Highways England - FOI - why not be helpful

Surely the ethos of public service is service?

Mr Mustard read about a PCN issued to a person who had a credit held in their name against their vehicle but didn't realise that Highways England had snaffled it and then they made a crossing and were sent a PCN. Mr Mustard hoped this would be an isolated event but decided to see if the sums of money involved might have mounted up, oh yes they had.

Here is what he asked.

The answer was enormously long, as usual, and here is an extract containing the answer.

Mr Mustard duly went off to fetch his own answer, at this webpage

He opened the Accounts and spent several minutes fruitlessly trawling through for his answer and then got bored and requested a review by Highways England.

It turned out that he had been led up the garden path by Highways England.

Now we find that the first answer was just plain wrong. The answer is to be found in a mere 40 page report. To tell me which page to look at the writer of the FOI review has to find the one figure that I wanted so why not just give it to me instead of making me download and locate it? that would be public service. It's as if Highways England don't want you to know how much they have snaffled of your money. Here you go:

So that is £14,000,000 of account and other credits removed from motorists, possibly affecting a million motorists. Mr Mustard knows it would be expensive to contact them all but with an income of £200m it would be the fair thing to do.

Penalty income, some of it from motorists whose credit balances they have snaffled, and much of it by innocent error by motorists who live nowhere near Kent, is pretty hefty as well, accounting for a third of all income.

The end.

Armchair Auditor Objection

The council's TMO had one fault (not 4)

Mr Mustard and Mr Reasonable have been separately busy pouring over a tiny fragment of the Annual Accounts of Barnet Council and looking at the backup documents. Our work continues as we struggle with Capita to get what we are entitled to see (they are trying to fob Mr Mustard off with a draft of a contract when he is entitled to see the actual contract with anything top secret crossed out - if Mr Mustard doesn't see a contract with redacted signatures and actual dates, how does he know a contract was signed?). The struggle is well worth it as some juicy stuff is to be found if you know which stone to look under. The bloggers also look under several decoy stones!

Mr Mustard tries hard to point the external auditor Paul Hughes (of Grant Thornton) at what he sees as terrible wrongdoing but Mr Mustard has yet, despite trying 5 times last year, to get him to issue a public interest notice or apply to the Courts. Mr Hughes is currently sunning himself, is Mr Mustard's guess, as he has an out-of-office set up (one of those infuriating ones which says if your enquiry is urgent do something about it yourself as they couldn't be bothered to make sure your emails are even glanced at whilst they are away) so you can read the Objection before he does.

Dear Mr Hughes

The London Borough of Barnet

Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2014

Notice of Objection

I am told by Barnet Council that in the year ended 31 March 2014 they issued 4,827 Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) within the Saracens Event Day zone with an estimated income of £217,215 which I believe they have collected unlawfully.

I request a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 that Barnet has unlawfully derived income of £217,215.

I request you apply to the courts under section 17 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 to have the income derived from the £217,215 of PCN declared as illegally derived income.

The reason why the income is illegally derived is that the Traffic Management Order did not contain a definition of what constituted an Event Day and consequently there were no days whatsoever on which a PCN could legally be issued for failure to comply with Event Day signs. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not claiming that the TMO was invalid, as it has to be contested within 6 weeks of being made and that did not happen, but on the contrary that it is valid but does not permit enforceable PCN to be issued.

The council are well aware of the deficiency as on 13 March 2014 they made TMO 2014 No. 28 in order to completely replace the defectively worded TMO 2012 No. 70.

All income from PCN issued inside the Saracens Event Day CPZ prior to 13 March 2014 should be refunded to the public.

A copy of this Notice of Objection has been sent to Mr C Naylor.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Should you still have an unpaid PCN issued inside the Saracens Zone before 22 March 14 then do feel free to get in touch with Mr Mustard as they are a doddle to defeat. Later ones might prove to be a little harder but properly approached, they too can be beaten.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update 18:07

Unlike the Capita man who had left halfway through the afternoon one of Mr Hughes's staff is still hard at it in his central London office and has thanked Mr Mustard  for his objection. So polite.

Third objection to Accounts - natural consequence of JR judgment

Following the judgment in the High Court that Barnet Council had been fund raising from CPZ residents contrary to the law, Mr Mustard thought he had better point out to the bean counters that the official Accounts of the council would need some adjustment. Let's see if they agree.

24 July 2013



Mr P Hughes
Grant Thornton
Melton St
London
NW1 2EP



Dear Mr Hughes

The London Borough of Barnet
Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013
Third Notice of Objection

In the judgment of Mrs Justice Lang, DBE in the parking charges judicial review and in particular paragraph 64 of the judgment which says, inter alia, "the 1984 Act is not a fiscal measure and does not authorise the authority to use its powers to charge local residents for parking in order to raise surplus revenue .............the Defendant's purpose...was to generate additional income.......... This purpose was not authorised under the RTRA 1984 and therefore the decision was unlawful."

The judicial review was brought to challenge the increase in car permit charges in April 11 from £40 for a first car to £100 (and other charges for 2nd & 3rd cars) and the increase in Visitor Voucher cost from £1 to £4. These increases are clearly unlawful and I would expect the subject of this objection to have already been picked up by yourself and the council and a suitable provision made to refund the unlawfully gained income. I think that the Accounts for 2011/12 will also need to be reopened and provision made for a refund in that year also.

I require you to make a report in the public interest under section 8 of the Audit Commission Act 1998. A copy of this Notice of Objection has been sent to Mr C Naylor and to Cllr Monroe Palmer, Baron Palmer of Child's Hill, OBE, FCA. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely



Mr Mustard

Where were those 5 extra Officers earning £50k+ p.a. ?

Mr Reasonable kindly let me know that the first set of unaudited Accounts for the year to 31 March 2011 were ready to look at. He has already given them a good blogging here: £1 million to leave Barnet Council

Mr Mustard has taken a look at the salary levels that have to be put in the notes.

Although inflation is generally low in the UK, in the parallel universe that is Barnet Council, it seems that inflation is rampant. The notes to the Accounts have to include all staff paid over £50k in £5k bands.

I have put the tables of 2 years together.

Each set of Accounts shows you this year and last year.

So you have 2011 & 2010 in the latest Accounts and

2010 and 2009 in the Accounts of last year

and of course the figures for the year to 31 March 2010 will be the same in both sets, will it not ? Let's see:-

35.      Officers’ Remuneration
	Accounts to 31 Mar 11	ch		Accounts to 31 March 10
Remuneration band	2010/11	2009/10		2009/10	2008/09
	#	#		#	#
£50,000 - £54,999	195	166		177	167
£55,000 - £59,999	122	92		95	79
£60,000 - £64,999	61	60		60	64
£65,000 - £69,999	63	59		58	37
£70,000 - £74,999	40	27		27	35
£75,000 - £79,999	20	16		14	15
£80,000 - £84,999	10	14		15	12
£85,000 - £89,999	16	13		12	7
£90,000 - £94,999	10	7		3	5
£95,000 - £99,999	10	3		3	2
£100,000 - £104,999	5	5		4	1
£105,000 - £109,999	2	4		3	5
£110,000 - £114,999	2	-		1	4
£115,000 - £119,999	2	6		4	1
£120,000 - £124,999	3	4		2	1
£125,000 - £129,999	2	1		1	-
£130,000 - £134,999	2	2		2	2
£135,000 - £139,999	3	3		2	1
£140,000 - £144,999	-	1		1	2
£145,000 - £149,999	2	1		-	1
£150,000 >_	8	8
Totals	578	492		487	444

Now what do you notice ?

- The number of higher paid employees is rocketing from 444 to 487/492 to 578 in 3 years.

- When the Accounts were signed off for 2010 there were 487 higher paid employees and suddenly now there were 492 of them for the same financial year. Where were those 5 employees. Perhaps there weren't any Contracts of Employment for them and so no-one knew they existed ? Or can't the bean-counters count ?

This table doesn't include Contractors as they are not employees so there are actually more high paid employees than the table shows. At least 5 that Mr Mustard knows of.

Two examples are :

Mr Andrew Travers, the £1,000 a day consultant Deputy Chief Executive and

Jason Wheatley - Interim Resourcing, Performance & Talent Manager ( the Audit Committee yesterday evening was certainly a right performance - they must have had some coaching although there was a distinct lack of talent in evidence amongst Officers although plenty from Councillors who were rocking the OneBarnet boat ) who was paid £104,500 in the year ended 31 March 2011. Actually not quite true, he wasn't paid it but his company Advance HR Consulting Ltd was.

So who signed off these incorrect Accounts in 2010. Oh no, it was Mr Travers. ( Sorry Lord Palmer, your name is on them as well but Mr Mustard takes the view that day to day preparation of these was not within your control, you sign more as a honorary duty because you are quite entitled to rely on the work of someone paid £1,000 a day. ) Hey, Mr Mustard has an idea. You are a proper Chartered Accountant and could be the Chief Finance Officer instead of being a Councillor. How about it Lord Palmer ? The money is good although we do need a bit of a reduction against the current excessive fees.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard