To think my local council are absolutely heartless?

[Esmediamond]

I am regular, have name changed.

Have a ds (7) with Austism, he is diagnosed etc.

I usually drive him to school, park outside and drop off and am in and out before 9.00 am when charging for parking starts.

One day last term he had a huge meltdown as I dropped him off, there is no way I could have left him. I had to stay with him to calm him down, no-one else can do it when he is like this. Eventually managed to calm him and left, got out to my car at around 9.20 am to find a parking ticket on the car. Fair enough I thought, I will appeal it. Later that day another parent told me that they had spoken to the Parking Attendant and said the Mother who owns that car is inside with her disabled child, please don't ticket the car, he did anyway.

So I appealed the local council explaining this with a supporting letter from school. The reply comes back today, the answer is no and not only that but instead of the original £60 it is now £120 as the appeal did not reach them within two weeks of the penalty notice.

I am gutted, I am on my own with dc so this is a massive dent in my finances.

How can they sleep at nights I will never know.

I think the school car park is the best option tbh. Even if you end up blocking some cars in it is very unlikely that the staff will be coming and going all day.

Also, they will know your car and will also know that it doesnt happen very often so will be able to find you within the school should the need arise.

We are all just trying to find a solution for you, I know that you would like the ticket cancelled as would we all. Un-necessary and you did have mitigating circumstances but if they wont give you a blue badge because of their 'rules' then rally against those rules. Speak to the Autism Society. See what can be done about getting those rules changed for all autistic children in the future.

Esmediamond I am surprised that so many people on here are being so apparently unsympathetic- maybe the original £60 could not be helped, although why parking wardens can't use their judgement or discretion from time to time I do not know, however the doubling of the fine seems very heartless as you say and I hope you appeal again to a higher authority if poss, and at least get that extra fine taken away.
Out of interest, is it essential for you to drive to school? I don't know, you may have said. I personally don't like the street outside ds's school being chock a block with cars all the time, especially humped up on the kerb etc and while I think Rocky has been a bit confrontational with you, driving to school is a bit of an issue, albeit a bit of a side issue here!

Great idea about the Autism Society Rocky. Thank you.

PS Another aside: any child can become very difficult at the start of the school day- I've had to try and walk out with a ds clinging to my ankles before and have seen it happen to loads of others- dc doesn't have to have an SN to make the start of a school day a prolonged, horrendous nightmare!

Commplain to the Council. You can usually do it on line and keep complaining until you reach the point where they refer you to the Ombudman. By the time it reaches the Chief Exec they will usually try to resolve an issue like this.

if disagreeing with you makes me heartless then so be it.

Thanks msyikes. I really appreciate your posts.

The driving to school thing is a PITA. The thing is that some days ds will throw a fit if I mention that we are walking or scooting and so there is a meltdown to contend with before we even leave the house.

Disagreeing with me is fine, I expected it in AIBU. Just your unsympathetic attitide a bit unnecessary I thought. But it doesn't really matter.

I think if my child had fallen over etc then yes I'd expect to pay the fine.

At the end of the day the rules are you have to pay after 9am and you don't have a blue badge, etc. so, I know this sounds harsh, the reason you weren't back on time is somewhat irrelevant to the council.

I think the bigger issue here though is that it costs you so much each week to take your child to school. That's what I'd be angry/upset about. There should be some provision for these circumstances. It seems ridiculous to me that if you had a child with a physical disability that required you to drive him to school you'd get a blue badge but not for being autistic. I think the school or LEA should perhaps offer more help - is there no way they could organise some permit that allows you to park for say 20mins either side of the drop off/pick up times?

If you appealed within the 2 weeks then ask them to recheck your letter. Presumably you wrote the date on it?

In a department like this with time-specific appeals they will have logged the date stamp on the letter and the date it was received in office.

Also, if you can use the school car park as you mentioned earlier, then why does it cost you £10-20 to go in to him when you're called out?

Very Black and White my council craftynclothy. It is all very faceless here because it is a big city I suppose. They are really unhelpful when you phone, can't wait to get rid of you. Obviously given this thread, they don't make any allowances at all.

Also - I don't think I have ever seen anyone with a blue badge who actually had something discernibly wrong with them! Maybe they have something that I cannot see. But I have seen blue badge holders drive to the gym, two people I know have them because they are so fat - compounding the problem neatly there - and one person I know has one because she used to have a very serious illness, but now is fine. So the blue badge qualification is a weird one.

Because as I explained earlier, there are only about 10 parking spaces and they are always full during the day, using the car park in the morning for a little while would be ok, though a teacher or member of staff would have to wait outside until I came out. It would be most unlikely there would be a space during the day.

Well thats the problem isn't it Starlight, yes a one off incident has ground for appeal but my childs regular difficulties do not and yet no other allowances are made either? Btw I have spoken to you before on the SN Board so I know have clued up you are on this kind of thing and do respect your opinion.

I agree Highland. Just this lunchtime I went out and in a disabled place there was a young women jumping out of her car and was in front of me in the sandwich shop. English was not her first langauge but I got the impression from what she was saying to the assistant that she was a carer of some sort to someone else. And persumably in their car running errards. Surely the badge is for the person NOT the car, perhaps someone can correct me please.

In the middle of the day how about parking in the school car park and, if you need to block someone in, putting a note on your dashboard saying where you can be contacted?

I think you can use a blue badge if you are a carer...I think! Not sure. That is more reasonable in my view than the shysters I have seen with blue badges! While I struggle in the rain in and out of the car with 20 bags of shopping and two cranky children, some trendy young thing parks in front of me with her blue badge and skips off down the road. Probably to her cartwheeling class!!!

You could try speaking to your local councillor and see whether they would intervene on your behalf.

I can understand why this is so frustrating.

I was wondering which council you are in, as they do vary a lot in my experience. Wandsworth particularly unhelpful when it comes to parking (although they do have a helpful mobile phone parking, so you don't actually have to be at the car to trigger the parking).

Merton much more sympathetic if you have a genuine reason for receiving the ticket.

For future reference, Merton you can lodge your appeal via the website, so no need to write a letter/print or post it, so you would be sure they had received it within the 2 weeks. I think this is increasingly required of councils.

Given it is such a regular thing for you, could you enquire whether you would be allowed to pay for an annual permit for the area that the school is in? This would be a lot cheaper than £10-20 per week in my council.

Also, do apply for the blue badge as suggested here.

Good luck!

I am making judgments about fat people being given badges which make it easier for them to drive places, thereby doing less exercise, thereby keeping them fat. And I have no problem with anyone going to the gym. Sorry if my post came across that way. My point about some people who are using their badges and then driving to the gym was not meant to be linked to the fat people comment! I just meant I thought the badges were for disabled peolpe, but I have seen perfectly fit and healthy people who have a badge, park outside the gym, then go in and use all the equipment, good for them, but they really are pushing the boundaries of my understanding of the word 'disabled' - I don't usually think of a weight lifting, butterfly swimming, rowing machining, bikini clad 25 year old!

O god, quickly before I am rounded upon- I am not at all saying disabled people cannot go to gyms and use all the equipment! I really hope no one thinks that is what I am saying! Just saying when you see a perfectly mobile, fit, healthy person with a disabled badge, you think something somewhere along the line has gone a bit wrong. That is all.
Phew.

A similar thing happened here not so long ago. A lady had parked in a 2hr car park and taken her disabled daughter to the cinema. The film they were watching was an hour and a half long so she would have been out within the allotted time.

In the cinema, her daughter had a massive seizure and had to be taken by ambulance to hsopital. Thankfully her dd was alright but had to stay in hospital for a couple of days.

Six weeks later, the lady in question got a parking fine. She rang the company in question and they would not budge. She went to the local paper, still the company would not budge - and by this time more money had been added to the fine as it hadn't been paid by a certain time.

In the end a very generous reader of the paper stepped in and paid the fine, but really, they shouldn't have had to.