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proceduralUK · England & WalesDifficulty: moderate

Taxi Setting Down or Picking Up a Passenger at a Bus Stop Clearway

The law expressly exempts a taxi that is stationary at a bus stop clearway only for as long as reasonably necessary for a passenger to board or alight and load or unload their luggage. If you were driving a licensed taxi and stopped briefly for exactly that, no contravention occurred. This exemption does not apply on red routes, and it does not extend to private cars — an ordinary car has no set-down exception at a bus stop clearway.

Legal basis

Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 (SI 2016/362), Schedule 7 Part 6 paragraph 4(2)(c) — taxi exception to the paragraph 1 clearway prohibition (disapplied for red route markings where paragraph 12 of Part 5 applies)

How to identify this in your case

This applies only if the vehicle is a licensed taxi (hackney carriage). Check: were you actively picking up or setting down a passenger, with the stop lasting no longer than that took? Gather your licence details, any booking/journey record covering the PCN time, and confirm the location is not a red route (red lines, not yellow). If the vehicle waited empty, or is a private car, this ground does not apply.

Sample appeal wording

Before you send this

Deadline. A late submission can be turned down without your argument being read. Check your notice for the deadline and how it is counted.
Paying may end it. Paying can count as accepting the notice and can close a challenge already under way. Part-paying or acknowledging an old debt can also revive a time limit that had expired.
The amount can change. Check what happens to the sum if you challenge — it may be held, re-offered lower, or keep rising, and fees or enforcement can continue meanwhile.
Use the official route. Use the method, recipient and form your notice specifies, with any reference, evidence and signature it asks for. Sent elsewhere, it may not count.
Only say what is true. Do not copy any statement of fact unless it is true for you, and check the legal point still applies. Delete what does not fit. It may be treated as your statement.
Careful what you volunteer. Avoid unnecessary admissions — naming the driver or accepting responsibility can remove arguments. But answer anything you are legally required to answer, and do include the evidence your ground needs.
Keep the record. Keep what you sent, the attachments, any receipt, and the reply. Note the next deadline.

Sample wording to adapt and send yourself — it may not fit your notice or the stage you are at.

I am appealing this penalty charge issued under contravention code 47. My vehicle is a licensed taxi, and at the time of the alleged contravention it was stationary only for so long as was reasonably necessary for a passenger to board or alight and for their luggage to be loaded or unloaded. Schedule 7 Part 6 paragraph 4(2)(c) of the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 expressly disapplies the clearway prohibition in those circumstances, and this location is not a red route. I enclose evidence of the vehicle's taxi licence and of the journey concerned. As the statutory exception applied, no contravention occurred, and I put the authority to proof of any evidence that the vehicle was stopped otherwise than for passenger boarding or alighting. I ask that the penalty charge be cancelled.

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Taxi Setting Down or Picking Up a Passenger at a Bus Stop Clearway

Legal basis

How to identify this in your case

Sample appeal wording

Beat It writes this argument automatically

Sources

Related appeal grounds

Next steps