grandad wrote:
A person was stopped on one of our taxi ranks this afternoon. A civil enforcement officer took a photo of the car and the driver complained and said he was only passing some paperwork to someone. At this point a member of the public got involved and was "having a go" at the enforcement officer. When the enforcement officer had finished writing the ticket she handed the ticket to the passer by and not the driver or on the vehicle. Is that ticket valid?
The ticket wont be valid as the driver has no way to appeal, or to even know what he is being ticketed for.
At some time in the future the council will send an enforcement notice, and that may be valid, as there is photo evidence of the alleged breach.
If someone gets ticketed and a chav takes the ticket off the vehicle before the driver arrives back, then IMO the charge still stands, it's just the defendant should be given extra time to challenge.
In the case at hand the fact that the warden gave the ticket to a passerby does question her ability to take down details correctly.
All that said, there must be a thousand posts on TDO moaning about cab drivers using ranks as free parking, so we can't have it always.