Barking Council - wide of the mark

 

Barking & Dagenham Council got the law absolutely wrong in this case. 

They had already rejected a good challenge by the motorist at the PCN stage.

Mr Mustard stepped in at the Notice to Owner stage. He used the council's online system which asks standard irrelevant questions. Whoever sent the rejection did not know what they were doing. Loading/unloading and boarding/alighting are completely different concepts.

The kerb marks would probably have been found to be inadequate as they are not bright and there should be one every 3 metres or so, so that there is always one adjacent to the vehicle. 

Mr Mustard started an Appeal to the independent adjudicators at London Tribunals. Just before the case was due to be heard Barking threw in the towel and cancelled the PCN.

Mr Mustard is concerned that most motorists would believe what a council writes no matter how wrong.

Sadly there is no remedy within legislation which obliged a council which contravenes the Regulations to pay a penalty. There should be in order to improve the quality of processing of representations.

The end. 

Blue badge holders - a source of unfair profit

 

A PCN was issued to a blue badge holder whose time clock was wrongly set to 4 o'clock.

Mr Mustard challenged it on two grounds. The first one was that the wrong contravention had been alleged. He sent the council tribunal decision 2170012879 in support.

The council agreed and cancelled the PCN.

The second ground was based on logic. Blue badge holders can park for up to 3 hours if they display a valid badge and a correctly set clock. Mr Mustard offered up the following second ground:

In his haste Mr Mustard wrote 'badge or no badge' instead of 'clock or no clock'. Mr Mustard thinks that an adjudicator would look kindly on such an argument but hasn't tried it out yet. You are welcome to use it if the situation applies to a PCN that you have.

What would be fair to blue badge holders is to not issue PCNs where it is self evidence that the 3 hours time limit cannot have been exceeded but that would be the council losing revenue and they won't like that.

The end 

Surprise in Southwark

 

The above was the informal challenge which Mr Mustard made for a mate of his who is a plumber and works all over London. Whenever possible he asks the customer to obtain parking rights but sometimes it goes wrong or doesn't happen and a PCN arises. Mr Mustard proceeded on the basis that parking had not been paid for which turned out to be correct and incorrect.

The response from Southwark Council was a surprise. They were completely reasonable.

 

A period of 35 minutes is way beyond what an adjudicator would consider as reasonable for the time taken to pay after parking, with reasonableness usually running out around the 5 minute mark and motorists being found against if they left the vehicle in order to pay, even though they may have been on the hunt for a better phone signal.

It is obviously great to have an easy cancellation but Mr Mustard wonders if the sub-plot is that Southwark Council didn't want a substantive decision against them on the sign?

The end.

Redbridge - from atrocious to merely awful

 

Many councils have padded out their challenge pages with extra advice or information. If it is going to be there at all it should be procedurally fair. The problem is that councils are not independent when giving advice which brings to mind the wise words of Warren Buffett:

'Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut'

The barber has an interest in the answer and the council have an interest in getting you to pay a PCN. I don't think they should give advice in any way, shape or form.

The council should only use the legal term of 'Penalty Charge Notice' = PCN for short. They should not use the phrase 'parking ticket' which is much less used these days and only refers to the PCN placed on your vehicle.

You can challenge a PCN even if you think it is correct, it does not have to be wrong. The PCN contains a promise to consider any representation before the Notice to Owner is issued.

You don't have 28 days from the issue date. For a PCN placed on your car you have 28 days from the date on which a contravention is alleged (usually the date of issue, except at midnight which might be different by a day) starting with that day as day 1 so really only 27 days and for a Notice to Owner you get 28 days from the date of service of the Notice with the date of service being day 1.

The deadlines to pay will only stand still if your challenge is within time.

You can challenge a PCN even if you have missed the statutory deadline. The council has the legal right to 'disregard' (ignore) your challenge but should not have a policy of automatic refusal. The Secretary of State's statutory guidance, to which the council must have due regard, states:

Clearly, Redbridge are not following statutory guidance.

The final line is particularly unhelpful. Sometimes, of course, important letters get lost in the post. There is the opportunity later on to file a Witness Statement (for parking PCNs) or Statutory Declaration (for moving traffic PCNs) which will lead to service on the motorist of a fresh document to replace the one which went missing. By not telling you that Redbridge are making you think there is no hope and that you must therefore pay the PCN. That is unfair.

 

You do not need to have a 'good reason' as what is a good reason in your mind may not be a good one in the council's view. It is a meaningless phrase which does not appear anywhere in statute.

The council mean your challenge could be accepted, not your parking ticket could be accepted.

The 'Do not challenge' section is fettering your right to challenge. A council should not close its mind to future challenge because, for example, the reason you stopped for a few seconds was to unload or let a passenger alight, both of which are exemptions. Redbridge don't mention, for example, that you can be up to 10 minutes late after being legally parked in, say, a pay bay without them being able to issue a PCN. I have had a case whereby a parent couldn't leave the school because tarmac was being laid in the car park and she was unable to leave on foot for a few minutes to reach her car on the public highway, reasons beyond your control are a good reason for a PCN to be cancelled. 'Illegal' parking isn't defined, setting down passengers is allowed other than on school keep clear markings. If you did not see the road signs or markings they may not be adequate.

There should not be a link to pay a parking ticket within the advice about challenging.

I agree with this section which is a statement of the bleeding obvious.

The council are thinking only of themselves. Making it on line is the fastest way for the council to process it as they don't need to do any data entry as you do it for them. They can then also reply by email which is far cheaper for them than a letter. Mr Mustard is going to send more letters in future, he wants the Royal Mail to stay in business.

Those are the longest 48 hours in history, the website said this last week, 96 hours ago or more. Some people are going to miss a deadline because of this (best write in rather than do that).

'Informal' and 'formal' challenges aren't really any different, it is only a matter of timing. You don't need to use any language other than plain English. An informal challenge is also a representation, it is the wording used on the PCN.

The council have carefully not told you that in response to a formal representation for an alleged parking contravention they must serve on you their Notice of Rejection within 56 days of receiving it otherwise they are deemed, by law, to have accepted it. The more people challenge their Notices to Owner the more likely will be that event.

It is best to screenshot your actual challenge, or put it in a pdf which you upload, as the acknowledgment doesn't include the gist of the challenge, only the fact that you have made one. If you challenge by post you wouldn't expect an email but if you use the 'Signed for' service you will have proof it was delivered.

The only time when a council must by law reoffer the discount is when it says it will. That is, for most councils, only on a PCN placed on your car or put in your hand. There is a move away from offering the discount again at a later stage thus forcing you to the tribunal. As you pay the same whether you go there or not and starting an Appeal to London Tribunals is free for the motorist and 99.9% of the time there are no costs there is no point in paying once the discount has gone. (Mr Mustard has just been threatened with a costs application by a different useless council but it is doomed to failure).

The link to an independent tribunal is to a government page containing more than one rather than the specific tribunal which applies so Redbridge could have been much more helpful there.

Redbridge mentioned statutory grounds right at the start. They don't apply until the Notice to Owner stage, before then you can make any challenge that you like. They haven't listed them for you but they are these according to a Redbridge Notice to Owner:

 

Redbridge could further improve their website by removing 99% of this useless page.

The end.

Cloning - the council have to prove it is your vehicle (hint: they can't).

 

Councils, Barnet included, are expected to learn from the decisions of adjudicators and act accordingly. One excellent decision is above.

Their cctv having picked up by ANPR a particular vehicle in an alleged contravention they are entitled to send the registered keeper a PCN (for driving through the bus gate in Netherlands Road and for other alleged contraventions on different days) provided the vehicle is of the same make and colour, details which they should check against the data which DVLA supplies.

Having done that to a client of Mr Mustard, let us call her Alice, she received a PCN for having driven wrongly at 03:31. Much as she might have liked to have been out dancing and on her way home at 3 in the morning, as a single mother she was safely tucked up at home in bed so she could get the kids to school and herself to work the next day. 

Mr Mustard made the formal representations and included additional photographs:

Now any sensible council would look at their own photos and realise the offending car was not the real car and cancel (as Brent & Enfield did, the cloned car being a serial contravener and was also caught speeding and the Met Police accepted the explanation) but Barnet didn't. They rejected the representations for this PCN whilst accepting them for other PCNs of the same time period.

Off Mr Mustard went to the tribunal and his grounds included the following:

The council are also being unsustainably inconsistent in that they have cancelled some of the PCNs but not others.

The question of vehicle identity having been raised the council must now prove that it is Zoe's vehicle in their images, and not a clone, in line with the thrust of the decision in case 2220717836.

The light dawned at Barnet Council HQ and they did not oppose the Appeal but cancelled the PCN.

If your vehicle get's cloned, put unique stickers on it front and rear, take a photograph of it every day wherever it is parked as a PCN might be issued when it was physically impossible to get there, keep your dashcam footage if you have it and be helpful to the council, send them photos of all 4 aspects of the vehicle. 

Also tell them this. The car you have identified is a 'clone', you must prove that it is the vehicle I own, if you have a photograph of the VIN or anything else which proves the car you are seeking to impose a penalty for is mine, please provide it to me as the burden of proof is on the council. The innocent motorist cannot prove a negative, it is impossible.

They will hopefully see the way the wind is blowing and cancel.

The end.

Harrow break the 56 day law

 

This blog relates to Harrow Council. They have made the same mistake as Barnet made back in 2016, here.

The above image displays the grounds on which Mr Mustard started an Appeal to the independent adjudicators at London Tribunals.

Councils get given 56 days to consider and respond to formal representations against a parking Notice to Owner whereas motorists only ever get 28 days to make them and a council really ought to be able to cope, if not they should issue less PCNs.

In addition, given the law sets a deadline to which councils must adhere and of which the average motorist will be ignorant all councils should programme their software in order to stay within the law. Sadly, there is no penalty if a council breaks the law.

In this case within a fortnight of hearing of the Appeal being started Harrow Council threw in the towel. 

The end.