new NSL appeal strategy - give in (April Fool)

This post was an April Fool, in so far as it is in red type.

Mr Mustard has been making NSL look like fools when it comes to Appeals at PATAS and to PCN in general (for which NSL are the appointed One Barnet parking enforcement contractor of Barnet Council).

In 2013 Mr Mustard handled 102 PCN and 98 of them were cancelled.

So far in 2014 he has 34 cancelled PCN to his name (with 3 people told by Mr Mustard to pay up rather than fight). Of those 34 PCN, 20 have got as far as PATAS and each one costs the council £40 in fees whether they win or lose. So far, in 2014, the council have either lost every case at PATAS or in a few cases thrown in the towel without a hearing. That has cost the council £800 in fees to help run PATAS. They paid £14,400 out in January to run PATAS and want to get this cost back within budget.

A new manager has arrived at NSL and has carefully studied the cases that Mr Mustard has won. He has done a cost benefit analysis of the situation and given that Mr Mustard appeals at most 160 PCN a year out of 165,000, so is only messing up 0.1% of the PCN issued, the new manager has worked out that it is cheaper to let Mr Mustard win every case at the formal appeal stage (the representations that are made in response to the Notice to Owner) as that way the council doesn't lose £40 and doesn't have to spend 2 or 3 hours preparing an Evidence Pack which Mr Mustard then chops into little pieces.

Needless to say NSL were trying to keep this quiet (they haven't even told the council thin client side) but inevitably one of Mr Mustard's moles got to hear of this new policy, which has only come into force today on the start of the new council year, 1 April 2014, and told him. The simple fact is that all you have to do in order to get your PCN cancelled is to add to your representations:

"If my PCN is not cancelled I will be represented at PATAS by Mr Mustard".

To preserve face and to avoid complaint from other lesser known PCN representatives who abound on Pepipoo you also have to put in the other grounds under which you think your PCN should be cancelled (i.e. the sign was facing the wrong way, the lines were faint, you were unloading etc etc) so that NSL can choose one of those grounds and cite some vague processing error and the normal order of things will be preserved. NSL won't officially cancel the ticket just because Mr Mustard beats them hands down every time.

If for some bizarre foolish reason your request for cancellation is not met then do please email mrmustard@zoho.com for advice.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard