Mr Mustard doesn't, as usual, know if a Barnet Council employee actually wrote the above Notice of Rejection or if an NSL employee did, although formal representations are meant to at the least be decided upon by an employee of the council.
The part that is not the truth is the statement that you cannot board or alight (on a double yellow line) where loading/unloading is banned (as notified by double marks across the kerb stones). It is true that no loading also means no blue badge parking but this wasn't such a case.
What the car owner told the council was that his wife who was driving and was collecting him and two small children left the car in order to help him because he has a disability. That is perfectly proper behaviour. The rules for loading or unloading are different to those for boarding or alighting.
The council set the rules for each section of road. This is what they say about boarding and alighting.
The passenger was disabled and therefore as long as necessary is allowed for the purpose of boarding.
How do Barnet Council not know about their own Traffic Management Order? They should have known, particularly in this case, as the formal representations included this huge clue
Needless to say an Appeal is now being made to the independent adjudicator at London Tribunals. Costs can be awarded in cases where the council has been wholly unreasonable. The bar is set very high but ignoring the exemption in your own traffic order may well be seen to be.
Thus in this case Mr Mustard comes to the conclusion that ignorance can be no excuse. It looks like a cynical and deliberate refusal to accept the obvious.
Yours frugally
Mr Mustard
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