Regulation 10(2)(a)(i) of the Civil Enforcement of Road Traffic Contraventions (Approved Devices Charging Guidelines and General Provisions) (England) Regulations 2022 provided for an enforcement authority to give notification of a penalty charge by serving a penalty charge notice (“PCN”) by post where, on the basis of a record produced by an approved device, the authority had reason to believe that a penalty charge was payable with respect to a regulation 11 parking contravention. Relying on photographic evidence as the “approved device”, the claimant enforcement authority served PCNs on the interested parties who appealed, contending that the authority had not been entitled to give notification by post since the parking bays had not been marked in accordance with the regulation 11(2) definition of “red route” because they were not also marked with either a single or double red line adjacent to the curb and the required “upright sign”, so that when vehicles were parked in those bays, they were not stationary “on … a red route” for the purposes of regulation 11(1). The defendant adjudicators accepted that each vehicle had been parked in a parking bay at a time or in circumstances in which it ought not have been parked but they allowed the appeals on the basis that unless the parking contravention on a red route occurred at a place marked with a single or double red line the contravention was not a regulation 11 parking contravention enforceable on the basis of a record produced by an approved device; and that, accordingly the enforcement authority had not been entitled to serve the PCNs by post.
On the enforcement authority’s claim for judicial review—
Held, claim allowed. A “red route” within the meaning of regulation 11(2) of the Civil Enforcement of Road Traffic Contraventions (Approved Devices Charging Guidelines and General Provisions) (England) Regulation 2022 had to be marked “in accordance with” the requirements in both sub-paragraphs (a) and (b). The requirement at sub-paragraph (b) for signage applied to both alternative requirements in sub-paragraph (a). The signage requirement thus applied regardless of whether the road was marked with a double red line or a single red line. A road was still marked “in accordance with” the requirement for either a single or double red line if the road also included parking bays marked in accordance with the requirements for parking bays in Part 4 of Schedule 7 to the 2016 Regulations. Accordingly, in respect of the parking contraventions in issue, the enforcement authority had been permitted under the 2022 Regulations to give notice of the penalty charge by post. The contraventions were “regulation 11 parking contraventions” because by parking in the parking bays on the occasions in question, the vehicles had been stationary on a red route within the definition in regulation 11(2) of the 2022 Regulations (paras 16–18, 20, 21, 28).
Timothy Corner KC and Andrew Byass (instructed by Transport for London Legal) for the claimant.
Karen Bagnell (instructed directly) for the first interested party, Commercial Plant Services.
The adjudicators and the second to fourth interested parties, Mitchell Perry, Richard Cooper Jackson and Rajah Miah, did not appear and were not represented.