DVLA compensate for their incompetence

Here is an email which Mr Mustard received at the beginning of January from a lady who we will call Ms B.

I hope you’re well!

You’ve been recommended to me by lots of people who have found themselves battling PCNs in Barnet, thank you for all you do! My situation isn’t council but rather DVLA and debt recovery related, I’m a Barnet resident though so I’m hoping you’ll be able and willing to help me too.

So, we’ve just scraped together £426.50 of a £618 fine so that Marston Recovery would remove their clamp from my car. We’re not well off so that’s completely cleaned us out and has made the next few months really precarious for our family. It’s also pretty scary to be bullied out of a large sum of money in the street like that, especially at the moment when work is so unreliable.

We must now appeal via court so that we will hopefully be refunded some of that sum, or at the very least not have to pay the remaining £191.50.

The original fine was for a Dartford crossing toll charge back in August 2021 - my partner and I had a miscommunication as to who had paid, and in the end neither of us did. We would have received a penalty notice a few days later for this error, discovered the miscommunication and paid the fine, but we received no letter and had no idea there was any fine to pay. Now it has snowballed and is about 3 times as much as the original fine.

The penalty notice letters were going to our old address because when we moved house in May earlier that year, the DVLA had lost my V5 form with the updated address. All of the letters regarding the fine, and presumably subsequent court summonses were sent to the old address. The DVLA only finally admitted they lost my V5 form in November and updated my details in December!

I believe I am accountable solely for the fine of failing to pay the toll charge. So far no one has supplied me with any information of the breakdown of fines, or what to do next. Informally, over the phone, the bailiff said I had until February to appeal, but supplied no information as to who to contact. I’ve tried to get through to the DVLA, Marston Recovery office, and the Citizens Advice Bureau by phone but I’ve just been on hold for hours & the bailiff told me not to bother with email as it could take weeks to respond! Obviously I don’t have any of the letters with contact info which were meant to reach me, I really have no idea what to do.

I do have the Royal Mail certificate of posting with the Special Delivery tracking number from when I posted my V5 form with the updated address to DVLA, and the confirmation of delivery back in May. Additionally, there is an email response to me chasing up my V5 form in July - here they tell me the application may take longer than usual. They didn’t respond at all to a subsequent message I sent them through their contact centre, and I finally got through to someone via phone in November who confirmed they’d lost my details and then arranged for a “no fee V62” to be emailed to me so I could start the whole process again at no extra charge. I have a case number for these communications, if that helps to prove I did everything necessary to be contactable.

I’d really appreciate any guidance you could offer as to who to contact, if I need a solicitor, how to get hold of a copy of these letters or any information about the amounts I am being charged, and if you think I will be able to contest this at all.

Thanks in advance!

Mr Mustard worked out a strategy which he emailed to Ms B.

I plan three different approaches:

1 - file two lots of form TE7/9 to the TEC. This freezes the bailiff action whilst the application is thought about, for at least 2 weeks. Dart Charge can object to your application.

2 - make a subject access request to see what happened to the documents sent to your old address. Do you know who lives there now and can you ask them if they sent post for you back? Did you pay for mail forwarding and if so please provide a copy of it? I will need a recent utility bill and a copy of your driving licence or passport to do that.

3 - make out of time representations to Dart Charge. They like to reject them but should consider them out of time if there is a good reason why you are late, which there is.

Having decided on a strategy Mr Mustard was about to go cycling for a week (in February, it was great) and so he passed the problem on to a retired lawyer (Mr L) who now works pro bono and who is hoovering up every bit of knowledge that Mr Mustard has spent 12 years acquiring. Time is of the essence in this sort of case so having someone at their desk and not on a bicycle was advantageous.

78 emails later, the problem was resolved.

After lots of digging it was established that the warrant, which the bailiff refused to produce until after they were paid, was defective as it still showed the old address, typically bad bailiff behaviour. Dart Charge agreed to accept £3.50 for each crossing and cancel everything else. The bailiff had to refund the £426.50 - crime doesn't pay!

Mr L concluded that the real villain was DVLA so he went after them. Here is just one devastating paragraph from his complaint:

The letter clearly hit the mark as after investigating and seeing that they were completely at fault the DVLA came up with a reasonable offer of compensation.

As you can imagine, Ms B was delighted, was able to pay off the loan she had to take out in order to get the bailiff off her back and donate to charity.

End.

ULEZ - were TfL frit?

Mr Mustard is going to tell you a story. He was asked to take over fighting a PCN at the tribunal Appeal stage. He said yes, but let's start at the beginning.

Let us call the motorist Mr H. He entered the ULEZ area at 9 of an evening so the congestion zone was not in force at that time. He knew nothing of the ULEZ as he is a member of a religious minority which does not expose itself to mass media and he did not see a ULEZ sign as he said in his representations against the PCN. He pointed out to TfL that Dart Charge let you off your first contravention if you ask them (usually) as long as you pay for the crossing itself and asked to be allowed to do the same for the ULEZ. He could not, of course, use that argument again in the future.

The whole point of these schemes is to obtain compliance but enforcement authorities appear to run them instead to maximise revenue.

Despite the short nature of the representations, TFL's Notice of Rejection ran into 3 dense pages of explanation about the setting up of the scheme, consultations, publicity, signs and so on. Ultimately, TfL rejected the representations which admitted to not paying to enter the zone because Mr H hadn't paid to enter the zone, a somewhat circular reason. There was no attempt to consider cancelling the PCN because this was a first contravention or due to not having seen any advertisements about it. Nor did TfL point out where the missed sign or signs where.

Mr H was unhappy so he put the whole £160 penalty at risk and make his own Appeal to the tribunal. The grounds were technical ones, that the Notice of Rejection threatened to send him a Charge Certificate before TfL were legally entitled to do so. At that point TfL did not know Mr Mustard was waiting in the wings. TfL decided to contest the Appeal and produced the evidence pack which had the usual 70 pages. TfL only wanted 50% (£80) if they won. They sometimes do this when you get your Appeal in to the tribunal within 14 days of their Notice of Rejection being issued. It is a simple decision therefore to go to the tribunal as there is nothing to lose.

At this point Mr Mustard went on file at the tribunal as an authorised representative and filed a skeleton argument a few days before the hearing date. As TfL rather unhelpfully don't allow on line Appeals to be made to the tribunal, and don't give out an email address, their copy of the skeleton argument had to be posted to them, so they would only have got it 2 days before the hearing, which doesn't give them a fair crack at defending themselves.

At the scheduled tribunal hearing the Adjudicator had clearly read the papers before Mr Mustard had entered the room and said that he wanted to adjourn the hearing for 28 days to give TfL an opportunity to respond to the important points which had only just been raised. Mr Mustard agreed as he wanted the points decided upon as they were substantive issues. The Adjudicator duly wrote to TfL seeking their detailed response.

This was the skeleton argument which Mr Mustard had filed:

Early threat of a charge certificate.*

Whilst TfL refer to this ground of Appeal in the case summary (and 8 pages is not a summary and is unfair on Appellants who represent themselves) they do not dispute it.

Accordingly the demand exceeded that applicable in the circumstances of the case.

The Notice of Rejection did not comply with Reg 17(2)(a). It is ultra vires. (Reg 15(1) is also applicable so add that in. Best have a good read!)

Mitigation not properly considered

The Appellant's case was very simple. His religious observance meant he did not know of the new ULEZ scheme. The Notice of Rejection goes on for 3 pages (which is procedurally unfair and likely to put many people off the idea of Appealing to the tribunal as they are effectively browbeaten by the volume) and doesn't really get to grips with the actual representation. TfL said 'because the daily charge has not been purchased. It is clear the PCN had been correctly issued'. Using against the motorist the facts which had been admitted cannot be said to be considering the mitigation. The nub of the representation was that the ULEZ scheme had not been heard of and nor had a sign been observed en route. The Notice of Rejection should have said why TfL were not prepared to exercise their discretion (they would only have to do this once as Dart Charge do as it happens and future compliance should be more important than raising revenue) and provided evidence of the sign that was passed. Neither of these things were in the Notice of Rejection.

I do not think that, based upon what they have written, which was all about the preparations for and implementation of the charging scheme, TfL can be said to have adequately considered the representations in line with Reg 13(6) (RUC Regs 2001**).

No evidence a sign was passed.

The representations denied that a sign was passed. No proof has been adduced of the sign or signs in place at the point of entry to the charging zone. Baker Street is a long road. A more informative description is essential to adequately describe the contravention. (Such a description does arrive in the case summary, the junction with Paddington St)

Sign is compliant but not adequate.

It is all very well putting up compliant signs but are they adequate? To a person who has never heard of the ULEZ coming across 'sign A' whilst driving along and at the point of entering the zone, has seconds in which to decide what classes of vehicle are affected and whether or not their particular vehicle is likely to be affected. Given the complete lack of information on the sign I do not think that the individual motorist is given adequate information as they aren't given any except that they are at the edge of the zone. They are not told the classes of vehicle which are affected nor the emissions levels which a vehicle must meet.

Mr Mustard went on holiday for 2 weeks. Whilst he was away, and a mere 6 days after the adjudicator had asked TfL to provide their detailed response, TfL instead decided to exercise their discretion and no longer wished to contest the Appeal. Now why didn't they do that when Mr H wrote to them or when Mr H filed their Appeal?

Have they taken fright or has Mr Mustard hit the bulls eye with one of this arguments? We'll never know except that we might. If you have a Notice of Rejection for a ULEZ PCN or if you have already started an Appeal at London Tribunals you might want to borrow one or more of Mr Mustard's arguments. (Mr Mustard expects that the Notice of Rejection will have been recently corrected, since the start of August).

*Expanding on the first argument, the PCN said this:

The Notice of Rejection said this:

and thus the Notice of Rejection demanded payment before it was legally due, because the date of service of the Notice of Rejection is usually 2 days after the date of the Notice and as the Notice of Rejection did not offer what the PCN offered nor what the legislation demands (the time periods for paying or Appealing the Notice of Rejection being the same 28 days after service).

Good luck.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

This story, received via the twitter account of the ABD (@TheABD) shows you how little known the ULEZ is. Close to 130,000 PCNs in 3 months. £10,400,000 to shore up TFL's budget and ultra low emissions within the zone clearly not achieved.

** The Road User Charging (Enforcement and Adjudication) (London) Regulations 2001.

The apology of the year - by Dart Charge

Regular readers, both of you, lol, will remember the story about the bailiff who put his own self interest before justice and Mr Mustard finished the blog post by saying the payment would turn out to be a loan and so it came to pass.

Mr Mustard's alter ego has made a few lash ups in his time and crafts, even though he says so himself, a fine apology. Well Dart Charge have been superb, they have studied Mr Mustard's complaint and taken it to heart, made a handsome apology, resolved to do better in the future and made a generous compensation payment. There is nothing else you could ask for except the impossible of not making the error in the first place. This is why often Mr Mustard goes to the top of an organisation when there are process errors which management need to fix. Are you reading this Westminster Council, as you received a 3 page missive yesterday, did you not, also about your importunate & unfortunate use of a bailiff.

Marvellous, a technical solution which should be foolproof. A recognition that any recent crossing might slip through but will be swiftly dealt with and direct contact details to assist - the inability to talk to people is one of the problems when automated systems go rogue.

Mr Mustard hopes that the disappointment is about the bailiff's actions as once your car has been clamped and you have to drive your kids to school some distance away you really don't have many options except paying up. Hopefully the bailiff will have to pay something towards the problem he created.

Another heartfelt apology here and a generous payment in compensation. The single mum had to go into overdraft to get the clamp removed so will have incurred some bank charges. Mr Mustard happened to open this apology when he was sat in the waiting area at London Tribunals, it warmed the cockles (he had just won 1 lost 2) of his heart as this was the first time in 5 years of asking that an enforcement authority has realised the damage that their blunders do and has realised it is right and proper to make amends by paying more than a token amount of financial compensation. Most authorities think is enough to cancel a PCN, which just isn't enough. The stress of a wrongful situation is enormous.

The lady in question was rather pleased with the outcome

Even though she lives on a very tight budget the lady in question offered Mr Mustard some money. He declined as he works pro bono (for free), and is fortunate to be comfortable, and he derives the most enormous pleasure from sorting out difficult problems. He merely asked that when she was clearing out clothes and toys which her children have grown out of that she donates them to a North London Hospice shop. Enfield or Winchmore Hill can expect a large delivery soon.

Gosh, the third good news story that Mr Mustard has written in the last month. His readers will both disappear if he carries on like that.

Seriously, Mr Mustard thinks that his years of bashing away at wrongdoing are starting to bear some fruit. Some parking managers go to the trouble of replying to him in minutes and out of hours and that is appreciated.

Only a fool ignores Mr Mustard.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Dart Charge misses target

Mr Mustard's client received a Dart Charge PCN for her car

That's odd, she thought, I was doing the school run at 08:30 within Enfield.

She looked at the picture, unlike Dart Charge, who issue PCN without any human intervention?

We all know that cars are getting larger but the Fiesta isn't yet 40 feet long. Mr Mustard doesn't know the outcome of the PCN yet but if his client did nothing she would end up with her car clamped and removed whilst at the same time being entirely innocent.

It turns out that the format we currently use in England, AB01CDE is also identical in Romania.

This means that Dart Charge should be very careful to check before issuing any PCN, they should not blindly assume that it will be the UK registered vehicle which has transgressed. In the case of this lorry, it seems to have been driven by a person or persons who are ignorant of, or wilfully ignoring, the Dart Charge.

The entry for £2.50 is the one when Dart Charge think the vehicle was a car and for all the rest they have spotted that it is a lorry.

Doubtless this blog will sort the problem out.

Update 14 June: This PCN has been cancelled for the car, it is still live for the lorry.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard