PATAS - Notice of Appeal - simples

ignore the redacted details on the right

OK folks, time for a quick lesson in completing a PATAS form.

Boxes 1.&2. You all know your name and address. This is always the person (or company) named in the vehicle registration document.

If you put a contact telephone number on the form and your personal Appeal hearing doesn't go ahead on the day, perhaps because the council/NSL give in at the last minute, someone from PATAS will phone you to save you a journey. Although the decisions of adjudicators can appear to be, and sometimes are, inconsistent when it comes to administration Mr Mustard has found PATAS to be very efficient.

If you have Mr Mustard representing you then you will know his real address to put here. If the council send the Evidence Pack to you instead of to Mr Mustard (or whoever else represents you) that is a procedural impropriety. You can quote PATAS case 2130093365 in support (not a precedent but should be persuasive).

3. Mr Mustard prefers personal hearings as that way he can take the adjudicator straight to his main argument and possibly have the case over in 2 minutes. If you don't want to go to PATAS at the Angel, Islington (it is within 50m of the tube station) then tick the Postal decision box and then you don't need to tick any times and days below. There are evening hearings on a Thursday, although not very late, and hearings on a Saturday. Mr Mustard just happens to always go on his notional day off from his day job, which is a Wednesday and is a half day at PATAS so quite quiet (35 appeals the last time he was there).

4. Choose your Grounds of Appeal to tick but don't waste time worrying about the grounds as these are only for statistical purposes as far as Mr Mustard can tell. It is usually a waste of time to tick the "Traffic Order is Invalid" box as they have to be challenged in Court within 6 weeks of being made.

If your PCN came though the post because you drove away before the traffic warden finished it you did not prevent the PCN from being issued, some physical restraint is required for that so you can tick that box on the right "The Civil Enforcement Officer was not prevented..."

Most of the time ticking the first box will do "The contravention did not occur".

Box 5. As the adjudicator will be sent copies of all of your correspondence (and it is a procedural impropriety if the council do not put it all in the evidence pack later on) you can simply rely on what you have already written and leave this box blank.

If the Notice of Rejection of Representations makes you notice other grounds, usually that your most recent letter has not been properly considered and/or answered, then you could write that in the box. Mr Mustard usually has so much to say at this point that he types it up so it is easier for the adjudicator to read.

You will get a few days to study the Evidence Pack before the hearing and email PATAS with any extra arguments you wish to make at that juncture.

You must sign the form otherwise you will be sent a letter to sign to confirm your Appeal is to be registered. Mr Mustard ticks the boxes below and only once has he sent a form in late. It is best to do this on time as you'll need a really good reason like a month in hospital to be allowed to be late.

So you can see this is a 5 minute job which will cost you 60p for a stamp and which might save you £60 or £110. If you have already received the Notice to Owner it would be silly not to stake 60p for a possible saving of £60 or £110.

The hearing will not take place for at least a month after you file the form and the council get the chance to give in without a hearing which they do quite often (Mr Mustard filed 3 forms recently and the council/NSL immediately gave in on 2 of them which was wise.) The chances of them giving in on your case are about 1 in 4 or 5. The harder and longer you make your appeal points the more likely the council are to give in.

Similarly, the more Appeals that are filed at PATAS the more that NSL will struggle with the volume and give in so fill that form in now (please).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet cases were 7% of Appeals to PATAS last week

PATAS	Barnet	Londonwide
	Appeals	Appeals	%
Mon	21	272	8
Tues	18	307	6
Weds	21	234	9
Thurs	23	245	9
Fri	17	317	5
Sat	-	-
Total	100	1,375	7
PCN issued	Barnet	London	%
Year to March 13	165,569	4,283,964	4

Slightly down on the 8% of the two previous weeks the number of Appeals to PATAS show no sign of abating at 7% of all Appeals based on having issued 4% of the PCN in London.

How long before we have a week when Appeals against Barnet Council PCN make up 10% of Appeals?

Come on folks, Mr Mustard knows you can do it.

Don't meekly roll over and pay. Make the council fight for the money. They'll only waste it, you can do that just as well yourselves.

CPZ permit reminders

Mr Mustard is not convinced that permit reminders are going out and this is leading to extra PCNs. Stop what you are doing, oh reading this blog, and pop to your car and check the date now. You can pay for and print out a permit online if you have the internet at home (or at the library).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Message for Brian Coleman from the real world

Here is a recent report from PATAS.

The Appellant attended in person together with a witness Mr B. Also in attendance was Ms. S, a BSL/English interpreter who interpreted for the Appellant and Mr B. The Authority did not attend and it was not represented.

The Appellant showed me her mobile phone which showed that on 28 October 2013, at around 11:59, she sought to register for payment by text. She received a text to say that she should send register by calling, going on line, or by texting her registration number to 65565. The Appellant used text. The next thing that happened was that a call was received. The Appellant has recorded an incomplete number +44330400.... The Appellant presumed that this was from Pay by Phone but as she could not conduct a transaction by phone she went to seek help and the PCN was issued during that time.

The Authority said that payment being made by text would never trigger a voice call. It drew my attention to the published pay by phone document. The Appellant did not say that she started to pay by text, nor had I suggested that she said that. I told the Authority that the Appellant said that she was trying to register by text so that she could make a payment by text. There is no information from the Pay and phone document to confirm that no voice calls would be sent under these circumstances, and the evidence tended to suggest that a voice call from a pay by phone number was registered on the Appellant's phone.

The Authority re-iterated that the Appellant should not have left her vehicle until she got a confirmation message. The Appellant and Mr B. cannot communicate by voice. They must therefore seek help if a voice call reaches her phone and that was what she did.

The Authority had taken the trouble to understand what I tried to ascertain from them. I am giving the Appellant the benefit of the doubt. I am allowing the appeal.

What a catalogue of errors.

Error 1 - removing cash parking meters

Brian's decision (Mr Mustard may refer to Councillor Brian Coleman as Brian but has never been introduced, oh how you now envy Mr Mustard!, but has merely nodded at him once when he was also in the public gallery at a committee meeting and some problem with parking got a mention, and he has of course seen the back of him, the one thing everyone wants? through the glass of the public gallery at Uxbridge Magistrates Court) to remove cash parking meters has evidently caused problems for the deaf. What Brian did was to make a decision that put administrative simplicity and expense before the needs of some of the disadvantaged in society, whose real world is much harder to cope with than his.

Error 2 - over zealous enforcement

If there was a longer period of observation (it doesn't have to be continuous, the traffic warden jots your details down and comes back later), of say 15 minutes, then the time it takes for anyone to go to a Paypoint shop (Mr Mustard was 6th in the queue at one in N Finchley this weekend and the first person seemed to be buying 1000 lottery tickets) or to a trader for a voucher or to find someone to help a deaf person, would reduce the number of tickets given out during the time it sometimes takes to pay or to get a visitor voucher from a resident.

Error 3 - NSL handling appeals badly

NSL have evidently failed to consider whether the motorist was actually deaf or not (and for PATAS it was easier because the deaf lady chose to attend in person) and they probably distrust ever letter they receive and, if so, are not properly considering representations as the legislation requires. They have relied upon a printed guide to PayByPhone which motorists don't carry about with them. NSL keep putting 50 page prints of the guide (android and iphone) into Evidence Packs they send to Mr Mustard which part he throws straight into the recycling because they are an irrelevance. They also signally failed to answer the actual question that the Adjudicator, always a lawyer who has done thousands of parking tickets Appeals, asked them. A schoolboy error.

It would be hard to find a worse combination than One Barnet outsourcing and Brian's historic unilateral money centred decision making.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Golden Bull Awards - NSL nominated

Plain English Campaign

It was back in March 2011 that Mr Mustard suggested to Barnet Council that they use Plain English in everything they do, he having ploughed through one tortuous committee report too many. This is the reply he received on 23 July 2011:

Apologies for the lack of a response, not least as I am broadly supportive of your suggestion.

I have discussed this matter with the Leader of the Council and intend to bring forward proposals as to how the Council will work to meet Plain English standards.

I note there is a cost of becoming a corporate member of the Plain English campaign and the Council will therefore need to consider the most cost effective way of achieving the standard.

Which Mr Mustard rightly guessed meant:

"Here, have a reply although we aren't going to do anything"

as nothing has happened since. Mr Mustard did respond at the time saying that the money saved in paper alone by writing more concise reports would fund the annual fee but that email hasn't been responded to yet (give it time, it is only 2 and a half years old).

Clearly NSL don't subscribe to the campaign on their own account as here is one paragraph he has received in a Notice of Rejection of Representations:

"You in your correspondence that paragraph sent to you were not correct. However, I can confirm the paragraph sent to you regarding the above contravention is correct."

Can anyone enlighten Mr Mustard as to what NSL are trying to say?

That wasn't the only error in the letter. NSL, on behalf of the council, wrote that due to the Data Protection Act of 1998 they could only reply to the registered keeper and this is in a letter they wrote to Mr Mustard who isn't the registered keeper. They do, however, have the right to write to him because he has supplied a signed authority from the registered keeper, as he always does. The Data Protection Act is probably the most misunderstood law in England. Here is another cracking line with punctuation that may make you weep:

You also, mentioned that the signage at the location does not state a time and that the Traffic Management Order, do not agree. I will state the signage meets the regulations set out under the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directives* 2002. (TSRGD)

Mr Mustard never said the sign doesn't meet the TSRGD. He wrote:

The restricted hours of the Residents Bays in Redacted Rd are 8am to 6.30pm. The sign bears no times so is to be read as a 24 hour restriction. Thus the time plate and the Traffic Management Order ("TMO") do not agree and the alleged contravention is not enforceable. If you wish to maintain that the bays are 24 hour bays please provide the TMO with your Notice of Rejection.

Needless to say the TMO was not provided and a different question was answered (a common ploy that doesn't work on Mr Mustard) and in fact answering a different question to the one asked has been found at PATAS to be a failure to properly consider representations and led to the PCN being cancelled.

Now the council have a duty to properly consider representations made as to why a particular parking ticket should be cancelled. Given the nonsense of their reply Mr Mustard will be completing the PATAS form later today, which will cost the council a £40 non-refundable PATAS fee, and Mr Mustard can't see himself losing at PATAS on this case. He is on 15 wins out of 15 appearances so far in 2014 and it is often the parlous performance of NSL that causes the council to lose.

This is one of the troubles with the One Barnet outsourcing, and this parking enforcement contract was one of the first such contracts, that you have to trust the abilities of the contractor, who might not turn out to be all they were cracked up to be (by themselves, natch) and who cannot properly be supervised when they are in, say, Croydon and the thin client side are in Barnet. So it is the council's reputation that suffers, and one day councillors will wake up and realise it and negotiate their way out of the NSL contract (which otherwise will run until 30 April 2017). It also shows the danger of thin client sides; they need to be beefier and then some cost savings go out of the window and mean that outsourcing perhaps couldn't be justified in the first place.

Have you got any nonsense letters from the council? Do send them to Mr Mustard or to the Plain English Campaign

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

* - should read directions not directives.

Friday 7 March at 10.42 

As ever Mr Mustard brought this NSL issued letter directly to the attention of the parking client side with whom he has a good relationship as they realise that he helps them do their job better. They are as unimpressed as Mr Mustard was with NSL and will be discussing the letter with them. Oh to be a fly on the wall.

Update Monday 10 March 14.

The PCN has been cancelled by a parking manager who is directly employed by the council.