#293


Updated 17 June 2020



KFC customers were shocked after they received £100 parking fines for waiting too long at a drive-through.

The unsuspecting chicken lovers did not realise they were queuing in a privately owned car park in Wirral, Merseyside, to buy their meals.

The parking charge notices were issued to people who waited longer than the 75 minutes permitted at the reopened takeaway in Rock Ferry.

This was despite long queues that left people with waiting times of more than two hours.


Customers were shocked to be hit with £100 parking fines for waiting too long in the privately-owned car park

Even though none of the customers were in parking bays, they were automatically hit with fines because their registrations were caught on CCTV when they entered and left the KFC site.

The first people knew about it was when a letter landed on their doormat from private car park operator Civil Enforcement a few days later, ordering them to pay a £100 parking charge – reduced to £60 if paid within 14 days.

Read more: Crocs launches a KFC shoe that looks and smells like fried chicken

Mum-of-two Hayley Abbott, who was waiting in the KFC queue for 90 minutes, said it was “the most expensive KFC I've ever had in my life”.


KFC has cancelled the fines.

Abbot added: “There was a security guard bringing people into the car park and there was no mention of there being a time limit and a possible fine.

“Once you're in the queue, you can't get out of it. The cars were bumper to bumper.

“I was fuming when I got the parking ticket through the post a few days later. I was thinking, ‘this is the most expensive KFC I've ever had in my life.’”

Read more: Surprise reopening of KFC causes 'two-hour queues' and 'manic scenes'

Instead of paying the fine, Abbot challenged it – and her appeal was upheld.

Another victim of the fines, who gave her name as Alisha, said: “It wasn't my fault I was waiting in a queue.

“If KFC knew people were going to be fined, they shouldn't have let that many people in.”

There was also a strong response when news of the fines was posted on a Facebook group's page, with many others saying they had had the same experience and were refusing to pay.

After being inundated with complaints from angry customers, KFC said it had now cancelled the penalty notices.

A KFC spokesperson said: "It's great to be back and we're flattered by how much our Rock Ferry fans have missed us!

"Our longer than usual queues did result in a few unfair fines for the car park but we've put that right now by cancelling the charges."

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/kfc-drive-through-parking-fines-merseyside-110742018.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABWpPUIcW57WGBxwudWmtBaLnrNMoXbzQXZVmVOW8KzWLbnRysXtLQbOSyzMR7faVSidTL8BH_C_zZ9RfrtQnYo4N4IxuwEvs3mi0P41hHHL6DzNR7u-ZaHPX_DiVIcMvLh66Sd3vwEtIewfcKqPIsBFXJMfCERI0Y6SarS9nG1G

#292


Jim Hibbert took Smart Parking to court after receiving a fine over a parking charge he actually overpaid.

Ellen Manning
Updated Fri 16 August 2024 at 11:18 am BST


Jim Hibbert, won a court case against a car parking company after he filed a claim over just 10p. (SWNS)

A pensioner has been awarded a payout after taking a car parking company to court over 10p.

Jim Hibbert, 85, paid for a 50p parking charge at Middleton Shopping Centre in Middleton, Greater Manchester using three 20p coins because he didn't have exactly 50p - yet then received a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) saying he owed £100, or £60 if it was paid in two weeks.

The pensioner proved he had paid more than the required amount but then received a reduced fine of £20 from Smart Parking for providing the "incorrect vehicle registration".

Hibbert wrote back in January last year and said he had entered his registration number correctly.

But when he received another letter from a debt recovery agency demanding £170, he decided to fight the company in court, making a claim at Manchester County Court and studying for months to represent himself. He argued the company had become the "beneficiary of unjust enrichment" and breached its contract by failing to adhere to its own signs.

Solicitors said Hibbert's claim costs, which included the 10p change, £4.96 in printing and postage costs and the £35 claim fee, was "spurious, opportunistic and an abuse of process".

However, before the case was due to be heard this month, he received a settlement offer of £40.06, and a letter saying that while the company believed his claim was "hopeless and entirely misguided" it had decided to pay out "to avoid further wasted time and costs".

Hibbert said: "I was polite in my letters but I thought they could get stuffed. I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. The more they tried to bully and intimidate me, the more determined I became. It's not a fine, it's extortion."

The centre's signage became a central part of the dispute as Smart Parking's solicitor said the sign indicated a need to pay and to provide a vehicle's registration.

But Hibbert provided photographs that proved otherwise, as the sign only indicated a need to pay the correct tariff before leaving the car park, with no mention of providing a registration number. The pensioner also argued the payment machine's keypad and display were "unusually small" and that the machine did not inform motorists how long they had been parked.

He added: "I spent a good few hours of my time but it's quite satisfying that they spent so much on lawyer's fees - when all I wanted was my simple 10p change."

'State-of-the-art' system

A Smart Parking Limited spokesperson said: "Smart Parking was brought into manage the car park at Middleton Shopping Centre in order to address parking abuse and to ensure consumers can always find somewhere to park.

"To do this we operate a state-of-the-art ANPR parking management system that monitors cars entering and exiting.

"There are numerous signs across the site that clearly set out the terms and conditions of use, one of which is that you must correctly enter your registration number into the machine when purchasing parking. In the case of Mr Hibbert, he did not do this and was correctly issued a charge.

"It is important to say that Smart Parking refutes the comments made by Mr Hibbert and at no stage was he the subject of any “intimidation”. The proceedings were initiated and pursued by him. Smart Parking advanced no claims against him.

"Whilst Smart Parking was advised by its legal advisors that the claim was without any legal merit, it was decided the costs associated with fighting the claim would be highly likely to be irrecoverable so we decided not take this matter further."

How to contest a parking fine in the UK

When it comes to challenging a penalty charge notice (PCN), there are various different rules depending on the type of PCN, but you often have have 28 days to challenge one, according to the government website. If you do it within 14 days and your challenge is rejected, you may only have to pay 50% of the fine.

You will not have to pay the fine if your informal challenge is accepted but if your informal challenge is rejected you will get what's called a ‘notice to owner’ which explains how to pay or make a formal challenge.

You then have 28 days to make a formal challenge (called a ‘representation’) after you get a notice to owner, in which you must explain your reasons for challenging the PCN in as much detail as possible and provide copies of any evidence or documents to support your challenge

If your challenge is accepted you will not have to pay the fine but if it is rejected you'll get a ‘notice of rejection’ which will give you 28 days to pay or appeal to an independent tribunal. If you do not pay or appeal, you will then have to pay a late penalty.

According to the government website, the first step to challenging a ticket from a private company is to find out who the issuer is then contact them to find out how to challenge the ticket.

"If your challenge is rejected, you can appeal to an independent appeals service," the site says, adding: "Find out if the ticket operator is a member of an accredited trade association by looking at the ticket or their website."

If the operator is a member of the British Parking Association (BPA), you can appeal to POPLA (Parking on Private Land Appeals, and if the operator is a member of the International Parking Community (IPC), you can appeal to IAS (Independent Appeals Service).

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/parking-fine-pensioner-payout-101012440.html

By Mark Hookham and Daisy Graham-Brown
Published: 00:29, 18 August 2024 | Updated: 00:32, 18 August 2024

Motorists have been hit with up to £5 billion in parking fines since ministers launched a failed crackdown on 'cowboy' firms, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Ruthless parking companies have enjoyed soaring profits in recent years amid mounting complaints over 'exorbitant' fines and aggressive tactics.

An MoS investigation reveals:

Private firms have dished out £4.8 billion in fines since 2019 when Parliament passed a law that was supposed to rein them in;
They are on course to slap a record 13 million fines on motorists this year – or 35,000 a day;
Some parking companies have doubled their profits in a year;
One motorist racked up £11,000 in fines at a car park because she was unable to pay for tickets due to poor internet coverage;
Private car parks are increasingly common, especially at hospitals, supermarkets and garages.

They can issue steeper fines of £100, compared to councils. A long-awaited code of practice was expected to be rolled out after legislation was passed five years ago.


Ruthless parking companies have enjoyed soaring profits in recent years amid mounting complaints over 'exorbitant' fines and aggressive tactics

Tory MP Greg Knight, who introduced a private members' bill which won Government support, highlighted 'poor signage, unreasonable terms, exorbitant fines, aggressive demands for payment and an opaque appeals process'.

The code included halving caps on tickets for most breaches to £50, creating a fairer appeals system and banning aggressive language on tickets. But the Government withdrew it after challenges from parking firms.

Instead, those firms introduced their own 'watered-down' version – but still use debt collectors, legal threats and county court judgments, which appear on a driver's credit file. There are also complaints about how difficult it is to contact the firms with queries.

The RAC's head of policy, Simon Williams, said: 'The delays sparked by parking companies and debt recovery firms challenging the code have meant thousands upon thousands have had to pay fines which were totally disproportionate.

'And then there's those that have had horrible threats of bailiffs and court actions. We badly need to bring an end to £100 parking charge notices and people being hounded.'


The RAC's head of policy, Simon Williams, said: 'The delays sparked by parking companies and debt recovery firms challenging the code have meant thousands upon thousands have had to pay fines which were totally disproportionate'


Private car parks are increasingly common, especially at hospitals, supermarkets and garages

Hannah Robinson racked up fines totalling £11,000 since 2021 after using a car park in Darlington managed by Excel Parking. Drivers must buy a ticket within five minutes of entering but Ms Robinson told the BBC that poor internet connection means payments often do not go through on time.

Stanley Luckhurst, 86, received a £100 fine after parking in a bay for electric vehicles in Uxbridge last year. He had bought a £1.60 ticket but poor lighting meant he couldn't see the signs. Despite telling Excel Parking he suffered from 'chronic health conditions', the firm pursued him in the county court for £255. He later successfully challenged the penalty.

Excel doubled its pre-tax profits last year, making £4 million. Owner Simon Renshaw-Smith and fellow director Alun Cockcroft have earned more than £1.8 million between them since 2019.

David MacBeth, 61, who lives near Inverness, spent weeks fighting a fine he received from Euro Car Parks after parking at a Morrisons in December. Despite his wife buying a ticket, debt collectors demanded £275. He told the MoS: 'It's completely unethical to go after you in this way.'

Euro Car Parks has more than doubled its pre-tax profits in a year from £6.2 million in 2021 to £16.6 million in 2022. It is owned and run by London solicitor Barry Tucker and his wife Rita, both 69.


Steve Gooding, of the RAC Foundation, which collates the DVLA figures, said a new code is 'long overdue'

He added: 'Surely, it's evidence enough that DVLA numbers suggest north of 45 million tickets have been issued to drivers leaving their vehicles on private land since the necessary powers made their way onto the statute book?'

Isaac Occhipinti of the British Parking Association said the code of practice operators introduced in June had brought consistency.

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said it was 'determined to drive up standards'. Neither Euro nor Excel responded to requests for comment.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13753435/Motorists-fines-failed-crackdown-cowboy-car-park-sharks.html

Not a single word from Croydon Council about its failure to keep the children safe.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

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Posted on August 7, 2024 by insidecroydon

CROYDON IN CRISIS: After the council bought number-plate recognition cameras that did not work, it managed to get a refund – after losing an estimated £16m income. By our Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE


Switched off: the council signed a deal for 100 ANPR cameras that never worked properly

Failures in Croydon Council’s procurement processes have been exposed yet again – but this time the local authority has at least managed to claw back some of the money it was losing over its school street motorist fines.

Conduent Public Sector UK Ltd is reported to have repaid £3.25million to Croydon Council over a failed parking enforcement scheme

As Inside Croydon reported in 2023, the council discovered that its officials had bought  ANPR equipment – Automatic Number Plate Recognition – which turned out to be incompatible with British car number plates – and therefore completely useless when used to police the borough’s “school streets”.

“Healthy School Streets” are where unauthorised vehicles are supposed to be banned from the roads outside schools at dropping off and picking up times during term.

But official council reports in May 2023 admitted that nine such streets, affecting 10 schools, which were supposed to be running a legally required six-month trial from the beginning of last year, were doing so with no data collection or enforcement from number-plate recognition cameras.

Another nine trial school streets introduced in March last year were also thought to be without any enforcement from ANPR cameras, bringing the total to 18 streets without any camera enforcement.

Croydon had signed a contract with Conduent in March 2022 to provide 100 ANPR cameras specifically to monitor traffic around schools.




By May 2023, someone at the council twigged that the ANPR cameras were not generating the revenues from fines that had been predicted by the then £150,000 per year “director of sustainable communities”, Steve Iles.

Council reports at the time suggested that the council was losing about £500,000 per month because of “the roll-out of new ANPR cameras”, with equipment that was “not compliant with the relevant UK standards”.

The council budget also had to be adjusted because of the short-fall in predicted income from fines on motorists because of the absence of functioning cameras in the council’s car parks.

The council reckoned it lost a total of around £16million as a consequence of the failings in the Conduent deal.

The BBC has reported that according to Conduent’s UK accounts filed at Companies House, the firm made a loss in 2022-2023, “due to several unexpected events”. These included “exiting a contract” with a local council.

“A £3.25million payment was made to the local council in August 2023,” the accounts state. Conduent told the BBC that it had sold the part of its business that operated “curbside management and public safety business”.

In June 2023, it was announced that Iles, a Croydon Council employee for more than 30 years, was to take early retirement. Iles today holds the senior position of “interim director of operations” at Swindon Borough Council.


‘Early retirement’: Steve Iles now works for Swindon council

According to sources at Fisher’s Folly, “this particular cock-up was mostly down to Iles, not because he awarded the contract but because he restructured the service and deleted all the integral staff required to implement and deliver”.

In councilspeak at Croydon Council, “restructured” usually translates to meaning reduced the number of staff, and “deleted” means made redundant. “Implement and deliver” means capable of actually doing the job…

The council source says that when it came to setting budget predictions, Iles “over-egged the deliverable income to fill the budget gaps, and kick the can down the road”. Notoriously, in the council’s March 2022 budget – the last to be passed by a Labour administration before the election of Tory Jason Perry as Mayor – income from parking and fines was predicted to reach £1million per month.

These figures were swiftly discredited when Perry’s Tories started poring over the cash-strapped council’s books.

Said the source at Fisher’s Folly, “The ANPR cameras contract was implemented during the Section 114 when they were all running around like headless chickens looking for scapegoats and pointing fingers and supposedly ‘saving money’.”

This is also the period under new-broom chief exec Katherine Kerswell, and when the government-appointed “Improvement Panel” was supposedly overseeing all council spending, to ensure “best value” for the public.

Of the cameras, the source said: “It’s technology, so if it’s not set up properly, it won’t work. There were faults on both sides, council and supplier.”

Thing is, Conduent still works for Croydon Council, albeit under a different company name.

Trellint (the trading name of Modaxo Traffic Management UK Ltd), as they are now called, supply the parking back office’s system for processing Penalty Charge Notices permits and other aspects of that work. They are currently in a 10-year contract with Croydon Council.

https://insidecroydon.com/2024/08/07/contractor-repaid-3-25m-to-council-over-school-streets-failure/

Is it enforceable? 

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Schrödinger’s speed limit

Published on 31 July 2024

Here’s a problem. In 2022, Manchester City Council say they reduced the speed limit on the Mancunian Way to 30mph. But it’s not clear if they have. It’s not even clear if they can.

Fair warning: this posts plumbs the depths of pedantry in the areas of legislation and signage, so if that isn’t your thing look away now. On the other hand, it does also have some jokes about hats.

At the present time, the only thing we can say with any certainty is that the A57(M) Mancunian Way either does or does not have a 30mph speed limit. Like Schrödinger’s Cat, we won’t know until we open the box.

The physicist Erwin Schrödinger first wrote about his famous thought experiment in 1935. It was meant to be a way of thinking about the problems of quantum theory, which state that particles can be in two states at once until they are observed. To illustrate this in a more understandable way, he created a thought experiment in which a cat is placed in a box with a volatile radioactive substance that may or may not kill it. You can only know whether the cat is alive or dead by opening the box. Until then the cat is in a “superposition” of being both alive and dead simultaneously.


Brand new 30mph speed limit signs on the Mancunian Way.

Manchester is presently - and unintentionally - embarking on a similar experiment in quantum speed limits. The City Council says their urban motorway now has a 30mph speed limit, something which appears to be impossible to achieve, and the legislation behind it appears to have a fatal omission.

So far their experiment is untested by the courts. Until a judge opens the box and has a look at the cat, we don’t know what the speed limit is.

Wait. This all sounds completely unhinged. Let’s go through it from the start.

The highway in the sky

Manchester’s famous Mancunian Way opened to traffic in March 1967, and was extremely novel. A bypass across the south side of the city centre, it is almost entirely elevated above ground, causing the local paper to name it the Highway in the Sky. It was one of the most famous and recognisable urban roads of the 1960s.

What it wasn’t, in 1967, was a motorway, despite the fact that it was often called one. When it first opened to traffic it was just part of the A57. For reasons that are not entirely clear it only gained its motorway wings in 1971, from which time its speed limit was 50.

It remained so for several decades, until Manchester City Council took a decision that no road in their care should have a limit higher than 30mph. On 3 November 2022 they applied a temporary order changing the limit.


A highway in the sky: the Mancunian Way crosses Brook Street.

Manchester’s temporary order expired on 13 April 2024, and we can’t find evidence that it has been extended, so at the time of publication the legal status of the 30mph limit is a complete unknown. (A permanent order has been drafted, and is due to take effect in the autumn, but we’ll come back to that.) However, even overlooking that, the whole thing is on shaky foundations.

A look is all it takes

In the UK, speed limits rely upon a simple concept that was first introduced in 1934. The idea is that a competent driver should be able to understand the speed limit by looking at their surroundings. Generally speaking, a limit is considered enforceable if that’s true.

The criteria for a 30 limit, set back in 1934, was that it applied in an area with a system of public lighting - streetlights, in other words. If you look around and the road has streetlights, the limit is 30. If you don’t see streetlights the National Speed Limit applies. The National limit is either 60 or 70 depending on whether the road is single or dual carriageway - another thing you can normally tell at a glance.

Now we also have 20, 40, 50 and 60 limits, which might override the usual ones. For that reason we use “repeater” signs, which are the little miniature speed limit signs posted at regular intervals at the roadside. They are there so that a competent driver can still look around and tell what the limit is. If there’s a little speed limit sign visible, then the limit is what the sign says.


A miniature 40 sign - a "repeater" to remind you of the limit.

An exception was introduced with the invention of the motorway. Since motorways did not have shops and houses facing them, they would never be subject to an urban 30 limit. A simplification was possible. So, a competent driver looking around and seeing they are on a motorway can just assume a 70mph limit applies, with or without streetlights, unless there are repeater signs to tell them otherwise. Hence long lengths of rural motorway with street lighting have no repeaters: it’s a motorway, so the limit is 70, and no clarification is needed.

From its creation in 1971 to the temporary order made in 2022, the Mancunian Way had a 50 limit, and had “50” repeater signs throughout, so competent drivers could look around them at any time and infer the correct limit.

The problem on the ground

Let’s assume the role of a Competent Driver and see if we can work out the Mancunian Way’s new limit.

It’s a motorway, and is signposted as one, so the default is 70.
It has streetlights, which normally imply a 30 limit.
The streetlight rule does not apply, because this is a motorway. Therefore the default is still 70.
There are occasional repeater signs for the 30 limit. So that confirms it: 30, right?
Well, it’s not as easy as that. If we remove our Competent Driver Hat for a moment and try on our Amateur Lawyer Hat instead, we will recall that 30 signs have to be correctly designed and located in order to apply, and some of those on the Mancunian Way (especially the temporary ones on A-frames) use an incorrect style of lettering. Others, at certain entrances to the road, only appear some distance beyond the “start of restrictions” signs, which implies that there’s a 70 limit between the start of the motorway and the first 30 sign


One of the temporary 30 signs on the Mancunian Way, which does not seem to comply with the regulations.

That’s only the start, though, because our Amateur Lawyer Hat also reminds us about TSRGD.

The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD) is the rulebook for UK traffic signs. A sign can only be lawfully erected, and enforced in law, if it complies with the rulebook.

In Schedule 10 of TSRGD, which covers speed limit signs, you’ll find diagram 670, a familiar red circle with numbers inside it. Its description is “maximum speed limit in mph”, and it has a number of instructions that set out the rules for its use. One of them says this.

The sign must not be placed as a repeater sign where the road is subject to a maximum speed limit of 30 mph and has a system of carriageway lighting.

Traffic Sign Regulations and General Directions 2016, Section 10, Part 4, 2.
In other words, you can’t put “30” repeaters on a road with streetlights, because the streetlights are what reminds drivers of the 30 limit.

On a motorway, of course, streetlights don’t indicate a 30 limit, but it seems that nobody involved in writing TSRGD had thought of that, presumably because nobody ever thought a motorway might actually get a 30 limit. And the rules are the rules.

The (speed) limits of possibility

Here is Manchester’s problem, then: they have attempted to restrict a motorway to 30mph, but there is seemingly no legal way to convey that fact to drivers. The system of street lighting doesn’t do it, but it is illegal to erect repeater signs because the street lights are there. They have created a road on which it is not possible for a competent driver to look around them and infer the speed limit from their surroundings.


Some entrances have no speed limit signs at all, implying a 70 limit.

That surely has consequences for whether or not the new limit is compliant with the law. If you create a limit, you must signpost it in accordance with the law, or else it is invalid. And (with the caveat that we are not lawyers and this does not constitute legal advice) it appears that there is no way to signpost this limit according to the law.

The obvious question is whether this can really be the first ever time that someone has tried to restrict a motorway to 30mph. If you’d care to try on this Road Enthusiast Hat - you’ll like this one, it has a pom pom - we will discover that there are at least three previous examples.

The most recent is on the Leeds Inner Ring Road, A64(M), where a temporary 30 was applied during bridge replacement works at the Regent Street interchange. This initially had repeater signs throughout, plus street lighting, just like the Mancunian Way - but Leeds removed their repeaters, on expert advice, in the belief that they would make the limit unenforceable.

There’s a section of M1 with a 30 limit too. A link road cutting through the roundabout and joining the northbound M1 at junction 1, Staples Corner, has a short and widely ignored 30 limit. There is no terminal sign where the motorway starts, and just two repeaters shortly afterwards, despite the road having street lights. Since the requirements for terminal signs aren’t met the limit is probably not enforceable anyway.


The start of the M1 at Staples Corner, and a questionable 30 limit.

The third and final example is unexpected. It's the Mancunian Way itself.

The 50 limit that existed until 2022 was imposed by The Motorways Traffic (Speed Limit) Regulations 1974, which created the 70 limit on motorways that we still have today. It attempted to reset the limits on all motorways, so it had a list of all the ones that had limits lower than 70, and specifically stated that the Mancunian Way - all of it - was subject to a 50 limit.

But the Mancunian Way became a motorway in 1971. Before the 1974 order, its limit was set by the Motorways Traffic (A.57 (M) Mancunian Way) (Speed Limit) Regulations 1971. They said something different.

These Regulations prohibit the driving of motor vehicles at a speed exceeding 50 m.p.h. on the Mancunian Way A.57 (M). The slip roads are restricted to a speed limit of 30 m.p.h.

Motorways Traffic (A.57 (M) Mancunian Way) (Speed Limit) Regulations 1971
For three years in the seventies, then, the Mancunian Way’s sliproads all had 30 limits - the first ones ever applied to a motorway. And that was probably the only example we’ve yet found that could be legally signposted: as long as there were signs at the start of the 30 limit, the sliproads are all short enough that no repeaters would be needed before they came to an end. It might just have been possible. It may even have been enforceable.

A legal oversight

Manchester City Council have now published the draft orders that will make the 30 limit permanent, so we do at least know that they intend for it to be permanent and that legislation will soon be in place, even if it isn't at the moment.


The Mancunian Way: enjoy it now while its experimental quantum speed limit lasts.

According to the notice the Council placed in the Manchester Evening News, the new order will do two things. First, it will establish a new 30 limit on the Mancunian Way, and second, it will revoke the Motorways Traffic (A.57 (M) Mancunian Way) (Speed Limit) Regulations 1971.

What it won't do is revoke the 50mph speed limit provision in the later Motorways Traffic (Speed Limit) Regulations 1974, which is more recent and appears to supercede the earlier 1971 order. It also won’t revoke speed limit orders for the two sections of 50-limit motorway that didn’t exist in 1971 and which were added in the 1990s. So even once the orders are published, and even if the signage problem is resolved, it's not actually clear that the existing 50 limit will be fully extinguished or that the 30 will be correctly established in law.

Where does that leave us?

Suppose a motorist is fined for exceeding the 30 limit, and takes the case to court. The courts may decide that the limit is not enforceable because the signage fails to comply with TSRGD. Or they may decide that the limit is invalid because the temporary order has expired, or that the new order is invalid because the 50 orders were never cancelled. Or, they may decide the Council have made reasonable endeavours to communicate the limit to drivers, despite the signage not complying with the letter of the law, and that revoking the 1971 order is sufficient, and thus declare it enforceable in its current form.

The Mancunian Way’s quantum 30mph limit, in other words, may be alive or dead.

We’re just waiting for a judge to open Schrödinger’s box so we can find out.

https://www.roads.org.uk/blog/schrodingers-speed-limit