I run a small property search and building company. I pay my council tax, own a residents' parking permit, usually have about £10 worth of parking vouchers in my truck which I use for work and have even typed out unloading notices for when I am stopped outside my office, picking up clients or unloading tools.

It is fair to say that I am trying hard to work with Brighton and Hove City Council's parking regulations in an area that is undergoing massive amounts of regeneration and am absolutely at my limit with the inflexibility of the existing parking control system.

I would have thought that a good objective of any council's parking policy would be to work with residents rather than against them. This does not seem to be happening.

North Laine resembles a building site at the moment, with roads being dug up, a development of some sort going on in most streets and house prices at record levels, affording residents the chance to get the builders in and carry out home improvements.

This is all good as long as there is a bit of tolerance from both residents and the council.

I recently wrote a letter objecting to a ticket issued while I was unloading on a quiet Sunday morning on yellow lines in Vine Street and mistakenly focused on the fact that I had been feet away in my office/

home and had a residents' permit and a note on my windscreen, both clearly displayed.

When the council refused to acknowledge my written argument and insisted that the ticket was issued correctly, I went into the ticket office in North Road to pay it rather than enter into protracted negotiations because time is a luxury most small business owners don't have.

However, I was told that if I had focused on the fact I had been unloading, rather than the traffic warden's enthusiasm to ticket me, there may have been more grounds to cancel the ticket.

They could not confirm if where I was unloading was permissible or not. So the ticket remained unpaid and I wrote another letter saying: "I have been told I was within my rights to be unloading, despite the fact I was parked on a yellow line. Is this correct?

"Please let me know if you can review the circumstances of this ticket or if not, what the rules are regarding unloading so I can decide if I should appeal and run the risk of incurring a heavier penalty."

Straight-forward enough, I thought, but no! Two letters from the council later and I had still not been told what the rules were about unloading on yellow lines, near the junction of Vine Street and Gloucester Road.

I am now having to go through the adjudication procedure at a cost to the taxpayer and my own time, all because someone at parking control cannot advise me what the rules are specific to the incident that took place in Vine Street and decide if the ticket should be cancelled or not.

This seems ridiculously bureaucratic and a good example of the parking system's failings.

There is no cut and dried solution to the parking problem in central Brighton and, in view of this, the council owes it to residents to work with them, not against them.

This should include traffic wardens being trained to use their discretion and common sense and the existing rota system of wardens operating in changing areas being abolished and replaced with wardens operating in one area so they become familiar with the local residents and their vehicles and can concentrate on those individuals who have no respect for the system whatsoever and park anywhere.

The current ratio of 1:7 permits per bay in North Laine is too high and needs to be reduced in accordance with the area's new-found popularity and the increase in people who work and live here. It is no longer a run-down area with empty buildings on every street but a busy extension to the city centre.

The council needs to review its policy of not allowing developments in North Laine with private parking, on the basis that it does not even want vehicles driving through the area to their allocated spaces, even if they are off-road or underground.

-James Oliver, Brighton