Honesty and parking - words rarely seen in the same sentence.

 

Puller Road in Chipping Barnet is old. The cottages on the right date from 1869 when the horse and cart were transport of the day. You can find old photographs of Barnet here.

Mr Mustard has worked in High / Chipping Barnet since 1987 and his time here pre-dates the controlled parking restrictions in the town. He knows that 'traffic wardens' have a list of locations in which they do not issue PCNs for parking partially on the foot way / pavement. Mr Mustard is certain that Puller Road, Clifford Road and Sebright Road are such locations due to how narrow they are.

Needless to say a resident of Puller Road received a PCN.

Here is the alleged contravention (from the Notice to Owner)

The challenge to the PCN was duly submitted

A bang on correct challenge. Yes, it was rejected and in as sanctimonious a manner as is usual:

Supported and advised by Mr Mustard and other experts on PePiPoo the resident stood firm and waited for the Notice to Owner.

Once it arrived the formal representations were submitted by Mr Mustard:

Later on Mr Mustard realised that he had only seen the data for 3 months but the lack of PCNs for pavement parking was still evident, that manner of parking clearly being tolerated. Not though, according to the council, in their parallel universe:

Mr Mustard had an ace card up his sleeve and therefore an Appeal was started at the tribunal, the home of the independent Environment and Traffic Adjudicator. Pretty quickly the council decided to to do not contest the Appeal and the PCN was cancelled (after refusing to do so twice previously). What was it that caused a change of heart? Being right royally caught out, that is what. This document, obtained using Freedom of Information legislation ran a coach and horses through the council's rejections.

This response should be on the council website of FOI responses but isn't, goodness knows why, perhaps because it will cost them money if the public know the truth?

What you can glean from this blog post is that if the council think you don't know what they are up to they will happily feed you a load of old baloney in order to collect the money for an invalid PCN.

Don't just meekly pay PCNs, consult Mr Mustard by email at mrmustard@zoho.com and instead of giving your money to the council for nothing at all you can donate some to the North London Hospice for Mr Mustard's help when he gets the council off your back. Win, win.

End.