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News

M

otorists who have recently received ‘fines’ in the post for what they have assumed is an ‘offence’ of using Bristol Parkway Station as a through road or ‘cut through’ are urged to double-check their notification letter to see if they have instead been wrongly accused of a parking violation. The station can be accessed from both the west side (off Hatchet Road) and the east side (Hunts Ground Road) but is clearly signed as a ‘private road’ that is also a ‘no through road’. However, station management company Great Western Railway (formerly First Great Western) confirmed to a member of the public back in 2015 that the rule was not currently being enforced (see facing page). Furthermore, numerous people have reported driving through on a regular basis over many years, right up to the present time, without any issues. However, reports on social media suggest that early January saw a flood of letters sent to people who regularly drive through the station without stopping (or who only stop for a moment to drop off or pick up a passenger) notifying them of a £50 ‘fine’. Analysis of these reports by the Journal reveals that most of the ‘fines’ relate to the period 6th to 9th December 2018 and that they have been received by people who make regular ‘through and back again’ journeys through the station, for example to take a child to school in the morning and to collect the child in the afternoon.

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February 2019

The clearest sign that they are, in fact, not a ‘fine’ for violating the ‘no through road’ condition can be seen in the title of the letter: ‘Parking Charge Notice’ (PCN). However, anyone overlooking this might easily be misled by the fact that the letter, instead of stating both the entry and exit times for the alleged parking offence gives just a single event time. Furthermore, the letter includes two photographs of the offending vehicle entering and

leaving the car park, but does not state the locations at which the photos were recorded. Because the backgrounds of the photos inevitably look different (as there as separate cameras pointing in opposite directions at each end of the car park), the reader can easily assume that they were recorded at different ends of the car park, thereby reinforcing the assumption of a ‘drive through’ violation. In reality, the date and timestamp of each photo is shown in tiny white print on a thin black strip along its top edge, which many recipients say they hadn’t noticed or found illegible. The timestamps, which are key to understanding the details of the alleged offence are, however, clearly readable in the online version of the PCN, accessible via the parking contractor’s website.

Pattern detected

Of five contested PCNs that the Journal examined in detail (thanks to the recipients sharing details of the PCNs and their own accounts of journeys made on the days in question) it is clear in each case that a fine has been issued because of the parking management system’s failure to detect a vehicle exiting the station at the Hunts Ground Road end, after having entered the station at the Hatchet Road end a few minutes earlier. This means that the vehicle is considered to have remained parked within the station grounds until it is next seen exiting, i.e. when the vehicle next drives through, which could be hours or even days later. Anyone who has received a PCN but not parked at the station, particularly if they make regular ‘through’ trips in both directions, might wish to examine the alleged entry/ exit times in detail to ascertain whether an exit event at another time may have been missed. In the light of the previous statement from 2015, we approached GWR with a set of questions relating to enforcement of the signed ‘no through road’ rule. Instead of providing answers to our specific questions,

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