Newham in a time warp

Mr Mustard's client woke up on 29 February and decided to be decisive and buy a car that day. He had a van but wanted a car. He started to research on gumtree and found 2 cars he liked. He tried to contact both vendors and went to see one car that on inspection he didn't like and then arranged to see the other one at 2pm in Ilford. He drove there in the van and hung around for half an hour whilst the seller turned up. He agreed to buy the car but didn't yet have insurance so the seller agreed to drive the car home behind him in his van. Once at home a cash payment of £500 was made, a hand written receipt was given and the car was parked on his drive ready for use once taxed and insured. This would have been at about 3pm. There is of course a trail of computer searches and texts which support the facts.

What he didn't know was that the vehicle had received a £130 PCN at 9:47 a.m. that day on Church Road in Newham, an address which he has never been to in his lifetime, for being parked in a residents bay without a permit. He duly wrote to Newham to explain that he didn't own the car at the time of the contravention and this is part of the hideous reply that he received (apologies for the poor quality).

"brought" ?

The log book (= the V5 registration document) never shows the time of the transaction, only the date. The log book shows this

So unless the transaction took place on the stroke of midnight on 28 February, there must have been two owners that day.

He was the owner of the vehicle on the said date but not at the said time. Mr Mustard will be bringing this distinction to the attention of an independent adjudicator as the response shows a failure to properly consider the representations (the law only says they have to consider them but implicit in that is proper consideration). It is a typical way in which Mr Mustard has seen a number of local authorities write and is a deliberate attempt to put motorists off from challenging further and to nudge them to pay up. The council have not directly called the motorist a liar and said he owned the vehicle before 9.47 a.m. but one can presume their lack of belief from the poorly drafted reply.

"Therefore, the PCN remain with you." Words would fail me but they have already failed Newham Council.

Something needs to be done about out of control parking sections of local authorities. Many people would pay up having received a rejection of their representations, especially the elderly or vulnerable, and then justice will not have been done (the tardy lose out as well, this client having contacted Mr Mustard on what he thought was day 28 when he couldn't cope with the tribunal's on line system. Mr Mustard pointed out it was day 27 and popped to see him the next day and did the on line Appeal for him. It will take place in mid June). Having paid, the PCN would be dead and any complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman probably wouldn't get past the first hurdle.

Perhaps we do need a Parking Tsar after all and some method of penalising local authorities who behave like Newham have.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard