Nottingham City Council, R (on the application of) v Bus Lane Adjudicator & Ors

Regulation 18 of the Local Authorities’ Traffic Orders (Procedure) (England and Wales) Regulations 1996 requires traffic signs to provide adequate information about the effect of a traffic regulation order. The test is objective and concerns road users generally, not the individual knowledge of the person receiving a penalty charge notice.

A prescribed or authorised sign may nevertheless be inadequate in its practical context. Where a bus-only street is enforced through civil bus-lane penalties, the signage must clearly convey the applicable restriction. Strongly recommended guidance is relevant, particularly where the authority uses a pedestrian-zone sign instead of the recommended bus-lane sign. Findings by a specialist adjudicator that signage was unclear will only be disturbed on judicial review if they are legally erroneous or Wednesbury unreasonable.

Nottingham City Council sought judicial review of a Bus Lane Adjudicator’s decision dated 31 May 2016. That decision upheld an earlier adjudicator’s allowance of Mohammed Sattar’s appeal against a penalty charge notice issued for entering a bus gate on Shakespeare Street, Nottingham.

The adjudicators found that pedestrian-zone signs based on diagram 618.3 did not provide adequate information about the bus-gate restriction for the purposes of regulation 18 of the Local Authorities’ Traffic Orders (Procedure) (England and Wales) Regulations 1996. The Council contended that the signs were lawful and sufficiently clear, and that the adjudicator had applied the wrong test and acted irrationally.

The central issues were whether the traffic order created a pedestrian zone, a bus-only street enforceable through civil penalty proceedings, or both, and whether the signs adequately communicated the restriction.

1. Claim dismissed. The judicial review challenge to the adjudicator’s decision failed.
2. The 2015 traffic order did not refer expressly to a pedestrian zone, but the adjudicator was entitled to decide the appeal on the basis that a pedestrian zone had been established. The surrounding material supported that characterisation, although the order itself was a formal legal document which ought ordinarily to be construed from its text.
3. Unauthorised entry into a pedestrian zone was not, in the Nottingham area, subject to civil enforcement by penalty charge notice. It remained enforceable by the police through criminal proceedings. The adjudicator was nevertheless entitled to consider whether the order also created a bus-only street enforceable as a bus-lane contravention.
4. Under regulation 18, the question was whether adequate information about the effect of the order had been made available to persons using the road. The test was not wholly subjective and did not depend on what the particular motorist knew or understood. Consistent signage was important because road users might be travelling quickly, unfamiliar with the area, or affected by poor visibility.
5. The adjudicators were entitled to find that the pedestrian-zone signs did not adequately communicate the bus-gate restriction. The Traffic Signs Manual 2008 recommended signs in diagram 953 or diagram 619 with an exception plate for a bus lane. The blue sign referring to 24-hour bus-lane enforcement was approximately 100 metres from the entrance and was insufficient to cure the deficiency.
6. The earlier guidance in Local Transport Note 1/97 did not displace the more recent and authoritative Traffic Signs Manual 2008. The adjudicator correctly directed himself in law, and the factual conclusion that the signs were unclear was not Wednesbury unreasonable.

First-instance judicial review in the High Court (Administrative Court). Permission was granted by Green J on 2 November 2016. The claim challenged the Bus Lane Adjudicator’s decision dated 31 May 2016, which had upheld the earlier adjudicator’s decision allowing the penalty appeal.