19 September 2016

What does adjacent mean?

There is a contravention of being adjacent to a dropped kerb, one lowered to meet the level of the carriageway so that pedestrians can cross the road, cars can enter a resident's drive and cyclists can access cycle lanes. 

Adjacent is usually interpreted as overhanging and a few inches might, especially in the case of a wide access, be regarded as trivial by an adjudicator.

A PCN has been issued for this car being adjacent to a dropped kerb. It simply isn't.

The tapered (it slopes down) kerb counts for nothing as it isn't at the level of the carriageway. This is a perfectly considerate piece of parking.

Perhaps the parking of the residents of, and visitors to, Barnet is getting better such that traffic wardens have to issue PCNs to cars which are obviously not in contravention to make the ticket targets that are meant to not exist but perhaps do.

A resident should not have to defend themselves from such trickery.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

1 comment:

  1. Hi Derek,

    Some eight years ago, when I was a Haringey councillor, I tried to explain to my colleagues why having a fair and transparent PCN regime was vital.

    Some of my fellow councillors told me that Haringey needed the money. Others thought it was some "anorak" issue involving petty rules.

    I doubt that many people took me seriously when I emailed the then Chief Executive, suggesting to her that it involved an important public issues at the heart of the relationship between local councils and their residents. Issues of trust and confidence; openness and accountability.

    In my email to the Chief Executive I said that, more than simply wrongly taking people’s money for permits and fines, we were breaking an implied agreement with our residents. I suggested they are entitled to expect their elected Council to follow the legal rules.

    My email said that if local councils behave as if they are above the law, that is corrosive of the trust and confidence in these councils, in council staff, and in elected councillors.

    I wrote that if Haringey Council made a mistake we should be candid and honest about it; accept responsibility and accountability; apologise with genuine contrition; and correct the error as quickly as possible.

    The Chief Executive acknowledged receipt of my email.

    To be fair, in Haringey I never came across a clear example of the Council using deliberate trickery to "harvest" fines for parking and traffic contraventions. But there were poor systems and some incompetence.

    Hopefully your dropped kerb example will turn out to be the latter.

    All the best,

    Alan

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