PCNs should not be more important than everything else in life.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Textile_cone.JPG

The image is of a Cone snail. Slow moving but highly venomous and used here to represent Ealing Council.

Councils all over London now make huge amounts of money from issuing PCNs and they are run as semi-automatic, relentless, unforgiving, money making machines. Humanity, common-sense, proportionality, good manners all often go missing and PCNs take on lives of their own. To council staff and their outsourcing agents they are just numbers on pieces of paper, real lives don't get considered.

Mr Mustard receives requests for help from all corners of London and via various methods; personal recommendation, prior assistance, a chance conversation, via people's work colleagues, because he was on the TV once and as he contributes to web forums. One such case came his way on 12 April when he read of a PCN issued in May 2021 which was still rumbling along. He offered to deal with the matter and was instructed on 13 April. The motorist had kept everything even though they would have been entitled to throw it all in the bin on the grounds that Ealing Council appeared to have abandoned the PCN.

Here is the history.

3 May 21: The driver, let us call them Mrs X, drove past a 'no motor vehicles' sign. Mr Mustard has some arguments about signage but this was one location which Ealing Council has since abandoned, along with many others, because of resident backlash so there hadn't been many tribunal cases to assist Mr Mustard with winning arguments.

19 May 21: A £130 PCN was sent by post but not received.

5 July 21: A Charge Certificate was issued for £195. 

6 July 21: Mrs X wrote in saying she had not received the PCN.

1 December 21: A standard 'you are too late' non-reply was sent along with a number of Frequently Asked Questions and their responses which leaves Mrs X to try and answer her own question. It is lazy and unhelpful. The letter said that if she hadn't paid within 14 days the council would register the PCN as a debt at Northampton County Court. This when they knew that the PCN had not been served so they were taking advantage of Mrs X. Every document is based on the presumption of the previous one having been served, which they knew had not happened.

The year 2022: Nothing at all was received by Mrs X. Any reasonable person would think the matter was at an end. The council are under a duty to act with reasonable expedition. Doing naff all for a year isn't reasonable but to the council a PCN is as good as cash and they want it.

15 February 23: Ealing sent another standard letter which was in similar form to the one of 15 February 23. Again, it said they would register the PCN as a debt debt in 14 days if still unpaid. These letters also mention bailiffs. They do not contain a clear explanation of the Statutory Declaration procedure.

Did Ealing wait 14 days? No.

18 February 23: Ealing Council registered the PCN as a debt. Mrs X asked for help on the PePiPoo web forum

21 February: Mrs X swore a Statutory Declaration at Willesden County Court.

27 February: Northampton County Court, who deal with all PCN debt registrations, rewound the process to the start.

9 March 23: Ealing wrote to Mrs X saying they were going to send a fresh PCN. They couldn't resist poking her in the eye about sending another charge certificate and registering the PCN as a debt at Court if she did nothing. This is outrageous bullying, the lady has not been in a position once to exercise her right to make representations, except out of time which Ealing could have considered but wrongly said they were 'unable' to when they meant 'unwilling' to.

10 March 23: Fresh PCN issued by post.

17 March 23: Mrs X challenges the PCN on the grounds of unreasonable delay on the part of the council and mentions the oft quoted case of Davis v Kensington & Chelsea which adjudicators usually follow the logic of. She wrote that she had no recollection of 3 May 2021 (nor does Mr Mustard as it was the May Day bank holiday. He went for a walk at Ashridge the day before and helped move furniture the day after as they are in his diary, but for that day nothing. Mr Mustard suspects that almost no-one would know what they were doing unless it was a major event).

Note: When a motorist starts quoting previous adjudication decisions at a council that council ought to stop and realise they are facing a motorist who is well informed and likely to take them to the tribunal. Not their way, Ealing Council want the money too much so reject perfectly reasonable representations.

6 April 23: Ealing reject the representations. They waffled on about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (missing the irony that they took most of them out, including this one). They claimed they had to be fair, correct and consistent and cancelling this PCN would set a precedent. That was absolute tosh, each PCN has to be considered on its own merits. Adjudicators are not bound by their previous decisions, let alone councils.

13 April 23: Mrs X instructs Mr Mustard as her representative on the usual basis that eh charges absolutley nothing for his help and if the PCN gets cancelled a donation is made directly to the North London Hospice.

15 April 23: Mr Mustard started the Appeal to the independent adjudicator. Here are the simple grounds he started with:

Ealing Council have now incurred the £25 tribunal fee.

18 April 23: The tribunal register the Appeal and notify Ealing Council.

20 April 23: Ealing Council throw in the towel and cancel the PCN. 

Even in their response they have to poke Mrs X in the eye twice more, once about it being a contravention (that has not been tested, it was still an alleged contravention if an adjudicator had not considered it) and secondly that a two year delay didn't set a precedent for cancellation for any similar or additional PCNs. (Ealing have Mrs X's vehicle registration and so know if there are any more PCNs. They know full well that any other moribund PCNs are more likely than not going to be expunged by an independent adjudicator).

22 April 23: Mrs X was delighted with the outcome. Her daughter had been helping her and this is what she emailed to Mr Mustard.

Mr Mustard is always pleased when the people he has helped make donations to the Hospice and/or to PePiPoo in grateful thanks and that is all the reward he needs.

Council staff need to think a bit harder about what they are doing to people. If they had to sit at a desk opposite people, real human beings, and tell them that their representations, perfectly reasonable ones, ones with track records of success, were being refused they would struggle to do it and the miserable, mercenary, monstrous, machiavellian maladministration which the general public currently has to endure, would abate.

Think about it council parking staff, you are dealing with real people. You may behave like automatons but you are affecting real lives.

The end.