Conflicts of self interest

http://www.whale.to/v/vaccine_research.html

Yesterday Mr Mustard commented upon a conflict of interest story about planning at Barnet Council.

Today Mr Mustard adds a serious matter of his own experience to the debate. Here is the email he sent to the Monitoring Officer earlier today.

Dear Ms Fiore

The following page from a government website sets out when planning permission is required for advertisements.

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/permission/commonprojects/advertssigns/

In a recent County Court case Parking Eye stated that they have the following signs on the Barnet Hospital site

Type 3c - 600*700m - 17 of
Type 3h - 600*700mm - 1 of
Type 5a - 700*900mm - 2 of

And the council can see them on site for themselves.

So they have 20 signs which require planning permission and Parking Eye did not apply for it before erecting the signs in 2014. Parking Eye appear to be negligent when it comes to applying for necessary permission for signs and cameras (just one example)

http://www.chad.co.uk/news/local/parking-company-using-unauthorised-cameras-at-retail-park-1-7774133

Planning Enforcement action is, I understand taken by employees of Re:. That company is 51% owned by Capita.

Parking Eye is 100% owned by Capita.

No matter how independently minded an employee might be he/she will struggle to properly progress the necessary enforcement action (and for the avoidance of doubt I am making a complaint and asking for the signs and cameras to be immediately removed until such time as planning permission is applied for and granted) as Parking Eye have been breaking the law by issuing parking charge notices up to date, without putting their own position in difficulty or proceeding in a completely unbiased manner (we all tend to have a natural and possibly innocent bias towards our employer) or being seen to be unbiased if they take less than robust action.

It is for that reason that I am making this complaint to you, the monitoring officer, as you are responsible for ensuring that the council enforces the law. Please appoint an independent body or another local authority, who don't number any Capita company within their client base, to deal with the matter and demonstrate that conflicts of interest are taken seriously.

Yours faithfully

Mr Mustard

Let's see how seriously conflicts of interest are actually taken because this is clearly one such example.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Kicking you when you are down

Bailiffs are like the school bully, however, they can be stood up to.

Mr Mustard has so far seen the effects of four bailiffs in action. Their behaviour has not been pretty. They have a difficult job to do and don't do it very well at all. The bailiff who was in the wrong in clamping a Motability car was rude when unclamping when he should have been polite and apologetic.

Here is an example of a badly written bailiff's letter, bullying and a conflict of interest all in one A4 sheet.

click to enlarge

A badly written letter

Now in this case there were three warrants so the "s" of warrant(s) shouldn't be in parentheses. On the second line there is reference to "warrants" in the plural which would be wrong if there was only one warrant and this letter is evidently used in all circumstances. 

There is reference to client(s). Generally there will only be one client being collected for but it should be clear.

It isn't clear why the date of seizure of the vehicle is put in a larger font size or why a continental date format is used when a short form date format is used at the top of the letter.

The amount outstanding "as of today" cannot include an extra £30 a day. What NSL mean is please add £30 on for each extra day after the date of the letter up to the date of payment.

To prevent further enforcement action you could, in this case, file a form N244 for a personal hearing in front of a District Judge in your local County Court. The exhortation that "you must make a full payment" is to try and bully you into paying without considering your other options.

"Please call in to the call centre" must mean by telephone but Mr Mustard expects that when one of his friends says they will "call in" that he can expect a knock on the door not a phone call. A pity that the number of the call centre is not given. We are expected to guess that the telephone number at the top of the page is the one for the call centre? It is impossible to telephone the call centre at least 24 hours before payment unless you delay paying for 24 hours. The normal process would be that you decide, after a lot of thought, to pay and then you do so almost instantly. Thus you couldn't go back 24 hours to warn NSL / TASK that you are going to pay. In addition, the moment that you have paid you are entitled to the return of your vehicle. Councils that clamp and remove cars to a pound are expected to provide a round the clock service for their release.

Bullying

The reason this letter is a bullying one is that an out-of-time witness statement was filed with the Traffic Enforcement Centre ("TEC" - attached to Northampton County Court) and their decision on 7 November 13 was that the PCN would not be put back to the start of the process so that representations could be made. The Order of the TEC (essentially a Court) gave the applicant the option to file a form N244 for a local Court hearing within 14 days of service of the Order. Therefore nothing should have been done before 22 November 13. This bullying letter is 10 days premature, looks like an abuse of process and is the responsibility of Barnet Council who have a duty of care with regards to the behaviour of their bailiffs as it is the Council who are the creditor. The letter is designed to harass the recipient into paying up. 

If Mr Mustard sees another letter like this one, sent before time, he will start a complaint with the view to it reaching the Local Government Ombudsman.

Conflict of Interest

Barnet Council outsource its parking enforcement to NSL. It isn't clear from this letter who gave the instruction to proceed with enforcement but Mr Mustard has all of his money on NSL. So this means that NSL decided if their own bailiff Task Enforcement should proceed down a route which would lead to the car being auctioned off (it was worth something approaching £3,000 although seized cars somehow don't sell for their true value) and at that point Task (part of NSL) would bank their considerable fees. It simply cannot be right that the company that makes the decision profits from it. We are always being told that NSL don't make more money if they issue more PCN, well they do if the PCN end up for enforcement with the bailiff that they own. The Contract with NSL needs to be changed so that either Barnet Council make decisions affecting the bailiff (if they don't already and Mr Mustard hasn't seen that in the NSL contract) or NSL should be barred from giving warrants to Task.

Conclusion

The more closely Mr Mustard looks at parking enforcement the murkier it seems. Over the festive break he will decide what his plan is for 2014. It will probably include, amongst other things, the introduction of a voluntary charitable contribution for his personal assistance with a PCN appeal (but only for the 97% of cases that he wins) and talks for motorists, such as:

• How to park and not get a parking ticket
• The appeal process in outline and some standard arguments
• Dissecting the evidence pack prior to a PATAS hearing

If you have a group which would like Mr Mustard to educate them (for 20 to 30 minutes) do please get in touch at mrmustard@zoho.com

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Friday Joke no. 3 ( eventually )

Last night was the audit committee. This is one of the meetings where you can be pretty sure that Jeff Lustig, the Director of Corporate Governance, so ultimately responsible for all things legal and for the proper behaviour of the council, will be in attendance. Now he is a dry old stick and sits at meetings, looking like Freddie Mercury according to one observer ( thankfully Jeff keeps his shirt on ) hoovering up all of the information presented and occasionally interjecting to keep the council straight. He tells the odd joke, Mr Mustard has heard two in 2011, but they are so subtle that they sometimes slip quietly past the audience. He is really the un-noticed man of Barnet.

Now of course Jeff Lustig knows where all the skeletons are in the Barnet Council closet ( actually it's probably an entire building, a closet wouldn't be big enough ) and if you won't be writing your memoirs Jeff if the ill-conceived merger of legal teams with Harrow Council goes ahead ( Harrow, do you know how many fights Barnet Council get into ) you can always have a guest blog.

So Mr Mustard always wondered about Jeff Lustig and then there were the two strange events where Barnet Council had a pop at Mr Mustard, the attempt to get him fined £5,000 for not complying with the Data Protection Act ( he doesn't need to ) and the blabbing to the press that one blogger cost the council £40,000 in 6 months. Mr Mustard was easily identified by the press as they simply rang the other 4 who said it wasn't them.

Now Mr Mustard has found out that Jeff Lustif asked for a list of all of Mr Mustard's FOI questions in August. Why is yet to be established but it is probably connected to the brouhaha that went on in early October. Mr Mustard is giving Mr Lustig the benefit of the doubt for now.

On the report to the Information Commissioner, and the potential £5,000 fine not to mention the curtailment of freedom of speech for all bloggers, Mr Mustard has an email which shows that Jeff Lustig stopped the chase after the ICO rejected the EU legal case precedent argument. Others wanted to go on ( introverted idiots that they are ) but a reality check was applied. What Mr Mustard doesn't know is if Jeff Lustig set the hare running in the first place. Time will tell.

Mr Lustig did get unusually excited about Mrs Angry last night ( she has that effect on men of a certain age ) and at the conclusion of the meeting he read out some sort of statement denying that there had been any allegation of fraud against an officer. Mrs Angry did not claim there was, which is doubtless why Jeff Lustig and Chris Palmer, the interim ( for now ) Assistant Director of Communications ( why was he sitting at the press desk - is he off to join the Barnet press perhaps - a step up from his current job? ) got so excited about it. Mrs Angry was talking about Mr Richard Grice who used to run ( one can run badly or well, or even into the ground ) customer services, having left the council to join BT who are the biggest name in the running to get the contract to run customer services. Conflict of interest ( not in Barnet surely ) was what she was talking about and Lord Monroe Palmer helpfully sexed the dossier up a bit and asked CAFT to consider whether there might be fraud. Anyway, the matter is going to be looked into, not sure by whom or for how long and whether there is enough whitewash in the paint store but we will ask at the next meeting.

Whilst we are talking about BT, Cllr Cooke asked a question which the Director of Audit could not answer. Which suppliers send data outside of the EU? Well Cllr Cooke, one is probably BT who have made great use in the past of Indian call centres and still do. You might want to have officers check the other suppliers who are in the running for the customer services contract. Mr Mustard is happy to publish the answers.

Now moving out of the EU over to China there is an artist called Lui Bolin who is known as The Invisible Man ( which could easily be a description of Jeff Lustig ) who has himself painted to blend into the background and here is a lovely shot of him in a London setting. If you look closely you will find Lui Bolin on the right and Jeff Lustig is queueing to use the phonebox on the left.

What, you can't see him. Well, that is the joke because no-one sees him but he is always there in the background.

Hopefully you are reading this Jeff and it has appealed to the sense of humour that Mr Mustard knows you must have because you couldn't have stuck it at Barnet Council for so long otherwise. You know the new FOI software that you are getting? It has an optional module that lets people who have asked questions, bloggers say, follow the progress of their requests on-line. Please do turn on that optional module so we can keep a better eye on you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard