5 November 2015

e-permits now available but only if your property still exists

Today, coincidentally, two local people saw Mr Mustard to tell him they couldn't buy an e-permit because their properties did not exist. One had, after a 30 minute wait, spoken to Crapita who said they would quickly fix the problem but that was 5 days ago and the permit had somehow expired 3 weeks ago so this was urgent.

Mr Mustard was engaged on paid work today, as he has a client meeting tomorrow, and so it was only late in the day that he realised what had happened. He put EN5 4LX into the permit application form (both the street name and the postcode are mandatory information which is poor as the latter usually dictates the former) and this is the top part of the selection offered to him:

The problem was instantly apparent; numbers 4, 6 & 8 are on the other side of the road and have a different postcode, being EN4 4LU, so Mr Mustard's neighbour can now sort his problem out as it doesn't matter what the postcode is as nothing is being posted to you (except maybe a reminder if you are lucky in a year's time) and it would probably still arrive as Carnarvon Rd has diligent postmen.

If you can't find your property, use other local postcodes which you can find here.

This database is not as simple as you think as only 1 in 10 properties qualifies for a residents permit and not necessarily every property in any one road. Someone is going to have to check many thousands of addresses. It will probably be possible to compare the postcode of qualifying permit address against the PAF (postcode address file) and amend the errors that way.

Mr Mustard wonders if Crapita have worked out what the problem is, what with them being in Coventry, and not having true local knowledge of Barnet.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

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