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The doctor is going to erect a fence so that he can park;in answer to the people who asked about driveways,"it must be clear that it is an area to which public have no access"-didn't apply to small patch of concrete where he parked.
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But surely there is an ' implied ' invitation to the ' public ' to come onto your land.....just like the Doctor's case, they're coming on for a purpose....postman, milkman, various delivery people, window cleaner, etc.
Seems to me the whole process of fining and prosecution is so unneccesary and spiteful.
Does it really matter in the greater context of all the problems in the land ? Does it matter if your towbar overhangs a parking bay by an inch or you stop a foot or so over a stop line. A bin lid up an inch ? that'll be £80 please, sir. Guy just fined for leaving his bin out all day...you go to work, the bin is emptied while you're out, you come home at 6 pm ...it's still out. What else can you do ?
Just money-grabbing avarice and greed !
Ted
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Would love to know the whole story... Courts don't just give a decission out of the blue, they usually have a good reason...
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The pic in the press shows a narrow pavement adjacent to a narrower strip of land.
It's obvious to me that parking a moped on the narrower strip would be a hazard to passers-by, unless it was fenced in.
But I'm not a clever doctor.
Edited by ifithelps on 02/12/2009 at 16:15
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Courts are obliged to apply the law as it stands. In anomalous cases like this one they often express sympathy with the law's effective victim, while explaining that their hands are tied. I think, but can't be sure, that the court did so in this case.
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I wonder if it because he does not have a dropped kerb?
Round here, I have heard of people being ticketed for driving over kerbs to get onto their front gardens to park.
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Round here I have heard of people being ticketed for driving over kerbs to get onto their front gardens to park.
And rightly so. Driving over kerbs is liable to damage them, and the repair cost would have to be borne by the council.
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Round here I have heard of people being ticketed for driving over kerbs to getonto their front gardens to park.
And rightly so.
Too right.
Pavements are for people and gardens are for plants.
The job should be done properly, get permission for a dropped kerb, reinforce that section of pavement if required, and then create a proper parking space.
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Cliff's general assumption that folks normally own up to the middle of the road could mislead. There is some weird law involved whereby a person may have this land shown on their deeds but they cannot assume rights over it.
The highway surface which may be road, footway or verge is very rarely owned by the householder in the sense we would normally understand owned. Think about it... all the services run in the highway such as gas/elec/bt/cable/water and if that land was privately owned they would have to take out an easement/wayleave agreement with every house each time they laid a main. All they have to do is notify the highways department who control the land affected. Effectively the highways people have ownership of the surface down to the subsoil.
If you wish to mow/plant/alter the highway verge outside your house, even if shown on your deeds, you need to apply for a licence to cultivate. Folks rarely do (we maintain some 300ft of verge as frontage and have never bothered to ask) but I guess in this case the highways dept are asserting their right of control of the surface if not absolute ownership of the land.
Not saying its good... just how it is.
Edited by M.M on 02/12/2009 at 16:21
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I also wonder if the proximity of the bike to the pavement had something to do with this ticketing..I can't see the scooter being any more dangerous here than would be a wheely bin or a couple of bicycles. It would appear, from the photo, that the warden did not have to encroach on to the private land other than to reach an arm out and stick his ticket on the machine.....easy pickings ! I wonder, had the private bit been 4 metres deep, whether any tickets would have been issued at all. There are plenty of shops round here with the length of a car between the shop front and the pavement....always used by the shop staff's cars and no one gives a hoot, because the land belongs to the shop..
In this case, if the warden had been seen on the land, I would imagine the owner would have been within his rights to ask/tell him to leave. I have done this a couple of times at home, on one occasion having to use a bit of force. ( Not traffic wardens, though )
Ted
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Ted,
Have you got a link to the Photo ?
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Can I show this link to the Daily Mail?
tinyurl.com/yeqhjno
Edited by Pugugly on 02/12/2009 at 17:48
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It may be law but clearly the law is an ass.
Whatever happened to fair and honest subjective judgement?
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Mmm, I agree it looks rather silly, but I agree with one of the posters under the story, why not just fence it off with a gate?! Its obvious from the photo that by concreting over the land and making it the same height as the pavement he has, in fact made it part of the pavement, which is not that wide in the first place, by allowing the public full access, so the Council have obviously decided that the bike constitutes a risk to pedestrians and the court has agreed...
Looks to me like both he and the council need their heads knocking together, it should never have got to the stage it has...
BTW can I borrow some of the Council's traffic wardens, I have a few pavements locally that could do with their "keen-ness" to ticket some cars that seem to think that the pavement is a car park...
Edited by b308 on 02/12/2009 at 19:48
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BTW can I borrow some of the Council's traffic wardens, I have a few pavements locally that could do with their "keen-ness" to ticket some cars that seem to think that the pavement is a car park...
Like this one?
www.flickr.com/photos/pvrframe/4144621673/sizes/o/
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I agree with the court decision. A mate of mine has a problem with his eyesight and it has deteriorated so that he can hardly see (uses a white stick now). He has hurt himself a couple of times by walking into bikes and motorbikes parked on the pavement. He's walked into bins a couple of times but they are not so bad, no hard or sharp bits sticking out. Who owns the bit of land doesnt matter, it looks like its part of the pavement and a bike on there would be a hazard.
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The point is..It's not on the pavement ! There are a hundred things that people with disabilities might get hurt on. I would imagine your friend would walk round a coned off hole in the footpath. I also have a friend who has no vision whatsoever and she manages very well with her cane to avoid obstacles, even parked cars on the real pavement, which are considerably bigger.
Ted
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The word 'curtledge' springs to mind here. That is an area within a physical boundary. In this case there is no boundary. The public have unrestricted access and therefore by definition it forms part of the 'Highway' and is a 'Public Place' under the definitions and case law within the Road Traffic Act.
It would therefore be legal to say breath test the rider and the vehicle would have to be insurance etc.
Still don't agree with it though.
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Sorry this is wordy but been involved loads with similar issues.
The more I look the more I think The Dr has taken the wrong case to court.
It seems since the court upheld the fines (it is also alluded to in newspaper reports) this area is part of the adopted highway meaning, as I said in the previous post, he may own it in theory but the highways have control of the surface. If so the tickets seem legit as the court declared.
There is also mention that this area was made part of the highway path in the 1990s when railings were taken down. Looks like the Dr bought the place with this adoption for highway already in place and his solicitors should have sussed it. I know our solicitors stalled on a purchase a couple of years back when it looked like we would own a section of path on the deeds that was actually a tarmac public path and could have given rise to maintenance/injury claim issues.
Anyway if the area being adopted highway is truly the situation he can take it to court over unpaid tickets till he's blue in the face and get nowhere.
For the press to state that this might allow any person to get a ticket on their own drive is daft.... because your own drive won't be adopted as public highway.
But....
What he should have done was to apply to the highways department for an extinguishment of highway rights under the Highways Act 1980. This is a legal procedure to remove the public highway status from a piece of land. To do this he would have to prove that the area was unnecessary for public use as part of the highway. Spending money on this approach may have been better value.... it costs about £3000.
On the sympathetic side I see from the Google street level view that other establishments in his road have items such as tables & chairs, full size dog statue, racks of dresses, a washing machine etc over what looks to be land of a similar status. Could be his is the only area to be adopted as highway though... perhaps to open out the pavement for safety on the corner where he's located. It appears they've done the same wide paving back to the building outside the Volvo dealers on the adj corner.
See Google street level for Cleveland Street, London.
Edited by M.M on 02/12/2009 at 22:57
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IMO MM has got it absolutely right. The doctor is pursuing the wrong case.
Owning the land has got nothing to do with whether it is highway or not.
A highway is merely a special kind of public right of way, to walk, drive, etc, whose maintenance and regulation has usually been adopted by the highway authority, and may be partly metalled or paved. It has to be a right to get somewhere to which the public has a right of access. Your front garden does not assist the public in exercising such a right, so cannot become a public highway even if unfenced.
A right of way serving no purpose can be extinguished by due process.
Ownership of the road as far as the centre does have a real meaning. When the local authority last year wanted to dig up the side of our lane and install drains, they were obliged to give me notice, and also undertake not to interfere with my own water and electricity pipes and cables passing under the road. They took great care not to damage one particular pipe, and constructed a temporary support structure for it.
They buried the statutory hazzard tape at the prescribed depth, and noted the existence of the runs for future reference.
Similarly, when I needed to close the road temporarily so that I could cut some trees, I was told I had an absolute right to do so, as long as I did not obstruct the right of way for longer than was necessary.
Edited by Cliff Pope on 03/12/2009 at 08:49
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That is very interesting. The house I own has land on the opposite side of the road which I also own. When I bought the place the solicitor said nothing about us also owning the road "to the centre". As we own land on both sides does this mean we own the road as Cliff says? Do I need to do anything to get this or is it automatic by owning the land?
I'd like to close it occasionally, such as when I have to get my steps out to trim a large hedge. It is quite scary up a ladder or steps trimming my hedge when a car comes past. More often than not these days it is not a car but a large 4x4 (it is the country).
A very interesting discussion, and nice to hear legal opinion on the situation.
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Like this one? www.flickr.com/photos/pvrframe/4144621673/sizes/o/
Not quite that bad... I'd report that to the Police, its totally out of order.
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>>But surely there is an ' implied ' invitation to the ' public ' to come onto your land.....<<
Correct,if there is access to your property and a letterbox in your door then there is an 'implicit invitation to deliver'.Should a delivery agent be attacked by your dog or slip on a poorly maintained path you would be responsible and could be sued,even if they are delivering stiff you do not want,such as junk mail.
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even if they are delivering stiff you do not want .........
A stiff should be taken to the crematorium!
;-)
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A few things spring to mind here ... When we had our Apartment in Tenerife, I used to park our Mountain bikes outside the front door, as we lived right at the end - no one was inconvenienced but we were to move them mucho pronto and I can see it now - others would have done the same thing, so its the same with the Doc - others would surely follow his example.
I have a long drive leading up to my garage, the drive crosses the public highway, if I parked in that area (the pavement) I would expect to recieve a parking ticket.
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If the doctor owned the land, but not the pavement/tarmac on top of it, then if the tarmac is owned by the council, the doc should be charging them a fee for ground rent?
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...the doc should be charging them a fee for ground rent?...
Don't give him ideas - he's wasted enough of everyone's time already.
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- he's wasted enough of everyone's time already.>>
Au contraire - surely everyone's wasted enough of HIS time already???
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If the doctor owned the land but not the pavement/tarmac on top of it then if the tarmac is owned by the council the doc should be charging them a fee for ground rent?
It's got nothing to do with ownership of the land or the tarmac. It's because it is considered to be part of the highway, over which there exists a public right of way, and a highway authority duty to maintain that right of way.
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...Au contraire - surely everyone's wasted enough of HIS time already???...
Seems to me it was made clear to him at a very early stage he could park the scooter were the space enclosed in some way.
This would have made the scooter less of a tripping hazard and provided some security for it, apart from the little matter of keeping it free of tickets.
So why not get on to the local authority, find out what could be approved as regards fencing, and do it?
Oh no, too simple.
I'm no lover of local authorities, but they are bound to defend their position in a case such as this.
And whose money do they use to do it? The hapless taxpayers'.
This guy has prolonged this case for years and must have cost the good citizens of the City of Westminster tens of thousands of pounds.
As well as wasting the time of council staff dealing with all the correspondence.
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Glad he's not my GP, education obviously does not improve common sense.
Edited by Old Navy on 03/12/2009 at 13:27
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...>> Seems to me it was made clear to him at a very early stage he could park the scooter were the space enclosed in some way.
>>>>
If it's part of the highway he has no right to obstruct it, either by illegal parking or with a fence.
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If it's part of the highway he has no right to obstruct it, either by illegal parking or with a fence. >>
My reading of the circumstances around this particular case is:
The privately owned part adjoining the publicly owned pavement has only been deemed to be a public highway because the owner has failed to "fence" it off. It has been put to him that he needs to "fence" it off to make it clear that it is not part of the highway. Until he does so, it will remain deemed as a public highway. Examples of acceptable "fences" are visible on other properties along the road.
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