Eastleigh B.C. - incompetent or bluffing?

Bluffer's Park in Toronto

For a traffic enforcement authority to get a simple law wrong, or to deliberately mislead a motorist in order to raise revenue, are both things which should not happen. Luckily the motorist, Mr D, had faith in the advice he received from Mr Mustard (whose name did not appear on the file).

The facts: Mr D parked his car on double yellow lines in order to deliver glass to a customer. He got ticketed. This had happened to him previously in Barnet and when it did he produced his delivery documents and the council always cancelled.

Eastleigh saw it differently.

If you are unloading something bulky or heavy you are not in breach of the restriction, you are exempt. Mr D couldn't believe the answer so he wrote again and got the same nonsense back again:

The second answer was worse than the first one as it said you cannot unload, a patent lie. Now Mr D had to wait for the Notice to Owner. Once he had it, he made the same representation of unloading. He got knocked back again and that opened the door to the relevant tribunal, the TPT.

It is impossible to be continuously loading. You go out of sight of a traffic warden when you enter the delivery premises or if they are around the corner. Funny thing is that rule isn't in the Eastleigh traffic order which allows for loading and unloading.

Mr D made his application to the tribunal and all of a sudden the council woke up to reality and threw in the towel, for this nonsense reason:

It is fortunate that Mr D had overturned previous PCNs whilst he had been engaged in unloading as otherwise he might have believed Eastleigh Council and given then £35 or £70 (depending at what stage he gave up). One member of staff, at least, needs some training in the basic rules of parking. Perhaps they could have a read of the Highway Code

It would seem that Mr Mustard's work will never be done.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard