Seeing red in Hillingdon

Mr Mustard's client, let us call her Innocence (not her real name) made a small error in Hillingdon in the early hours of the morning. Hillingdon Council pounced on her but for an error she didn't make. She did overshoot the stop line at the traffic lights but did not stop in a yellow box due to the presence of a stationary vehicle. The police could have sent her a Notice of Intended Prosecution but they didn't, those lights may not have a police camera, only a council one. Mr Mustard can't share the video on the blog as he doesn't want to release the registration number so has extracted and redacted the still images which tell the story.

Here is the car about to pass the stop line with the lights on red.

Next, the car having entered the junction with the lights on red and the brake lights are on.

Innocence reverses back.

She finds the lights are green so moves forward again and exits the box in one movement.

The next event is the arrival of a PCN.

 

The rules for a box junction are patently clear. It is only a contravention if  a vehicle has to stop due to the presence of stationary vehicles (which is read as including a single vehicle).

Clearly, patently, obviously to all the world, this, whilst a slightly sub-standard piece of driving, is not a contravention within the letter of the law.

Mr Mustard made the representation. Hillingdon Council's on line 'smarti' system is being used dumbly, it offers the wrong selection of grounds on which one may make representations. This is enough alone to win on at the tribunal.

Mr Mustard happily selected the wrong ground. The way these systems work is that the ground you choose then pre-determines the template letter which will form the base of the response so Mr Mustard messes with the system by often choosing the wrong one, or none at all, and then adding a document which has to be individually considered.

The response was utterly wrong.

The vehicle was permitted to stop as there wasn't a vehicle in front of it which had stopped.

Mitigation was not put forward. A full on challenge was made that there was no contravention.

The CCTV evidence shows the exit was clear at the moment of entry and for the entire period the car was within the junction. The exit space was 100% clear. There was no vehicle in front, except perhaps half a mile away.

The word 'obstruction' in this regard does not appear in the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 - Hillingdon Council are well out of date. A contravention has not been committed.

Mr Mustard's representation having been summarily and wrongly dismissed in five days it was only two days later, as soon as the Notice of Rejection arrived with Mr Mustard, that Mr Mustard started an Appeal on line to the independent adjudicator at London Councils. He was supremely confident of success. Hillingdon let most of the month pass in the run up to the hearing without doing anything and then with a week to go they DNC'd the case. DNC is shorthand for notifying the tribunal that they 'Do not Contest' the Appeal. They didn't give a reason but perhaps it was that they were 100% in the wrong and were going to read about their shortcomings in a public register. Instead they can read them here.

Had this vehicle been leased the lease company might have paid it and charged an administration fee for so doing. That is a good reason to not lease a car but to take out a normal loan with which to buy your car outright.

Councils don't think about people, they think about money from this source. Innocence's life is tough enough already. Cancer and radiotherapy have caused her to lose 40% of her body weight. Think about that Hillingdon Council when you send bogus demands for £130 and then don't see sense when your wrongdoing is pointed out to you.

Faceless, ignorant and stupid is the restrained description of your behaviour.

The end.