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.