An ice cream van owner has been hit with £2,850 in fines plus legal costs after he was trading illegally in Southall.
Idrees Mian, of Uxbridge Road, Southall, appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court on 19 May 202 where he pleaded guilty to two charges of illegal street trading in The Broadway in Southall and claimed in a third incident that he was not trading but only parked.
Officers from Ealing Council provided CCTV and eye witness accounts and Mr Mian was found guilty of three charges of illegal street trading and one charge of failure to respond to a notice. He was ordered to pay £5,950 in total consisting of £2,850 in fines, £1,140 in victim surcharges and £2,000 in costs.
Peter Mason, Leader of Ealing Council said: “While we welcome traders in all our towns in Ealing, we expect them to have the correct licences and operate legally. The council will continue to take action against anyone who is trading or parking illegally. Illegal parking is not acceptable at any time in Southall or any of our other seven towns.”
Ealing Council says the rules for ice cream vans is that they must be constantly in motion and are not allowed to remain parked on unrestricted roads to trade for longer than 15 minutes at a time. They then must move on and not return to the same location for the rest of the day.
When vans are in same place and starionary for a whole day, the council says they “become a de facto fixed pitch street trader operating without a licence. The vehicle can receive a parking control notice (PCN) for unlawful parking, particularly if it is parked on the footpath or in a controlled parking zone (CPZ) without a permit. In the last year, one ice cream van alone received (and paid) 42 PCNs for illegal parking. The trader may receive a fixed penalty notice (FPN) for unlicensed street trading or for wilful obstruction of the highway.”
Over the past year, the council says it has issued 35 FPNs to ice cream van operators for this type of offence.
