Haringey Council - verification code error

If you receive a PCN which you contest with the council you will, perhaps after 2 challenges but sometimes only one is necessary, it all depends upon the legislative process, receive a Notice of Rejection. That opens the door for a period of 28 days to a hearing with an independent adjudicator at London Tribunals.

Here is the rejection of the first challenge, known as the informal one, made in response to a PCN placed on a car.

Time moved on and then, more than 56 days after the formal representations were made, the formal Notice of Rejection was issued.(That itself was a blunder as for parking PCNs the Notice of Rejection must be served within 56 days so Mr Mustard was always going to win at the tribunal, Haringey threw the towel in the day before the hearing).

The verification code is, at least for the first 3 digits, easy to decipher. To get the first two digits simply deduct the date of the month from 100, so a letter of 2 May gives the number 98. The third digit is the number of the month of the year rendered as the corresponding letter of the alphabet if A = 1 and B = 2 , so in this case the code should have been 98E??? not 76L112.

Naturally the London Tribunals computer knows that 76L112 is an out of date code so it lets you enter the details of your Appeal but doesn't count it as a valid Appeal, it has to be checked with the council for validity. 

Given that you cannot phone Haringey Council parking department you can't fix this problem easily with a 2 minute phone call. You have to phone the tribunal who won't generally take your word for it but will instead contact Haringey Council.

Mr Mustard wouldn't have written about this, thinking it was a one off error but a second wrong code has landed in his inbox (despite not fighting many Haringey PCNs or at all at the moment due to cycling 50% of the time) and so Mr Mustard thinks there is a systemic error that the public need to know about.

You have already worked out that the code should have started with 83E and that 88C will be rejecting as appearing to be a Notice from 12 March 22 and the 28 days in which to Appeal would be long gone.

If you have such a problem please email mrmustard@zoho.com

To get around the problem if you are in receipt of a printed Notice of Appeal form you can post it to the Nottingham address and include a copy of the Notice of Rejection and point out the verification code error.

End.