Hell's Belz in Hackney

The double kerb marks are more prominent now

Mr & Mrs Smith (not their real name) have a young child who goes to nursery in Belz Terrace on Clapton Common. Civil enforcement officers ('traffic wardens') seem to target Belz Terrace at nursery drop off times. Thus it was that a few months ago Mr Smith was driving the family car, registered to Mrs Smith, and during the nursery drop off a PCN was issued. This is fair enough, that a PCN is issued, as it takes a few minutes to walk your child to the nursery, go in and formally hand them over to a member of staff and sign the register, and the traffic warden doesn't know where you are. All they see is a car on double yellows. Perhaps parents should have a small laminated card including the nursery logo to put in the windscreen which says 'Boarding or alighting' just as delivery drivers sometimes have ones that say 'loading'.

What you do expect, or hope for, is that Hackney Council will, when presented with relevant evidence, cancel the PCN without ado if shown adequate evidence.

Mr Mustard challenged the PCN during the 14 day discount period although he wasn't fretting about discount, he would have taken the PCN all the way to the tribunal.

The online representation system didn't offer boarding and alighting but did offer loading and unloading so Mr Mustard chose that as the nearest option and pointed out the lack of choice.

He kept the challenge simple 'The x year old child Jim Smith was being alighted to the Adjacent Nursey. This is an exemption. Please cancel the PCN.' The nursery contract was attached.

Ten days later a rejection was received. The substance follows:

There was nothing careful about Hackney's consideration. No mitigation was advanced so there was none to consider so clearly this was a template response and the council diddn't consider the evidence even though that is their exact duty. A representation isn't a comment, which would be something like 'ooh, that blue dress suits you' which clearly he didn't write. Councils are easily satisfied in their own favour.

At this point he decided to step outside of the formal process which required him to patiently sit and wait for a Notice to Owner and instead to make a complaint, which he did on 7 February.

Just before that complaint a second PCN had been issued and thus it was that 2 days after the complaint Mr Mustard found himself challenging a second PCN issued at the same location in the same circumstances. He expanded upon the challenge to make it idiot proof (it wasn't).

The response really wasn't very good.

Before Mr Mustard could do anything another email popped into his inbox, just one second later!

The next day an explanation arrived in response to Mr Mustard's complaint.

Whilst pleased with the honest admission of error Mr Mustard was concerned about the public in general and so he asked about other possible errors:

The staff at Hackney are getting used to Mr Mustard and so they know it is best to reply as Mr Mustard will see things through.

As one can't force a parking department do the right thing, as they are generally self policing, so Mr Mustard went outside their world and asked the chief auditor to consider having a look. At that point he stopped chasing as audit programmes have to be planned in advance and he had put the germ of an idea there which may bring fruit in the future. That was all he could reasonably do.

If Hackney Council write the same load of old toffee to you do please ask Mr Mustard to act for you.

The end, for now.

Having completed the blog Mr Mustard went to shred the file and found a third PCN he had forgotten about. It was raised just before his email to the Auditor and it should have led Mr Mustard to point out further errors. Here is the gist of the third rejection, written by a third council employee, who also needs retraining as it contains different errors.

Error 1: The yellow stripes on the kerb signify a ban on loading, not on parking (waiting).

Error 2: You do not have to stay with your vehicle, you cannot ask your toddler to cross the road and walk to the nursery on their own. This question was considered by the High Court in the case of Makda, a taxi driver who went looking for his passenger.

Error 3: Never mind 'future contraventions' there hasn't been a contravention.

The end, until Hackney Council issue yet another PCN.