PCNs - exercise of discretion - #16 Havering

Mr Mustard doesn't run into Havering Council very often but is pleased to see they have thought about discretion, written a long policy and published it.

Discretion Policy for the E... by MisterMustard

You have to jump to page 43 for the policies on discretion as what comes before are reasons why a contravention has not occurred.

Havering are more generous in discretion policy MC3 than many other councils in London (and an Adjudicator would probably find against you).

Policy MC12 isn't fair and reasonable. You park and the car behind you bumps you forward partly into the next space. No incontrovertible evidence is available (you don't photograph your car every time you leave it although Mr Musatrd does if the bay has no sign).

MC15/16 & 17 are all examples of the fettering of discretion as Havering will never cancel, that cannot be within the sprit of exercising discretion.

MC27 - Mr Mustard is bemused. The motorist is in jail and the PCN process will just plough on? How is the motorist to visit site to take photographs of something that is wrong with signs or lines.

MC32 is wrong. If you are dropping your 5 year old at school and the nearest you can reasonably park is a double yellow line 400m away then you can leave your car to walk with your child to school, it would be gross neglect to send them on their own.

MC44 is a good thought. Havering Council meaning is if you are following an ambulance to the hospital as it has a member of your family inside, not that you are closely following the ambulance whose blue lights are parting the traffic for you! (don't do that).

On a separate note, pages 89-91 about accepting instalments are interesting. Mr Mustard doesn't think they are entirely fair but this may be an enquiry he makes of every other London Borough one day.

The end.

PCNs - exercise of discretion - #15 Harrow

Harrow Council - they have no policy on exercising discretion. That fits with the behaviour Mr Mustard has seen from Harrow Council - one of the most horrible unforgiving heartless councils in London, in parking, Mr Mustard can't speak about other departments, who may well be lovely

The end.

PCNs - exercise of discretion - #14 Haringey

It was back on 6 October that Mr Mustard asked Harinegy for a copy of their policy.

Mr Mustard thinks that the very near future may have already passed but he hasn't been made aware of any new policy, he did ask to be told an expected date of publication and will now have to nudge Haringey.

PCNs - exercise of discretion - #13 Hammersmith & Fulham

This list is supposed to be of policies setting out when discretion may be applied.

It isn't, it is a list of when contraventions have not occurred, a list of exemptions.

Not only is it the wrong list, it is wrong and incomplete.

For contravention code c02 the section in parentheses (driver not permitted to leave vehicle) ignores the well known and decade old High Court case of Makda -  the same exemption would apply to code c01.

A competent enforcement authority i.e. the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, should know of all parking related High Court decisions and they are generally to be found in the key cases section of the London Tribunals website.

The end.

PCNs - exercise of discretion - #12 Hackney

Hackney didn't do very well in their response, the link they sent does not work

Mr Mustard then worked out for himself, from an FOI response to another member of the public a year ago, where the policies were to be found, on page 76 of the Parking and Enforcement Plan which you can find here.

The policies themselves are not numerous:

The examples of mitigating circumstances are no such thing. They are examples of when a contravention did not occur.

The penultimate paragraph seems to say that the council's policy is not to exercise discretion.

The end.

PCNs - exercise of discretion - #11 Greenwich

As well as their policy on discretion Greenwich kindly supplied other information. Greenwich seem to operate a forgiveness policy for the first common error of its type.

PCNs - exercise of discretion - #2 Barnet

 

Thank you to the officer who sent this to Mr Mustard at 9.51 pm on the long stop day for responding. Surely a response could have been sent on day one or two. Allegedly, there is a policy, just that it would be dynamite in the hands of Mr Mustard and the public at large (except it would make very little difference as Mr Mustard rarely asks for discretion to be applied but hey ho and if he asks a manager directly, discretion is usually applied as the circumstances will have been pretty awful).

Hands up who thinks that Barnet Council are engaged in 'law enforcement'. The issue of parking tickets (PCNs) is a decriminalised regime. The definition does include some regulatory functions, such as the collection of taxes, but doesn't appear to Mr Mustard, at first blush, to include the processing of PCNs.

Now Mr Mustard is a bit concerned that he is only on post #2 out of 33. This will be a pretty dull series if you don't get to see a single policy document. Rest assured you will although even Mr Mustard doesn't yet know which post that will be as he is only looking at the detail of each authority as he reaches their place in the alphabet.

End.

 

The results of the Review have arrived and here they are

(it is possible that it was Mr Mustard to whom the policy was previously received but he can't rememebr everything he has done in the last decade on parking and the comments below suggest it was AS.N.Other).

This is rather embarassing for the council, did they only refuse to answer because Mr Mustard is a blogger. He is trying to find out as requests are meant to be applicant blind.

Barnet PCN Cancellation Policy September 20 by MisterMustard on Scribd

The end, no. 2.

Bromley - where traffic wardens don't think.

 

This Citroen car was ticketed twice in a week when it didn't move. The second PCN is therefore not valid due to there having been only one continuous contravention.

Mr Mustard doesn't know if it was the same traffic warden on both occasions or if two unthinking traffic wardens are employed.

A further oddness in this case is that the Mercedes wasn't ticketed. That fits in with Mr Mustard's hit and run theory. Traffic wardens don't like to be caught in the act so they ticket one car, chosen at random, and then move on so they don't get into conflict with drivers, a conflict which would be justified here as the cars are not in contravention. Do you know why?

If not, best read on.

The blue sign at the top right of the lower picture shows where parking with two wheels on the pavement is not allowed or allowed (reading from left to right).

The snag is that this sign has been turned back to front. It should be facing the carriageway so that drivers can see it on the move and park accordingly. (Individual start and end of pavement parking can be mounted at 90 degrees to the kerb facing traffic so that drivers can easily see them on the move but a pair of signs can't be mounted that way).

The traffic warden should have thought about (checked) the signs before he got his equipment out to issue a PCN (it will be in the contract which Mr Mustard thinks is with APCOA). It is clearly logically wrong if you look at the top picture. Beyond the lamppost is a junction and so to park there at all would be dangerous and a breach of the guidance in the Highway Code which councils are so fond of sanctimoniously quoting at motorists whilst rejecting their PCN representations.

What is more, Bromley Council agree.

The PCNs have got a bit out of hand due to missing paperwork and have reached bailiffs. The motorist in this case has asked his local councillors to help in putting his case to the parking department.

Will the council want to rely on the PCNs, even though they are undoubtedly wrong, thanks to a perceived procedural failure by the motorist or will they do the decent thing and cancel.

They will be squarely in Mr Mustard's sights if they don't cancel out of time.

The end, for now.

Update: 17 December 2021. After some trawling of the internet Mr Mustard found an email address for a manager. he sent a detailed letter making late representations and putting forward reasons why they should be considered and they have been. The manager agreed with Mr Mustard and has cancelled both PCNs and recorded contractual defaults against the contractor.

Barnet Council - Highways - a song and dance act.

 

At a meeting tomorrow evening Barnet council should take another step in the tortuous unwinding of the dreadful 10 year contract that was signed on behalf of us all by councillors who hadn't read much of the detail (possibly even none of it). Barnet bloggers reported on it at the time, recognising a bad bargain from the outset, and Mr Reasonable has been the most thorough long term critic of the stupid bloated expensive deal.

If voting goes the way that Officers (staff) suggest, some services will come back in-house and others will get an extension (another monumentally stupid idea). It is no good just bringing them back and operating them in a Crapita manner, service to the public needs to underpin new methods of working. Here is a terrible example of how tedious it is to deal with Highways.

This is a public announcement. It was a repeat of the same order made in 2019.

Mr Mustard didn't want, in these Covid safe times, to visit an office and be near lots of people, even whilst wearing his mask, so thought he could save time for everyone by asking for a copy of the relevant drawing, which had been around since 2019 when the earlier Order was made and which presumably is electronically filed in an easy to locate system, that being the reason why one files things, so one can find them easily.

It must have been coincidence as Mr Mustard asked for the drawing the day bafore the second Order was published, but it did mean that it should be on top of the paperwork pile at Highways, something current that Mr Mustard was asking for, not an Order which started in the 1970s and was still going, and it would be held in digital form so it would be easy to search for.

It was only 5 days later that a response was received. Here it is

Mr Mustard didn't understand, and he clearly wasn't the only one, why was he being asked to pay £234.96 for a single drawing which should be in the public domain for free? Mr Mustard was obliged to email back.

Three days later, 21 October, the request was acknowledged. It was given a new reference number. Does that start time again so that the previous request can be closed and marked as dealt with in time?

Every email is a drain on the time of Mr Mustard, a commodity which is limited and which he would rather spend on helping people with their PCNs.

All was then quiet until 16 November when this unhelpful email arrived.

What Mr Mustard doesn't understand is why he has to do all of the running, why not simply forward his request to highway.searches rather than make Mr Mustard do it? All of these emails ask for his feedback on the 'service', rating it from 1 to 5, except it doesn't, it uses descriptions not numbers. Mr Mustard duly obliged.

Mr Mustard doesn't want the staff to be his friend, his answer was related to their unhelpfulness. It should also be 'getting in touch'.

Mr Mustard duly did the work of Highways and sent Highways yet another email

Finally, on 19 November, Mr Mustard got what he asked for and an apology.

If this is what happens to a simple request which should have been five minutes work on the day the first request landed, what happens to something complicated?

Clearly, the whole way of working in Highways needs to be carefully looked at. Maybe, in the future, there won't be a reliance on blunt Key Performance Indicators, but on actually serving the public?

Here is the drawing, it was far too late for Mr Mustard to use it in the tribunal about a PCN which was the reason for his request but he won anyway, because the council (NSL probably) had been incompetent in a different way, but that is another story.

The end, thankfully.

PCNs - exercise of discretion - #10 Enfield

Instead of a pure policy only document the exercise of discretion is scattered through this training manual. That is fine as it allows more insight into the way that Enfield think. They haven't caused much annoyance to Mr Mustard in the past and are always quick to answer his questions at managerial level.

That final email address is out of date. It should be tec@justice.gov.uk

Page 15. Mr Mustard thinks that Enfield Council should not place yellow lined disabled bays on the public highway as they aren't valid and that could undermine legitimate bays. This document was written 3 or 4 years ago and so policy may have changed.

There is a decent level of discretion applied for blue badge holders for a first contravention - see page 15.

The going for change policy on page 18 fairly reflects real life but only applies in car parks for some reason. Although some people keep a bag of change in the car you can't always have all the change you need especially given the cost of parking in 2021.

The end.