Harrow Council - band of thieves

Harrow Council are hedging their bets. They are going to apply to London Councils to change from band B (outer London rates) to band A (inner London rates) but if London Councils own attempt to increase the value of all PCNs is successful they won't do it (for now anyway). Their website had a explanation from which Mr Mustard has extracted the most relevant parts.

 

Mr Mustard completed the survey. Questions 1 & 2 were about who he was and the postcode of his home.

Question 9 was how Mr Mustard had heard about the survey and Q10 as to whether or not he had completed the London Councils' survey.

Mr Mustard thought that this was the least useful survey he had completed for some time. (Please ignore the spelling errors in his responses, you get the gist).

Mr Mustard was also unimpressed with the FAQs which the public were intended to read and digest before answering the survey itself. Mr Mustard decided to ask some more penetrating questions and today he received the responses which are now followed by his commentary. Feel free to add your own at the end.

 

The only factor considered before bringing forward the survey (it can't count for anything before it has taken place!) is the bare number of PCNs issued. That is unconvincing as a justification.

 

The bare numbers of PCNs issued do not show a direct relationship between value and the number of PCNs issued. If there was such a direct relationship the numbers would surely be more or less constant?

 

There is your proof. If you don't know in advance what a PCN will cost you how can your behaviour be affected by not knowing? (it can be £60 or £80, £110 or £130).

 

Mr Mustard has the data as it is published by London Councils each year. 

In the year ended 31 March 2013, Waltham Forest issued 70,623 PCNs. 

On 1 April 2013 they increased the penalty levels by £20 per PCN. 

In the year to 31 March 2014 WF issued 69,082 PCNs a decrease of just 2.2% which Mr Mustard would suggest is not statistically significant (and isn't 3.3% which wasn't material either).

Oh dear, Harrow failed to notice, or chose not to notice, that in the year ended 31 March 2016, WF issued 88,767 PCNs, an increase on the base year of 2013 of 25.7%. The price increase was a disaster, it didn't work, clearly. Mr Mustard recalls from his secondary school days his maths text book which had a chapter  headed 'Lies, damn lies and statistics'. He didn't understand the heading back then but he sure does now.

 

Harrow were being wilfully blind in not taking a wider view of the PCN statistics of the last 20 years which are freely available to the public. They have cherry picked a small but convenient fall. They know nothing about the true experience in Waltham Forest.

 

No it isn't, it is a question of what you, Harrow Council, know about why the numbers of PCNs issued by WF have gone down slightly in one convenient year and shot up rapidly in four subsequent years.

 

Again Mr Mustard was asking what information Harrow Council held, clearly none at all.

Perhaps the time has come for an undergraduate or a professor of statistics to study this topic.

What is clear to Mr Mustard is that any report presented to councillors, which probably won't contain much more useful information than has already been given to the public, won't really contain a proper basis for an informed decision to proceed with the re-banding.

Mr Mustard doesn't know how Harrow Council works and isn't a resident of Harrow so doubtless has limited hearing rights at any council meeting, but you the reader can play your part.

Please ask the hard questions, complain if you don't like the answers and go to any relevant council meeting and have your say.

This survey is just laying the ground for revenue raising.

The end.