How compliant is fully compliant?

Mr Mustard loves some of the nonsense which gets written in letters rejecting perfectly valid claims. Here is an example:

There are two possible problems with this sentence.

The first is that in the year 2016 Mr Mustard has completed his work on 82 Barnet Council PCN and has lost twice at the tribunal having been there 44 times. The other 38 PCN were cancelled by Barnet Council based upon what Mr Mustard himself said in his challenges so 38/82 = 46% of the time the council agree with him, 42/82 = 51% of the time an independent adjudicator, a lawyer, agrees with him and 2% of the time Mr Mustard is wrong (he is much more wrong when he is in Ealing, about 95% of the time but that is about a moving traffic violation case where the battle has been lost but the war continues) so maybe, just maybe, he was correct in this case. (1% is lost in rounding).

The second reason is that the argument employed is one that has been found in Mr Mustard's favour three times already at the tribunal and although tribunal decisions are not binding, they are persuasive, so the same outcome is likely.

The case will be at the tribunal by the end of July. We'll see how the alleged careful consideration of the representations pans out.

Councils really should not write rejection letters which are not even-handed as they have a general duty at law to be fair.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

This blog should not be necessary (see update at end)

http://theonlygreenroom.blogspot.co.uk

This blog post really shouldn't be necessary.

It concerns a businessman in North Finchley who regularly parks in the Lodge Lane Car Park and PaysByPhone. He has the code to use, 7521, imprinted on his brain. You can see it in the above photo (if you find it in google images).

On 11 September 13 he arrived in the car park and PaidByPhone the sum of £3.25 (which for businesspeople includes vat which you might be able to reclaim, you can get receipts online from your PayByPhone account - they arrive as an email from support). The receipt number (Txn ID) is 97099284 and clearly covers from 8:11 until 8am the next day. It is for the correct day and the correct registration.

At 9.20am he got a £60 parking ticket (AG25051099). No worries, thought the businessman, he scrawled the fact of his payment across the PCN and sent it back to the council. He didn't hear anything more and thought that the obvious administrative blunder had been corrected (we don't know if the traffic warden made an error or if the payment wasn't showing on his handheld equipment).

On about 19 November he received a Charge Certificate putting the bill up to £90. His thoughts were probably not printable in a family blog. Anyway, he wrote in to the council to point out the blunder they had made and this PCN is unlawful after all but has, in the council's mind, been made lawful by his failure to respond to a Notice to Owner issued on 14 October 13 which he doesn't seem to have.

Shockingly, despite pointing out that payment has been correctly made the council's response (written by an employee of NSL naturally) is tough luck mate, you are out of time, you only had 28 days from the date of service of the Notice to Owner (approx 13 November 13 - except that it wasn't served because it didn't arrive for some reason). Technically the council are correct, they can disregard any formal representations outside of the 28+2 day period. However some commonsense should be applied. That rule does not exist so that the council can gain an unfair advantage over a motorist to collect payment for a contravention that clearly hasn't occurred.

Luckily this businessman had met Mr Mustard at a dinner party held by a long time friend of his who just happened to be the computer boffin of Mr Mustard since the time of the IBM PC AT (gosh Mr Mustard is getting old - a 10mb Hard Disk Drive remember those?) and so knew of Mr M's expertise in the parking ticket arena. Rather than pay up for a quiet life, he made a phone call and here we are now.

Mr Mustard has the advantage of a direct line to the council client side parking managers and really he only wants to bother them with important matters of state but if NSL can't sort out a simple query, or are deliberately abusing the power invested in them, then he has to spend his time blogging about small matters (this might be symptomatic of a wider problem in Lodge Lane, see this blog as he has seen that time paid for problem occur twice) and bothering a parking manager who should be managing the bigger picture. Mr Mustard would also like to be blogging about some of the other bigger issues that abound in Barnet, as he is letting the blogger side down, and he can't because PCN wait for no man.

Mr Mustard predicts that this PCN will be cancelled by Friday. If it isn't he will have to follow the procedure that allows him to file a form TE9 at the TEC (a blank is being signed and sent to Mr Mustard so that he is ready to act) and then the PCN will go back to the beginning and appeals can be made on the regular timetable. It is all such a waste of time. Businesspeople want to run their businesses, not faff about with correspondence with should not have been necessary.

Anyone would think that the council were desperate for money at any cost, even at the cost of honesty?

One final thought: the council have a duty at law to be fair. Are they being?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

At 9:43 Mr Mustard emailed a parking manager. 
At 10:07 he got this reply. The parking manager knows a PR disaster when he sees one.

Dear Mr Mustard,

Thank you for drawing this to my attention. The Penalty Charge Notice has been cancelled.

I do not know why the CEO issued the PCN, as payment was made, I will be asking the CEO supervisors about this. With regard to the Notice Processing Officer disregarding the late challenge, I will be raising this with the manager of the Notice Processing Team when I next see him, I am not pleased with the response given in this instance.

I apologise to Mr X.

Kind regards

So all ends well for Mr X but what about everyone else in the same boat who have to deal with NSL by post or email, you can't phone them directly. They would have to go through the TE9 procedure if they even know of it andmight pay up rather than be bothered. Outsourcing certainly has its problems.

Parking ticket zealots - duty to be fair.

The following are the notes made by the independent adjudicator at PATAS and they nicely sum up the approach of Barnet Council and their enforcer, NSL Ltd.

The contravention is "parked without payment of the parking charge" and not as stated in the case summary parking "not purchased soon enough...". From the evidence it is clear that the appellant paid for parking and this is not disputed by the Authority.

The nature of this matter causes me to expand more than usual in my findings. It is also pertinent to note that the account provided by the appellant has at all times been consistent, and though there are some issues with the exact timing of the telephone calls the central core of the appellant's account has never been disputed.

The Authority relying on its Pay By Phone records submit that the appellant's first telephone call to pay by phone was made at 1.53pm and that the PCN was issued one minute earlier at 1.52pm; even if these times are reliable and correct with such a difference of one minute I find it surprising that the Authority would pursue this matter further. The Authority continues by stating that at 1.53pm the call was terminated because the appellant had given incorrect card expiry details, but the Authority accepts that the appellant rang back within two minutes and that ultimately at 1.58pm payment was successful. The Authority state that because the PCN was issued at 1.58pm this was six minutes after the PCN had been issued at 1.52pm and have continued to enforce this matter.

The appellant's account is that she first made the call at 1.50pm and that ultimately payment was made at 1.57pm. What the Authority in its zeal to pursue this case appear to have neglected is a duty to act fairly and proportionately. There has been no attempt by the appellant to evade payment. A motorist who has not used this system before has to register a number of details including debit card information and full description details of the vehicle in question. The service requires waiting for an operator whilst part of the service is also automated. This appellant was making the call from the information board and not from her vehicle. Even if the records relied on by the Authority from Pay By Phone are reliable there is still only a gap of six minutes between the issue of the PCN and the appellant first trying to make contact with Pay By Phone, and if the appellant's records are more reliable the gap is just five minutes.

This matter should be pursued no further. The appellant has acted honestly and genuinely throughout. I cannot perceive how an Authority can claim to act with fairness when it accepts that the motorist has paid for the parking, but submits that a gap of either 5 or 6 minutes due to attempts to engage with Pay By Phone is indicative of the motorist in these particular circumstances not acting quickly enough.

I am not satisfied that the PCN was correctly issued.

 

If you are in a similar situation you can quote PATAS file number 2130045792 in support of your argument.

 

Yours frugally

 

Mr Mustard