Barnet Council - PPPPPPP

 

Mr Mustard is looking at a Notice to Owner dated 22 October 25 from which the above extract tells you the process you must follow for the vital challenge/representation if you wish to fight the PCN. You cannot legally make a valid challenge unless you follow the process which the council has defined.

Enforcement has been largely contracted out for many years and the contractor changed from NSL to APCOA on 1 November 2025.

Thus the PCN underlying the Notice to Owner issued by NSL will henceforth be processed by APCOA, both of whom are the servants of Barnet Council. Before Mr Mustard gets into the pig's breakfast of the handover let's see how long the staff have had to plan a seamless as possible changeover:

To start with just let your mind boggle at contract value. So that is £5m a year of PCN income which goes to pay the contractor (and this isn't the only contract, just the largest value one). If you pay a £160 PCN promptly you get a discount of 50% so pay £80. This means that up to the first 71,444 PCN each year go just to pay the contractor. Is it any wonder that CEOs (traffic wardens) are sent out to issue PCNs like drunken sailors and that the number of cameras monitoring moving traffic locations have proliferated.

Whilst digressing here is the value of the moving traffic cctv system contract:

  

The report tells you later on that Marston now own both Videalert who installed the cameras and NSL who provide back office processing so NSL haven't lost all of their lovely income stream from Barnet. Marston are also providers of bailiff services and we'll have to wait and see who now gets instructed on behalf of the council.

 

So that is another £2m a year of administrative cost which is equal to 25,000 PCNs at 50%. Got to keep on churning them out.

 

Back to the main topic, the problem that motorists now face in making representations and this blog has come about because of the problems which Mr Mustard discovered when he went online to challenge the PCN in this case.

 

Option 1 - Write

 

The current address in Sheffield isn't a council address. It is the address of a contractor who scans letters received and (it is presumed) inputs them directly into the council PCN processing software. That contractor has changed.

 

Having made an enquiry of management Mr Mustard has been told the following:

I would ask that you refrain from advising your readers writing to our old postal address in Sheffield, although we have activated the postal forwarding service for the next few months.

Everyone knows how hit and miss the mail forwarding system is and how it introduces delay into the system. Better options were available which include putting the new PO Box address on Notices to Owner from mid-September or providing both the old and new addresses stating which is to be used when or paying the contractor to forward all mail received by next day delivery service in bulk to the new address for 3 months.

 

The new address to use is:

Barnet Parking Services 

PO Box 5772

DINGWALL

IV15 0BD

NSL have a contact centre in Dingwall which may turn out to be the provider of a scanning service for Barnet Council but might not. Mr Mustard will have to enquire.

 

Always send letters using the 'signed for' service as a lost item of mail only hurts the sender not the council who will blindly plough on. 

It is a long way away being north of Inverness so post will likely be slower than to a Barnet address. Mr Mustard cycled through it on his way to John O'Groats and had his first ever Macaroni Pie there which helped him up the huge climb out of the town.

The council don't want you to use the postal system as it is easier, quicker and cheaper for them if you use the online portal as that fires your challenge straight onto your file.

 

2    - Online portal 

There is a page redirect for www.barnet.gov.uk which takes you to the page below, even though that isn't where you want to go. 

 

 

 

You wanted to make a representation, not a payment, that is an unfair nudge from the council.

 

There is a link on the right of the page to do what you want to but you shouldn't have to take a second action to get there and hopefully the current pages are not the final ones as they are not slick. The photos from the old system don't seem to have migrated to the new one yet.

 

Once you do find the correct page, this is what you are faced with:

 

You need a web code in order to proceed. You search your Notice to Owner, read all four pages, minutes of your life are ticking away, and guess what, there isn't a web code on Notices to Owner issued before 1 November 2025.

 

Mr Mustard will now tell you how to get one as if you don't persist and fight the council's incompetent system (web codes could have been provided on all documents since May even if they were not needed until 1 November) and it is, in the words of the council in their email to Mr Mustard:

 

call our customer service team on 020 8359 7446 (option 1), who will be available to assist customers 9am-6pm Monday to Friday (excluding bank and public holidays).

 

Mr Mustard doesn't think that motorists saddled with an unfair PCN will consider that they are 'customers'.

 

It is only because of Mr Mustard that you know this. There is nothing on the main page of the council website to tell you of this major change and equally nothing on the landing page of 'parking' on the council website and nothing on the council Twitter either.

 

In the year to 31 March 2025 Barnet Council issued 353,144 PCNs so approximately 30,000 a month and that is a lot of people to mess about by the council's blistering incompetence.

 

Now we come to the final method of making your representation.

 

3    - Email 

 

Forget it. This is what the council now say about email.

 

We do not have an email option, informal challenges/formal representation can now be made online or via post.

In real life, as opposed to council ivory towers, email has largely replaced writing as the primary method of written communication. 

This change of policy is a backward step, a decision doubtless taken for the administrative convenience of the council and not with the interests of the public at heart.

Dog's dinner / pig's breakfast / PPPPPPP

It isn't easy to change computer systems which is why fully detailed plans need to take place and the public need to be at the centre of thought. Haringey have just changed their website and done a good job, they did not leave the public in the dark, their new system tells you every action that has taken place on your PCN, all council PCN computers should be the same.

Mr Mustard seems to recall 40 years ago when he was a payroll manager, parallel running the new system against the old one so that any processing error would show up.

Barnet's change is inept and brings to mind that old Army adage: 

The end, for now, doubtless other problems will arise.