parking to appeal or not to appeal that is the question?

[tricot39]

We accidentally parked in a residents on street parking bay amongst other pay and display bays on a sunday. A few feet away we would not have been fined. The road falls on the boundaries between 2 councils and there were at least 4 different signs/times/types of bay so very confusing. Within the same council area the residents bays just to the north had writing on the road next to the bay (residents parking) but our bay did not. Otherwise restrictions were the same.

I also noticed that the ends of our bay were framed in double dashed lines when residents bays are meant to be single lines.

The whole thing was confusing and i appealed the notice. A letter has arrived ignoring both my points - firstly "the end lines appear to be correctly marked" and "the other side of the road is a different council" so it is confusing but in essence tough luck. They have rejected the appeal which was unofficial.

Are they bluffing ? Do i have good grounds to hold out for an official appeal?

I have just received a fine for stopping in a yellow box. I have spent 2 hours googling appeals. Truthfully most appeals fail and I think I will be better off time wise paying the £65 through gritted teeth and knowing better for next time.

Tired i think that stopping in a yellow box must be very difficult to get out of. Still not sure what to do about our letter which loos like a bluff by revenue protection....

try putting a question on the honest john website - they seem to be pretty good at answering things like this.

honest john writes a motoring column in the weekend telegraph newspapers (motoring sections) so should be pretty reputable and often has questions about parking problems.

this is his faq on parking problems as a starter: www.honestjohn.co.uk/faq/private-parking-penalties/

Have you got lots of photos of the area and the problems? Might be worth getting if you don't, so you can illustrate your claim. Worth making it look as confusing as possible when you take the pix!

Thanks for the suggestion! I did that and here was the reply:

"If you appealed to the parking adjudicator and it was turned down, that's it. Next step bailiffs, so better pay."

So they didnt read it properly! It was an informal representation not parking adjudicator.... Back to square one....