutes before issuing the notice.
The attendant's notes
The notes record five minutes between first seeing the car and issuing the notice at 2.57, and they record that the driver came back to the car during that time. So the five minutes did not stop when he returned with the voucher: the clock ran on while he stood at the car and while he went back into the shop.
The voucher itself
A voucher from the participating shop, scratched to show 2.55 as the time of parking, the details filled in by the shop assistant. Two minutes before the notice was issued.
A statement from the shop's staff
Not in the file. He says the staff talked over how long he had been in the shop, but nothing from them is among the papers.
Photographs of the car
Not in the file. No photographs are part of this case.
How long a driver gets to pay
Background, not from this file: the rules set no number of minutes for buying a ticket or a voucher. Adjudicators have said a driver must be allowed a reasonable time to pay, doing nothing else in between, and what is reasonable depends on what the driver had to do to pay.
Which way do you decide?
The ruling
Given by the adjudicator
Appeal allowed
Why
The adjudicator accepted the driver's evidence in full. In a voucher scheme a motorist is plainly allowed a reasonable time to obtain a voucher, and no maximum period is set; the motorist must do only that, with no other activity, and delays are to be expected, because shop staff may be serving other customers, so a voucher's time is more variable than a machine's. The attendant's five minutes included time after the driver had come back with the voucher, since the notice was fixed after he returned, and the voucher's 2.55 bore that out: he was back at the car before 2.57. About three minutes in the shop was entirely reasonable, and whatever the exact time, he had followed the scheme's requirements. The council's expectation that drivers keep a supply of vouchers in the car has no justification in law, and the adjudicator told the council to stop applying it: the scheme is that shops sell vouchers, and that is how motorists obtain them.
What had to be done
The penalty charge notice and the notice to owner were cancelled. Nothing to pay.
What an adjudicator takes from this. Time is evidence. The voucher's time, the notice's time and the attendant's own notes settled this, not the argument about three minutes or five. Keep anything that carries a time, and read the other side's record for what it gives away. This decision is twenty years old and voucher schemes have mostly gone, but the question it turned on, whether the driver was given a reasonable time to pay, is still the one adjudicators ask about machines and phone apps.
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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