Vehicle Not Adjacent to the Dropped Footway Section

Section 86 only bites where the vehicle is parked on the carriageway 'adjacent to' the lowered section. If your car sat alongside the full-height kerb or the sloping transition stones, and only its bumper overhung the start of the drop — or it was beside the crossing but not next to the lowered stones themselves — the council must prove genuine adjacency to the lowered section from its officer's photographs, which frequently do not show it.

Legal basis

Traffic Management Act 2004 s.86(1): prohibition applies to a vehicle 'parked on the carriageway adjacent to a footway, cycle track or verge' that 'has been lowered to meet the level of the carriageway'; the burden of proving the contravention rests on the enforcing authority

How to identify this in your case

Check the council's PCN photos against the kerb line. Were your wheels and bodywork actually alongside the lowered, flush section — or alongside the full-height kerb or the angled transition stones, with little or no overlap of the flat dropped section? Photograph your parked position relative to where the kerb actually drops, marking where the flush section starts and ends.

Sample appeal wording

Before you send this

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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 27. Section 86(1) of the Traffic Management Act 2004 prohibits parking on the carriageway adjacent to a footway that has been lowered to meet the level of the carriageway. My vehicle was positioned alongside the full-height kerb / the transition stones, not adjacent to the lowered section itself. I put the council to strict proof, by its civil enforcement officer's contemporaneous photographs showing the whole vehicle and the extent of the lowered section, that my vehicle was parked adjacent to the dropped footway within the meaning of section 86(1). If the photographs do not establish that positioning, the contravention is not made out and the penalty should be cancelled.

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Vehicle Not Adjacent to the Dropped Footway Section

Legal basis

How to identify this in your case

Sample appeal wording

Beat It writes this argument automatically

Sources

Related appeal grounds

Next steps