55. Bloody Islington!

£7.40 for 2 hours parking on the street in Islington... Outrageous!

That was what was posted on Facebook on Tuesday and it doesn’t surprise me at all. Bloody Islington!  It was posted by Alex, whose wedding with (to)? Lucie, Caroline and I went to in December.  Well done you two.  And to think that some people said it wouldn’t last!

You may remember that I wrote about life in Islington last summer when we were living there for five weeks in Caroline’s sister’s house while ours was being refurbished.

Parking in Islington is an absolute nightmare.  We ran up more than £300 in parking fines in those five weeks.  Bloody Islington!  I appealed two and lost.  A third is still under review. 

As an Islington resident, Joanna has a resident’s parking permit that goes with the car. Joanna and her family were away in France and she gave us the use of her car and the use of her resident’s permit.

There is a parking bay with a meter right outside Joanna’s house.  I was unsure whether or not I could park in the bay without paying while displaying a voucher.  As I was getting into her car one morning, a traffic warden was passing.  I showed him the voucher.

“May I use this to park in the metered bay?” I asked him.

He studied the voucher and assured me that I could.  Later the same day I received a £60 parking ticket for parking in that bay and not “paying and displaying”.

I appealed, quoting the warden’s name and number and advice given but my appeal was turned down on the grounds that the information I had been given was incorrect and a different warden had issued the notice legally.

These vouchers only had to be displayed between 8:30 in the morning and 6:30 in the evening.  One morning I woke up, looked at the clock and saw that it was 8:35.  I ‘leapt’ out of bed, got dressed descended two flights of stairs and hobbled as fast as I could (which is about half normal walking speed) to where my car, that I had used instead of Joanna’s the previous day, was parked around two hundred yards away.  I was in time.  I had not been ticketed.

The vouchers were for one hour at a time.  The start time had to be scratched off and the card displayed.  In my rush to get dressed, I had not put my watch on and so I estimated and scratched 8:50, locked the car and went back for breakfast. 

Fifty minutes later I returned to find I had a ticket.  £60!  The ticket was timed at 8:48.  I had been fined for being a bad judge of the passage of time or I suppose, for walking faster than I thought I had or maybe, just for parking in bloody Islington.

The appeal was dismissed for the same reason as the first: the warden had issued the ticket legally.

The third ticket, the one that is still under appeal, was an outrageous injustice, (in my opinion m’lud).  .

One afternoon I parked Joanna’s car in a nearby street.  I displayed a 24-hour parking permit and didn’t use it again that day.  When I went to drive off the following morning I discovered that the car had been moved across the road.

I am officially classed as disabled.  I have a blue badge issued by Enfield Council that allows me many parking concessions.  I never walk further than I have to. I parked as far down Garnault Place and as close to Joanna’s home in Rosoman Place as I could to make the walk to her house as short as possible. I parked some 15 to 20 feet beyond a lamppost.  That, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, is important.

I put a 24-hour parking-scratch-card on the dashboard, got out of the car, locked it and set off along the pavement.  I did not turn round to look at the lamppost (Why would I?) and even if I had done so, I would not have walked (painfully) out of my way to read an A4-sized notice hung upon it.   I would have assumed that it would have had information of interest to Islington residents only such as clearing up after dogs fouling the footpath or to watch out for uneven paving slabs.

The following morning at 11:30 I found that the car had been moved to the other side of the road and the windscreen was plastered with notices.

The notices told me that I had parked in a restricted area as road works were due to start there at 8:00 am that morning.

At 11:30 there no was work being done in the road nor was there any sign of any workmen or equipment.  However, the area where my car had been parked was now cordoned off.

I do not think that I should have to pay this fine, as the warning sign was neither obvious nor large.  I’m not even sure that it was hanging from that lamppost the previous afternoon.

Islington will not communicate with me as I am not the registered keeper of the car and Joanna is not keen on communicating with them as she was out of the country at the time.

Her first appeal has been rejected for the usual reason but I am urging her to go for a hearing at a Parking Tribunal.  Islington has to be stopped.  Bloody Islington!