Crapita - Dispensing with dispensations

How many Crapita employees does the system require

An email received by Mr Mustard this week is below. He has redacted the staff names as they are only implementing the stupid call centre system that they are forced to follow or be sacked, so the junior staff are not to blame.

Dear Mr Mustard

I hope that you are very well.

I just want to let you know that today I called the Crapita Call Centre permit section to renew my Housing Permit which expires 14/03/2015 as I could not renew it online as it required a PIN which I do not possess. (PINs are new but no-one seems to have been told what they are. We all have to find out the hard way)

I spoke to the officer by the name Ms Redacted #1, who took my details. I told her that I wanted to renew my permit as it was expiring this week. She informed that she will start my permit on the 15/03/2015. I informed her that she needs to start the permit on the 16/03/2015 as the operational hours of the CPZ is Monday to Friday 10-11. I did not see the point of her starting the permit on Sunday.

She has agreed to start the permit on a Monday 16/03/2015. She then advised me that the permit will be sent today 1st class. (Odd that as Mr Mustard's was sent second class).

From reading your blog I have noted the difficulties other residents have endured. So I asked the officer for temporary dispensation to start on the 16/03/2015, so that if the permit does not arrive I would not be penalised by getting PCN from NSL. The officer refused and Informed me because my permit is still valid, they would not issue the dispensation. She also informed me that I had to call on Monday the 16/03/2015 to get dispensation. I told her that this was not the way when Barnet Council was dealing with the permit and I ask if this is a new policy implemented by Capita. She just kept repeating that they would not issue a dispensation.

I asked to speak to a manager which I was transferred to by the name Mr Redacted #2, and I explained my situation that they have to give dispensation as they cannot guarantee the permit will be received before Monday. In addition it creates hassle to call back the call centre just to get the dispensation on the day of enforcement as Monday is always busy day. (and a dispensation issued on Monday would only apply from Tuesday)

The manager agreed with me and transferred the call to another officer by the name Mr Redacted #3 to issue dispensation from 16/03/2015 to 02/04/2015.

All this could have been avoided if the first officer issued dispensation from when the permit was due to commence. I wonder how many people have been told the same story but later receive a PCN. I never experienced this situation before.

Best Wishes,

If you are unhappy with what the call centre tells you, do as this person did and persist. If Crapita prove to be unresponsive then complain to the council, the only slight snag being that Crapita handle phone calls and you can't know without asking if the person you are speaking to is a Crapita or council employee. If you are unhappy with the level of service received you should complain as that is sometimes the only way to get organisations to improve.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard gets treated as a second class citizen

No fault by the Royal Mail - they deliver the paid for service

A few months back, Cllr David Longstaff, otherwise christened Goldenarse by Mrs Angry (not because he bears any resemblance to a James Bond character in Goldeneye but because of an acting part in his show reel which showed him with a gold painted posterior, sorry about the imagery) went to Coventry to the Crapita call centre at Coventry. Slightly naughty Mr Mustard tweeted the question as to whether the staff there had ever heard of the councillor (thinking they were sure not to have) and back came the reply that yes they had (well of course Goldenarse is so important they would have) and they had also heard of Mr Mustard which Mr Mustard thought was unlikely. It would have been wise though of the council to have given the call centre a list of VIPs (very irritating persons) which would have included the bloggers and local troublesome cafe and sweetshop owners, the BAPS committee members etc. but no, that would be too sensible.

Anyway, Mr Mustard collected a car (his first ever Mercedes, 4 years old & very nicely made) on 25 November as he is spending a lot of his life on motorways at the moment.

On 25 November he made a permit application and uploaded his insurance etc. documents.

On 26 November Mr Mustard was busy but no-one rang to say his application was accepted and he could pay now.

 

On 27 November at 18:40 (real work got in the way again) he paid on-line having checked for himself if his application had resulted in an "offer". Mr Mustard looked to see if he could print his permit out at home as he had been able to the previous year. The option had quietly disappeared which is a typical council trick whereas those people who had previously relied on this method should be told in advance. This page on the councils website still says you can

but council management tell Mr Mustard you can't (expect the website will be updated once this blog post is read by the council).

Just going back to 25 November for a moment, Mr Mustard phoned the parking department line, which is answered by Capita in Coventry, and asked if he could pay and for a dispensation. Mr Mustard couldn't pay as the documents weren't yet showing, apparently they take up to 24 hours to become visible on the server when that should really be instant in this day and age. Mr Mustard's ears pricked up (usually they just stick out) when he was told that he couldn't have a dispensation and he politely asked why not. Because now it is only for a change of vehicle or a change of address. Apparently last month too many were given out to residents who were not renewing their permits on time (could this be because the council aren't sending out reminders? cause and effect) and so they were giving out "too many dispensations". Mr Mustard having purchased a second vehicle was not in that category but still couldn't have one and yet since then a friend, a troublesome cafe owner, was late in renewing and was given one (and no, she didn't receive a reminder and yes, you do take your coffee in Cafe Buzz, N12 don't you?). Mr Mustard asked if the parking manager (meaning the Barnet Council one, knew about the new policy) and was then very helpfully given the name of the Capita Parking Services Manager which Mr Mustard has filed away for later use.

Mr Mustard was parked outside of the zone all this time which means he had a 10 minute walk to his car and back although it did mean that he met three ladies walking their dogs, one of whom was his neighbour and expressed surprise that Mr Mustard of all people wasn't given a permit, and one other lovely lady said "oh, you're that famous man aren't you" well, not in Coventry is all Mr Mustard can say.

Back to the calendar.

On 1 December the printed permit arrived at Mustard Mansions. It came with a letter dated 27 November in an envelope that was post-marked 28 November. It was sent second-class. Mr Mustard has paid £70 and expects first-class service at all times. Things got worse. The permit had an expiry date of 25 November which means that Mr Mustard had been short-changed by £1.15 worth of permit. Multiply that up by 12,000 permits a year and a nice profit is made for the council. Anyone who paid more slowly than Mr Mustard could have been robbed of more days of validity.

On 3 December Mr Mustard received the letter saying his application for a permit had been accepted. It was in a letter dated 27 November and again sent second class in an envelope post marked 1 December. What a palaver.

Needless to say Mr Mustard took his concerns up with the real parking management. They were not happy. They didn't seem to know that changes had been made and they think that permits should be sent out first class, that the permit should expire a year and two days after the posting of the permit, that on line printing should be made available but that would have to wait its turn in software development and other councils would also need to ask for such a function.

This function of permits was clearly out sourced in a half baked manner by the commissioners who possibly didn't know the subtle nuances of parking permit renewals. Parking itself, the thin client side (getting thinner with all the worry caused by having to answer to Mr Mustard?) are now on the case and when they update Mr Mustard with any good news, he will tell you.

Now just before you go why not pop outside and check the expiry date of your permit and then go here to renew if it has expired. You'll need to phone the council to get a PIN as clearly your renewal letter has not reached you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Someone crashed into your car - that will cost you £110

Barnet Council dispensation system is a car crash in waiting

Dear Sirs

I represent my friend and neighbour Bill of (address redacted) whose usual vehicle is AA11BBB which he shares with his father Ben.

The PCN is challenged on the following grounds:

1. The time plate suggests that the Residents Bays are restricted 24 hours of the day & 7 days of the week but the Traffic Management Order will show that it is only from 8am to 6.30 Monday to Saturday. Thus the time plate does not match the TMO and is not enforceable.

2. The council has been unfair. Bill suffered an accident which was the fault of a third party. A courtesy car was delivered on the evening of Friday 31st January and although Ben requested the registration number in advance of delivery Aviva (or their car delivery agent) were unable to tell Ben what it would be. Thus he was thwarted in his wish to notify the council during normal working hours on Friday. Ben sent an email in at 6.53pm pointing out that he had a courtesy car.

On Saturday Ben again rang the council to try and obtain a dispensation and found that the relevant department did not operate on a Saturday.

On Monday morning Ben again rang (020 8359 7446) and obtained a dispensation DSP018313 and placed a note to this effect in the car windscreen but he was too late with a PCN having already been issued.

The council issue PCN up until 11pm at night and at weekends. The council have a general duty at law to be fair and it clearly isn’t fair if enforcement takes place when the ability to make an everyday change for a courtesy car is only available during normal office hours. Car crashes don't only happen during those times. The council should, in order to be fair, cancel the PCN.

3. After finding the PCN on his car (and before coming here for a restorative cup of tea) Ben rang again (020 8359 7446). A lady told him that the dispensation did not apply until tomorrow and that he had to pay the PCN. Ben tried to explain how crazy this seemed but the lady was adamant that he had to pay.

Firstly, I have often heard that dispensations are given out without telling the motorist that they do not apply until the next day. This is absurd as people phone because they need one now. This is also entrapment and if your current computerised systems are not up to the job then a manual system needs to be introduced in order to provide a decent level of customer service. It is a simple matter. If the supervisor of the traffic wardens is told about each dispensation being issued as it happens, then whenever a traffic warden sees a note in a windscreen that there is a dispensation, which hasn't been updated to his handheld equipment, he can phone through to the office who say yes or no as to the validity. That would be the fair, reasonable and business-like way to go on.

Secondly, it is not correct behaviour that the advice line in respect of parking should instruct people to make payment of a PCN that they have every right to contest (again this is not the first time that I have heard of this happening). People tend to place faith in officialdom (often quite wrongly when it comes to parking in my view) and to issue instructions that benefit the council financially when if a challenge was made it might be accepted is clearly improper.

There is absolutely no traffic management purpose to this PCN as it is the council's own inability to operate a permit system fit for 2014 that has led to the PCN and the council should not profit from its own inefficiency.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Isn't it a delicious irony that the council are hyper-efficient with up to 50 traffic wardens roaming the streets at almost all hours of the day and night, weekends and bank holidays because there is money in it for them and yet they can't issue a dispensation at 6.30pm on a Friday or 10am on a Saturday?

There is a new computer system coming which will probably have virtual permits as a feature and so this problem will hopefully go away in about a year's time but until then either a manual workaround should be put in place or at the least all PCN for courtesy cars should be cancelled when challenged.

Mr Mustard isn't sure who is currently responsible for answering calls on 020 8359 7446 but it is most probably Capita and this wrong advice demonstrates the inability to have call centres which handle calls for multiple departments. The operatives simply cannot know enough. There should be dedicated phone lines that only answer calls about permits and PCN. That way expertise and customer knowledge builds up.

Mr Mustard sent a copy of the above challenge to a parking manager. He doesn't think the PCN will live for long. If it doesn't get cancelled the council are ultimately in for yet another visit to PATAS (and a £40 fee) where they usually lose. There is a guide to the process of challenging a PCN at the top left of the blog. Feel free to cut and paste any of Mr Mustard's arguments that are relevant and add any others of your own. The more arguments you present the more likely the council are going to fail to respond to one which is a procedural impropriety and a reason for your PCN to be cancelled at PATAS. Also, the more people that write in the more likely it is that some PCN have to be cancelled because NSL won't have enough time to argue.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

CCTV - coming to a PCN near you?

A few weeks ago Mr Mustard read an article in the Guardian about a day in the life of an NSL "traffic warden" (they are called Civil Enforcement Officers nowadays but everyone understands the phrase traffic warden).

One interesting part was they they have a name badge containing a very small video camera and the warden claimed he lifted it up to film periods of statutory observation. Here is a picture of the camera hidden in the name badge. Devilishly devious?

picture credit : http://www.scottishcommunications.com/body-worn-cctv.php

The name badge camera can record continuously for 10 hours which would be more than enough to cope with the entire shift of Barnet's traffic wardens. As we all know Barnet's enforcement is being contracted out to NSL from 1 May 2012.

Now Mr Mustard doesn't like to sit around doing nothing so he wrote to Pam Wharfe, the interim (for now) Director of Environment, Planning and Regeneration. Here is the slightly edited (just to cut out the superfluous bits) correspondence:

---

19 March 2012

Dear Ms Wharfe

I see from an article called "A working life: The Traffic Warden" in this Saturday's Guardian that NSL CEOs in Enfield wear a tiny camera which is sited within their name badge.

Does the contract that Barnet Council are signing/has signed with NSL

1 specify the use of body worn cctv,

2 forbid the use of body worn cctv or

3 is silent on the question?

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

---

12 April 2012

Dear Ms Wharfe

Please could I remind you about my below enquiry about CCTV and NSL that I sent to you on 19 March 2012.

---

13 April 2012

Dear M Mustard

I’ve been passed an enquiry from you about body worn CCTV for Civil Enforcement Officers.

I can confirm that the Barnet Specification neither requires nor precludes these devices.

I apologise for the delay in responding to this simple question.

John McArdle
Interim Parking Manager | Environment, Planning and Regeneration

---

13 April 2012 

Dear Mr McArdle

Thank you for the straightforward answer.

Now that I think about it I should have asked one further question.

If the contract neither requires not precludes the device what policy does the council have on the matter? ( if the answer is no policy then I think it precludes them ).

Many thanks

Mr Mustard

---

13 April 2012 

Dear Mr Mustard

The Council doesn’t have a policy, but is open to suggestion from NSL on how the service can best be delivered so not having an existing policy doesn’t preclude their use.

We haven’t discussed this option with NSL at all, but I do know that they use them elsewhere, Enfield being one example.

The use described in the article, which I didn’t see at the time so thank you for it, is unusual in that enforcement photographs are generally taken with a hand-held camera which is either a separate unit or part of the handheld computer. This allows the officer to more easily ‘point’ it at the subject be it a line, sign, or vehicle.

The CCTV unit is more often used to defuse conflict by providing both the officer and the motorist with a detailed record of any exchange, an approach which has been found to make both parties more thoughtful as to their words and actions. In this respect it is more useful in an overt position rather than concealed.

I hope that this further note is helpful to you.

John McArdle
Interim Parking Manager | Environment, Planning and Regeneration

---

16 April 2012

Dear Mr McArdle

Thank you for the further considered reply.

Being a "traffic warden" is an unpopular job and does lead to confrontation on occasion. Many years ago I stopped alongside a car in the High Street where a lady warden was being subject to a tirade of grossly offensive abuse from a motorist who had been issued with a ticket. Luckily a plains clothes policeman wandered past and took charge and so I did not have to try and intervene in what was an ugly confrontation. For that reason I have no objection to traffic wardens bearing obvious camera & recording equipment for use only when a confrontation is anticipated and I would hope that the vast majority of Barnet residents would agree with me.

However, the cameras which NSL use are, to all intents and purposes, hidden and will only record what they are pointed at so can be mis-used. For that reason, I am against the use of these tiny cameras and think that most residents would be unhappy to be filmed by them.

One can understand that sometimes motorists do get annoyed, particularly if they are issued with a ticket in incorrect circumstances and then might have to deal with a stubborn correspondence clerk. The adage of innocent until proven guilty is reversed in the case of parking tickets.

Even the handheld cameras can be misused. Please see the attached photograph 

which I took in Chipping Close on Friday evening. I have no idea whose car it is; I was just passing. Guess what the piece of white paper is? It is a dispensation that someone has printed out and put in the windscreen of their car. The number appears to be 6***. So now that motorist has to start making representations when they appear to have done nothing wrong. I know that you are having some troubles with Civica at the moment - are the details of motorists with dispensations not reaching the handheld equipment of the wardens? If that is the case, is the council being entirely fair and honest in its dealings by wandering around issuing tickets that they know ought not to be issued. Are you merely passing the problem on to innocent motorists?

I would be interested to know if the photographs taken on this occasion by the traffic warden also show the piece of paper with the dispensation number? Couldn't you allow your wardens to use their judgment in such a case?

If the ticket has been incorrectly issued you could make someones life easier by writing to them straightaway apologising for the error and cancelling the ticket.

I look forward to hearing from you

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

Oh dear, more out of office annoyance followed.

Thank you for your e-mail but I am out of the office until Friday 20 April so will not see it until then. Unless it is some matter that I need to deal with personally it may be better for you to contact instead one of the following:

Jose Garcia
Enforcement Manager
All enforcement matters including NSL mobilisation

Jose.garcia@barnet.gov.uk
Tel: 020 8359 5001 Mob 07787 266422

Mick Dolan
Interim Parking Maintenance Manager
Maintenance, finance and procurement
Mick.dolan@barnet.gov.uk
Tel: 02083595161 Mob: 07903109744

James Norman
Information Team Leader
Penalty Charge Notice processing
james.norman@barnet.gov.uk
Tel: 020 8359 7799

Geraldine Edwards
Acting Operations Manager
Complaints, FOIA requests, and all non PCN correspondence together with NSL mobilisation for Business Process Operations

Geraldine.edwards@barnet.gov.uk
Tel: 020 8359 7542

Now is the time for you to have your say on body worn CCTV. If you don't think it is suitable for Barnet then send an email. I suggest the following receipients

pam.wharfe@barnet.gov.uk

john.mcardle@barnet.govo.uk

cllr.b.coleman@barnet.gov.uk

cllr.r.cornelius@barnet.gov.uk

Mr Mustard knows of 3 tickets issued to residents who hold a dispensation. It is tedious but you will have to appeal. Why not ask for compensation of an amount equal to the value of the defective ticket?

Update email received 07.52 ( Mr Mustard was in the final throes of his slumbers and only just had his first cup of tea and it is now 09:34 ) 

Dear Mr Mustard

I’m out of circulation for a couple of days but have asked a colleague to look into this for me.

We’ll get back to you this week.

John McArdle

Whatever else people might think of Mr McArdle he is at least diligent and able to prioritise so thank you John for getting someone onto this as you can get yourself and the department some brownie points if you fix this dispensation problem fast, sadly they will only cancel out some of the minus points you have had, but it is progress and it would be "putting the community first"

Update Saturday 21 April 2012

Mr McArdle has done his stuff and replied as follows, with Mr Mustard's added emphasis:

Dear MrMustard

I have now had the opportunity to review our records concerning the PCN issued to the vehicle displaying the reference to Dispensation number 6*** in Chipping Close, and can confirm that the Dispensation was valid for that location at that time.

The issuing officer has noted the number, but has wrongly concluded that it was not valid and proceeded on that basis. The enforcement photographs do indeed show the document in your own picture. There was no reported fault with that part of the Civica system at the time and none has been logged since 

In the circumstances the charge will be withdrawn without any further action on the part of the motorist. Hurrah - let's hope they don't just pay it.

I will also ensure that a change to our procedures is implemented to add a further layer of checking where an officer has grounds to believe that a dispensation may be in place.

Thank you for your interest and for bringing this matter to my attention.

John McArdle

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard