A Brighton man says he wants his day in court after being ordered to stop storing broken down cars on the road and green outside his home.
Robin Mouland, 62, was given a community protection notice order in November 2024 which told him to stop using the green and public highway in Selham Close and Selham Drive to repair cars.
The order, issued by Brighton and Hove City Council, also ordered him not to store any un-roadworthy vehicles in those locations.
Today, he appeared at Brighton Magistrates Court charged with breaching that order, which he pleaded not guilty to.
He said the council was victimising him, and that not being able to repair unroadworthy vehicles put him in a “Catch 22” situation because that meant they could not be moved.
He added he was being evicted from his home on Wednesday.
He said: “I have vehicles on the road that were not roadworthy but I’m not allowed to work on them. It’s a Catch 22.
“I want my day in court to prove the council are picking on me. There are thousands of people doing the same thing as me.”
Mouland, who is representing himself, said he would be calling the council’s abandoned vehicles officer as a witness.
Helen Wilson, representing the council, said they would be calling a single witness.
The trial has been set for 18 March at the same court.
Genius, seems to have the idea public roads belong to him, he may have a costly surprise en route.
He has verbatim said, “I have vehicles on the road that were not roadworthy.” – So…that’s an admission of guilt and understanding that what he has been doing is unlawful. The CPN shows reasonability and that he’s not “being picked on”, and saying “other people are doing it” is a classic example of the bandwagon fallacy.
I agree with Stan. He doesn’t have a compelling argument here.
The point he was making was that the council breached a court order by stealing vehicles from his land that he had permission to keep on there, so he’s using this situation to bring it to the public domain that the council aren’t abiding by court judgements themselves!!!!!!
His land ??? with permission from who ???
His land? He doesn’t own it it’s in the street he rents a house and is being evicted Wednesday 😂 he’s got no leg to stand on
Shame the photo is 3years+ out of date, the other residents in that close park on the green more than he ever did, he hasn’t parked on there since September & then it was only one car,
People are more likely to park antisocially, if you don’t enforce it. It fosters the “what about them?” argument, which is fallacious at best. Likewise, if people see they get tickets or towed, they are less likely to do it.
Nonsense. He had 12 to 15 cars on those and surrounding roads and the green. Removal is well overdue.
Stan Reid he has a hard stand at the rear of his property that the council said he could only keep one car on it so he appealed this in court & was granted a court order to keep 4 vehicles on his private property, while he was in America working for the us army the council breached the order & STOLE his vehicles which is contempt of court & when he try’s to get compensation the council say they had the right so he tells them the ceo of the council should be in Holloway prison, if it’s good enough for Tommy Robinson then it’s good enough for council staff that breach court orders
Obviously someone in the systems doesn’t agree with any of that otherwise the case would be rejected, can’t wait to hear the outcome on this one.
Being evicted ??? not HIS property then ??? any court orders are laid against the property owner along the tenant, maybe the property owner has a different point of view to the mechanic that doesn’t fix cars ??? the more I read more silly it all is, working for the “US Army” ??? you mean an agency or contractor that supplies to the procurist unit for the US Military ??? and yes I’ve done service and been employed at many stations around the planet.
Mr Waxy Lemons has never set foot in Holloway as it’s a woman’s prison.
And not only that Ms Gibbons won’t set foot in their either for the simple reason it closed down 10 years ago.
Anyway the green and road aren’t his property so him having cars on them isn’t covered by the court order.
Totally agree. Councils, Government and the Police, all think they are above the law. Sling them all in Jail. Please turn off the lights and throw away the keys! 🤬
Mushrooms for tea? It is this perpetrator who believes he is above the law. The lights don’t seem to glow very brightly either. From what I understand, it is this person who appears to have thrown away the keys, be it to the motors or their house.
Holloway has not been an active prison for a few years. The CEO may enjoy the luxury flats they have become
Maybe the council could be so pro-active over the truly unroadworthy vehicles parked on Carden Hill and Ditching Road and other sites around Brighton. Just burn them.
Not really improving the environment is it? Especially when you put lives in danger and pressure on the emergency services.
How is this an issue but the council allow the C&S vans on Highfields (also in Coldean) to park on the grass, transfer waste between them and leaving the van cage gates open making it hard for other vehicles to get by?
Seems to me to be a real double-standard.
Are these vans there permanently?
Being evicted ??? not HIS property then ??? any court orders are laid against the property owner along the tenant, maybe the property owner has a different point of view to the mechanic that doesn’t fix cars ??? the more I read more silly it all is, working for the “US Army” ??? you mean an agency or contractor that supplies to the procurist unit for the US Military ??? and yes I’ve done service and been employed at many stations around the planet.
If this dude wants to run a business fixing cars ,then let him rent a garage and do it professionally.Theres too many of these idiots thinking they can do what they please in public spaces. Its not on,throw the book at him and fine him the max.
I’f I wasn’t already engaged on the 18th Match I’d be tempted to pop along to watch the case in the court.
Maybe B&H News could do a live blog for the laughs.
He’ll be claiming he’s a “freeman of the land” next.
That’s next on his list, after his granny publishes her book about serving in the SAS,SBS, P Company, WW1, 2nd Boer war with Winston Churchill and Mad Mitch in Yemen.
Here we go again — another fine example of Brighton & Hove’s talent for turning common sense into a legal labyrinth.
A 62-year-old mechanic is told he cannot repair unroadworthy vehicles, then prosecuted because those same vehicles remain unroadworthy and therefore cannot be moved. A perfect Catch-22, dressed up as a Community Protection Notice. Justice by circular logic. The city really is getting out of hand.
If Brighton & Hove is genuinely serious about congestion, space, and “quality of life”, then let’s stop this selective enforcement charade and be honest about it. Introduce a one-car-per-household policy, full stop. While we’re at it, a one-property-per-family/household rule would go a long way towards easing pressure on housing, instead of allowing quiet accumulation while ordinary residents are squeezed out. And if overpopulation and strain on services are the unspoken drivers, then let’s have the courage to say it plainly — even a two-child maximum policy could be debated openly, rather than imposing restrictions by stealth.
Naturally, all of this should be led from the front. Every Brighton & Hove MP, every councillor, every senior council officer and council worker — one car, one property, same rules, no exceptions. If the city wants to model a better, fairer future, leadership should look like leadership, not exemption.
And Coldean? Parking bays and meters should have been installed years ago. It’s 2026. The absence of basic infrastructure speaks volumes when the council somehow has ample resources for enforcement and prosecution instead.
Nobody is arguing against reasonable regulation. What people are sick of is selective policing, bureaucratic traps, and councils that confuse control with competence. When the law makes it illegal to repair a vehicle and illegal to leave it where it stands, that isn’t community protection — it’s administrative absurdity.
Perhaps Mr Mouland is right to want his day in court. At the very least, it may expose a city that increasingly struggles to tell the difference between law, justice, and simple common sense.
That argument, while well-generated, doesn’t hold water. Those vehicles were not on private land, and he is not entitled to the exclusive use of the land. He even admits this in the article, in full knowledge that he has done wrong. Justice, by common sense, means accountability.
There’s no evidence of selective enforcement; that’s pure hallucination. Your broader narrative, tangential about systemic hypocrisy, one-car policies, and councillor privileges, is pure speculation and entirely disconnected from the facts at hand. It’s classic AI rhetorical overreach by dressing up irrelevance as insight. That kind of tangential moralising may sound profound, but it distracts from the straightforward issue.
You don’t get to treat public land as your private garage.
Public land is owned by the public. Roads, greens and public buildings are paid for by the public and held in trust by the state on the public’s behalf. That does not grant any individual an automatic right to exclusive use — but neither does it give public authorities unlimited power to impose irrational or impossible obligations.
Under common law principles, enforcement must be reasonable, proportionate, and capable of compliance. If an order prohibits a person from repairing an unroadworthy vehicle and penalises them for the vehicle remaining unroadworthy and unmoved, that is not enforcement — it is entrapment by regulation.
We are not invoking pseudo-legal “sovereign citizen” theories, which have no standing in UK law. The UK is a sovereign state under parliamentary supremacy, and individuals are subject to law. But sovereignty cuts both ways: public bodies are equally bound by lawful decision-making, rationality, and fairness.
Human rights are legitimately engaged.
Article 6 ECHR guarantees the right to a fair hearing — which is precisely why this matter belongs in open court.
Article 8 ECHR may be engaged where enforcement action disproportionately interferes with a person’s home, livelihood, or private life.
Proportionality remains a core test: was the interference necessary, justified, and the least intrusive option available?
No one is claiming a right to treat public land as a private garage. The issue is whether a public authority can lawfully impose conditions that cannot be complied with, then punish the inevitable breach and call it justice.
Public land is administered for the benefit of all — not as a mechanism for bureaucratic punishment divorced from reality. Accountability must operate within law, not in place of it. That is not avoidance of responsibility; it is the very definition of justice.
Eviction means not his home, private car repairs are NOT his livelihood, just parked where they shouldn’t be, not a business nor business rates applied
Stan has put his finger on the point Milton keeps skating past.
This was not an eviction from a home.
It was not interference with a licensed business.
It was not the loss of a lawful livelihood.
It was the continued storage of unroadworthy vehicles on public land, without permission, after warnings.
You say, “A 62-year-old mechanic is told he cannot repair unroadworthy vehicles, then prosecuted because those same vehicles remain unroadworthy and therefore cannot be moved. A perfect Catch-22”
You have obviously never visited in person to see these cars. Some have been there for ten years. They are beyongld ‘unroadworthy’, they are not repairable; they are simply scrap cars occupying space outside a school, meaning parents struggle to park when picking up and dropping off. These cars are literally on their knees: the owner is a hoarder and has no intention of moving them or repairing them. They aren’t only in these locations, the cars are all over Coldean and Bevendean.
The Council managed to obtain police powers to remove a handful last year, and should continue to pursue this policy until they are all gone.
Ben, accountability only works when the rules themselves are coherent, proportionate, and capable of being complied with in the real world — that’s common law common sense, not rhetorical fog.
Yes, the vehicles were on public land. No one is disputing that. But justice doesn’t stop at ownership of the land; it extends to whether an order creates an impossible position. If someone is prohibited from repairing an unroadworthy vehicle and prohibited from keeping it in situ, the law isn’t enforcing compliance — it’s engineering breach. Courts have long been wary of that, because enforcement must be reasonable, practicable, and non-oppressive.
As for “he admits he’s done wrong” — admitting the physical facts is not the same as conceding legal culpability. People accept circumstances all the time while contesting whether an authority has acted lawfully, proportionately, or with proper discretion. That distinction is foundational to justice.
On selective enforcement: absence of publicly presented evidence does not equal proof of absence. Councils operate by complaint-led enforcement — that’s not controversial, it’s policy reality. When enforcement is reactive rather than systematic, disparity is an inevitable outcome. Pointing that out isn’t hallucination; it’s administrative law 101.
And the so-called “tangential” points aren’t distractions — they’re context. Law doesn’t exist in a vacuum. When councils choose to criminalise low-level conduct while failing to address structural pressures like parking saturation and infrastructure deficits, people are entitled to question priorities. That’s not speculation; that’s democratic scrutiny.
No one is claiming a right to treat public land as a private garage. The argument is simpler and far more grounded: don’t impose legal obligations that cannot be complied with, then call the resulting breach “justice”. Accountability without fairness is just punishment dressed up as order — and courts are usually rather unimpressed by that.
You are still arguing against a fictional constraint set, and this is where your tool is struggling and making mistakes. There was no order prohibiting repair. That is a hallucinated premise that keeps reappearing. The order prohibited keeping unroadworthy vehicles on public land. Full stop. Once that distinction is respected, your claim collapses.
This is a normal, lawful baseline. The fact that compliance would have cost time or money does not make it impossible. Courts do not treat inconvenience, loss of profit, or the need to change working practice as regulatory entrapment. Complaint-led enforcement is lawful. Disparity only becomes legally relevant if there is evidence of arbitrariness, bad faith, or discrimination. None has been shown.
The wider policy commentary is where the argument drifts furthest. Political debates do not suspend compliance with laws relating to his misuse of public land. Courts are very explicit about that separation.
You say no one is claiming a right to treat public land as a private garage, yet every paragraph generated attempts to excuse exactly that outcome by reframing refusal to comply as impossibility.
This case is simple. Shared land cannot be privately appropriated. Repeated non-compliance after warnings invites enforcement.
Identify the contradiction in its actual terms. Show why lawful alternatives were unavailable. If you cannot do either, your argument is rhetorical.
Try telling that to the majority of drivers who tax and MOT their vehicles every year so that they can park legally on our roads.
This man has acted in blatant denial of normal vehicle ownership: it is not right that he has kept cars that are beyond repair stacked outside a school: some raised up with jacks, presenting a danger to passers by.
You should come out of your cosy lawyers’ chambers occasionally and connect with the real misery this man has inflicted on his neighbours for literally decades.
Classless – probably cash jobs and evades Tax but feels hard done by Council .Get a Lock Up – . If my Tottenham Nan was around she,ll say that Romany,s av more Class and self respect …