Sunderland City Council's Coronation Street Imperial Blunder ...

The area below is another area of Sunderland where the businesses have been targeted by Parking Attendants over the past few years. A lot of car repair and motor dealers and small businesses dependent on customers accessing their businesses, but many are being driven away by draconian enforcement practices ... BUT help may be at hand.

The location is shown below ...



Do you watch Coronation Street?

Sunderland Council obviously don't, well at least not as closely as they should. This is not the Coronation Street but Coronation Street in Hendon, Sunderland.

Shown is a parking bay (for the time being we will set aside the fact that the bay is not correctly marked and has an illegal motor cycle bay in the middle) where I received a Penalty Charge Notice last week and again, another today.

Now remember, Sunderland City Council is the Council that famously prosecuted local greengrocer Steve Thoburn for daring to sell his bananas by the pound in defiance of the legal requirement (they claimed) to sell in metric, arising from European Council Directive 80/181/EEC.

The case attracted worldwide attention (see here) and the criminal conviction was taken to the grave by Steve who tragically died from a massive heart attack at the age of 39.

Now, the Directive also requires "Member States to adopt metric units as the primary system of measurement for 'economic, public safety, and administrative purposes."

In a Guidance Note (see here) issued by the Department for Trade and Industry it states:
"8. Public sector organisations are further advised that the continued use of imperial units as the primary system of measurement after 1st October 1995 - could render liable to legal challenge expressions of quantity in future legislation, documentation, etc. on grounds of inconsistency with the Units of Measurement Directive."

"20. Public sector managers should ensure that their staff use metric units from 1st October 1995 for all public sector business ..."

Pretty clear so far...

BUT and it is a big but, have a look at the Traffic Regulation Order for Coronation Street here





















Item 451 Coronation Street states:
"The North side from a point 31.333 yards east of the easterly kerb line of Nile Street for a distance of 20 yards in an easterly direction."

So, the local authority that was hell bent on enforcing the Metrication Regulations using hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to squash greengrocer Steve Thoburn is about to be hoisted on its own petard.

Coronation Street is one of more than a dozen TROs which are marked in imperial and therefore fall foul of the Units of Measurement Directive. However, as all these unlawful TROs are contained within the Sunderland South Consolidated Order the Order MUST be declared invalid.

A recent case of Isaacson v Bury
the adjudicator stated "It would be wrong in these circumstances (a legally unsound TRO) to try and cherry-pick the provisions that are sound and those that are not - especially when the interested citizen reading the TRO would have no idea which provisions might be upheld and which might not be."

Therefore, not only are they going to have to cancel my PCNs at the locations they are using unlawful imperial measures in the TROs they are also going to have to admit that they must refund everone else unlawfully ticketed at these locations. It appears however, that they are aware of the problem ... BUT are still ticketing!
We believe the amount of money involved runs into tens of thousands of pounds.