I spent £50 efficiently proving my parking ticket was unfair. Can I get my bills again? DEAN DUNHAM replies
A local council sent me a penalty charge notice for parking outside a pub.
I disputed it and the council eventually conceded that I shouldn’t have been charged.
However, to prove I was right I spent £50 re-visiting the site, taking and printing out photographs and buying documents.
I think the council should cover my costs, but it has refused.
Should it?
M.B., Surrey.
Wrongly issued: A reader had to spend £50 as well as a considerable amount of time proving to a council that a parking ticket was unfair
I understand your frustration – it seems obvious the council should reimburse your costs when they have wrongly issued a parking ticket and then cancelled it.
However, the law does not support what would clearly be the fair outcome in your situation.
The relevant law is called the Traffic Management Act 2004 and it requires councils to only pay costs where you successfully challenge a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) at tribunal; either the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (outside London) or London Tribunals (in the capital).
Because the council cancelled your PCN during the internal appeal stage, the matter legally ends there.
The Act contains no mechanism for recovering costs incurred before reaching tribunal, even when the council admits it was wrong.
However, you’re not completely without options. You can escalate it through the council’s complaints procedure.
In your complaint, emphasise the specific errors the council made, that no reasonable local authority would have made these mistakes, the time and costs you’ve incurred as a direct result and that you’ll refer the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman if costs aren’t reimbursed.
Some councils will reimburse costs at this stage to avoid Ombudsman involvement and the reputational damage it can bring. If the council refuses, the Ombudsman is your final option.
However, I must be honest, success is unlikely. The Ombudsman investigates maladministration causing injustice, and they typically find that councils getting it wrong – even cancelling PCNs they shouldn’t have issued – doesn’t meet this threshold.
They usually consider that cancelling the PCN is the remedy for the injustice.
Jeweller damaged daughter’s engagement ring
My daughter had her engagement ring resized at the jewellers where she bought it. The hallmark was gone when the ring was returned to her. Is there anything she can do?
E.B., address supplied.
Your daughter has a strong claim against the jeweller under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
When the jeweller agreed to resize the ring, they entered into a contract to provide that service with reasonable care and skill.
Removing or damaging the hallmark during resizing falls well short of this standard.
Hallmarks are legally protected marks indicating the metal’s purity and are regulated by law.
A competent jeweller should know that resizing can affect them and must take steps to preserve them or arrange for re-hallmarking if removal is unavoidable.
Under the Consumer Rights Act, the jeweller must now provide your daughter with one of the following remedies: re-hallmark the ring, which involves sending it to an Assay Office at their own cost; or replace the ring with an equivalent one of the same quality and value.
Alternatively, if your daughter keeps the unmarked ring, she’s entitled to compensation reflecting the reduced value, as an unhallmarked ring is worth significantly less than a hallmarked one.
If the jeweller refuses to offer any of these free remedies, your daughter can pursue a claim via the small claims court.
Here your daughter will claim that there has been a breach of contract on the part of the jeweller, as it failed to carry out the resizing with reasonable care and skill, causing the ring to be devalued.
If she takes this route, I would advise her to get an independent jeweller to provide a statement to confirm that the original jeweller should not have removed the hallmark and how this has affected the value of the ring.
