Hackney Council boxing themselves in

Mr Mustard's attention was drawn to a decision of the independent adjudicator at London Tribunals when they ruled on a PCN issued to Hackney Council by Transport for London, so on a red route road. He can't believe he hasn't told you about this case before so if he has, sorry, and if he hasn't enjoy, it is a corker.

This is a quite short yellow box which even a not very competent driver ought to be able to avoid and the contravention occurred during the hours of daylight so no excuse there.

The corker of an excuse is that the council which employed the hapless driver had introduced 'traffic management measures' for which read low traffic neighbourhoods which stop alternative routes through residential areas or streets with schools in and make the traffic follow main roads until the final part of their journey. As the adjudicator notes Hackney Council were robustly defending these, Hackney's LTNs were the subject of judicial review, which they won in September 2021.

Attachments greater than 10mb get stripped off emails sent to the tribunal (Mr Mustard thought that no attachments could be added so he always inserts images into emails in line but has been corrected and so now does send small attachments).

Mr Mustard also happened to look at the whatdotheyknow website and found this disclosure, one that shows that Hackney Council didn't educate its own drivers very well about LTNs.

These 39 PCNs were a monumental waste of time as the money goes from the left trouser pocket of the council to the right hand one. As a moving traffic PCN is for £130 and can be paid promptly at £65 the council could or should have collected £2,535 from itself, perhaps some recipients fought the council i.e. the council was in both the blue and the red corner, and knocked itself out.

 

Sometimes one council penalises a different one. In this case a different Hackney council vehicle driver got caught in Waltham Forest, Hackney lost. The excuse was equally risible, the box wasn't 'necessary' and was counter-productive - to what wasn't argued.

Hackney did better against TfL on the next occasion because they were cleaning graffiti. It is a bit rich of an enforcement authority (TfL) to ask for evidence of something and then say they won't take account of it, why waste everyone's time?

End.