Unfairness built into the PCN system

 

You park your car up for 10 days as you know you won't use it in that time due a personal matter and use an unrestricted bay. It is probably only marked out to keep you away from junctions and to keep passing traffic more central. You return to your car and find that during your absence it has had a 24 hour disabled bay painted around it and you have two PCNs. You make informal challenges to the PCNs which get rejected and then you make formal representations against the Notices to Owner and one of those is rejected (and the other was pending).

The motorist started an Appeal at the tribunal, who are independent, and as soon as he did that Ealing Council cancelled both PCNs.

Lots of things wrong here to think about.

Firstly, why did a 'traffic warden' (Civil Enforcement Officer) issue the first PCN and why was the second PCN issued?

Taking the second one first, when a bay operates continuously you only commit one contravention when you park. You do not magically commit a fresh contravention each day. The second PCN was therefore unlawful from the off.

There are an awful lot of traffic wardens who do not see the obvious clues.

Firstly, they should come out of the base each morning armed with a list of about to be painted bays so that they can be aware of them and not issue a PCN in this situation rather than give out clearly unfair PCNs which the public have to spend their time fighting and not everyone is as robust as this motorist was. Anyone of a nervous disposition might just pay up, anyone who can't afford to pay the full penalty value would rather pay 50%, or anyone with a lease car might see the lease company pay it and recharge them and add a fee. The concept of innocent until proven guilty does not work in parking, here the burden of proof is reversed.

Secondly, the traffic warden is required to check that signs and lines are correct. Surely they must see how crisp the lines are as compared to the free bays, they should also see the chalk lines which are placed so that nice straight lines get painted and chalk lines are quickly washed away so the clues are there if you look for them.

Thirdly the traffic warden will have a mental map of their patch and should know this disabled bay wasn't there last time they came this way.

Fourthly they should notice that the bay has been incorrectly painted as there should be two transverse markings, one to mark the end of the bay pay and one to mark the end of the disabled bay.

The traffic warden (s) get 0/10 here.

Now we look at the Notice of Rejection. Is that perfect?

The council knew when the bay lines were painted and the motorist told them that when he parked the disabled bay was not there (it really isn't something you would make up). Did they check the list of vehicles which were parked there when the lines were painted, by the same council (Ealing) or their contractor. That is a logical thing to do. Many authorities do it when they suspend a bay. The letter does not say if they checked the notes of whoever installed the bay. If Ealing Council don't have such a procedure they are being unfair to the public.

The paragraph which starts with 'Although we sympathise...' is utter bunkum. They have been told the bay had not been painted and thus there was no sign to face and you cannot comply with a sign which does not exist. Their sympathy is crocodile tears.

Pretending that they are somehow prevented from cancelling this PCN due to a need to be fair is self-serving nonsense. No-one else knows if your PCN is cancelled or not and every PCN has to be considered on its own facts. The Statutory Guidance of the Secretary of State says that a council can cancel a PCN even if it is correct. Ealing Council were being unfair to this motorist.

Even a decision by an independent adjudicator, a qualified lawyer, doesn't set a precedent so no decision by a council employee, or their contractor, will do so. It is a sentence included to try and make out that the council are hidebound 'we would love to cancel your PCN but our hands are tied...' no, they aren't.

Then comes the very generous offer, oh so tempting. You did nothing wrong so you can pay 50% of the penalty for being innocent. Luckily this motorist said no.

There is a threat which follows closely. If you take us to the tribunal we will come after you for the 100% the whole £130.

So that's 0/10 for the Notice of Rejection.

Many motorists give up at that point as they think the tribunal might be a scary place with judges in wigs and gowns and a lot of formality which they won't be able to cope with. It isn't at all like that. The hearings can now take place by video call so you don't have to troop into central London, as Mr Mustard has been doing nearly every week for a decade. The hearings are informal and if you did attend one in person it is just you sat across a large desk from the adjudicator on the other side and you have a chat about the PCN, that's it.

As soon as the Appeal was started at London Tribunals, where the independent adjudicators work, Ealing Council threw in the towel, cancelled this PCN and the other one. What happened to precedent? surely this is unfair on all the other motorists whose appeals they are still contesting?

What do you know? it was all a big bluff. If you think you are in the right ignore all the bluff and bluster which the council come out with, start down your chosen course and challenge the PCN, make representations against the Notice to Owner, and then go to London Tribunals with your Appeal against the Notice of Rejection. Put all thoughts of the discount out of your head except the notion of having a 100% discount.

Ealing Council are no worse than any other, they are playing the system as best they can to maximise their income. They had all the facts about this PCN at this disposal from the off, or at least they should have done. They tried to crowbar 50% out of an unfair PCN, it didn't work and they burned a tribunal fee of c.£30 in the process.

Never take a council at face value, put your PCN on www.ftla.uk to receive independent expert advice from multiple experts which includes Mr Mustard.

The end.

Ealing Council - believing anything to save time and/or money

Here is a car committing a contravention whilst bearing cloned numberplates

 For the displayed numberplate DVLA provided the following data 

Mr Mustard make some enquiries of Ealing Council in order to see the extent to which they make sure they are sending a PCN to the keeper of the vehicle seen in their cctv.

 

What we can see from this is that between receiving the DVLA data and issuing the PCN there is no sanity check to make sure that the car in view is at least a grey Mini (It could still be a clone as a dodgy Mini owner will try to use the numberplate of another Mini but that would be reasonable behaviour by the council).

There are two reasons why Ealing Council should be checking the reasonableness of DVLA provided data. The first one is the legal basis. The legislation says this about the contents of a PCN

To meet this requirement the council must believe that the vehicle captured by their camera is the one for which they have obtained DVLA data and clearly that is not the case here.

Secondly, as pointed out by one of Mr Mustard's careful readers, the KADOE (Keeper at date of event contact with DVLA) requires that a check be carried out. The standard wording from an old contract follows

Ealing Council have inadequate audit processes in place and need to up their game. From now on Mr Mustard is going to report every obviously cloned car to DVLA when a council has not noticed the bleeding obvious and therefore breached their contract.

The end.

 

PCNs should not be more important than everything else in life.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Textile_cone.JPG

The image is of a Cone snail. Slow moving but highly venomous and used here to represent Ealing Council.

Councils all over London now make huge amounts of money from issuing PCNs and they are run as semi-automatic, relentless, unforgiving, money making machines. Humanity, common-sense, proportionality, good manners all often go missing and PCNs take on lives of their own. To council staff and their outsourcing agents they are just numbers on pieces of paper, real lives don't get considered.

Mr Mustard receives requests for help from all corners of London and via various methods; personal recommendation, prior assistance, a chance conversation, via people's work colleagues, because he was on the TV once and as he contributes to web forums. One such case came his way on 12 April when he read of a PCN issued in May 2021 which was still rumbling along. He offered to deal with the matter and was instructed on 13 April. The motorist had kept everything even though they would have been entitled to throw it all in the bin on the grounds that Ealing Council appeared to have abandoned the PCN.

Here is the history.

3 May 21: The driver, let us call them Mrs X, drove past a 'no motor vehicles' sign. Mr Mustard has some arguments about signage but this was one location which Ealing Council has since abandoned, along with many others, because of resident backlash so there hadn't been many tribunal cases to assist Mr Mustard with winning arguments.

19 May 21: A £130 PCN was sent by post but not received.

5 July 21: A Charge Certificate was issued for £195. 

6 July 21: Mrs X wrote in saying she had not received the PCN.

1 December 21: A standard 'you are too late' non-reply was sent along with a number of Frequently Asked Questions and their responses which leaves Mrs X to try and answer her own question. It is lazy and unhelpful. The letter said that if she hadn't paid within 14 days the council would register the PCN as a debt at Northampton County Court. This when they knew that the PCN had not been served so they were taking advantage of Mrs X. Every document is based on the presumption of the previous one having been served, which they knew had not happened.

The year 2022: Nothing at all was received by Mrs X. Any reasonable person would think the matter was at an end. The council are under a duty to act with reasonable expedition. Doing naff all for a year isn't reasonable but to the council a PCN is as good as cash and they want it.

15 February 23: Ealing sent another standard letter which was in similar form to the one of 15 February 23. Again, it said they would register the PCN as a debt debt in 14 days if still unpaid. These letters also mention bailiffs. They do not contain a clear explanation of the Statutory Declaration procedure.

Did Ealing wait 14 days? No.

18 February 23: Ealing Council registered the PCN as a debt. Mrs X asked for help on the PePiPoo web forum

21 February: Mrs X swore a Statutory Declaration at Willesden County Court.

27 February: Northampton County Court, who deal with all PCN debt registrations, rewound the process to the start.

9 March 23: Ealing wrote to Mrs X saying they were going to send a fresh PCN. They couldn't resist poking her in the eye about sending another charge certificate and registering the PCN as a debt at Court if she did nothing. This is outrageous bullying, the lady has not been in a position once to exercise her right to make representations, except out of time which Ealing could have considered but wrongly said they were 'unable' to when they meant 'unwilling' to.

10 March 23: Fresh PCN issued by post.

17 March 23: Mrs X challenges the PCN on the grounds of unreasonable delay on the part of the council and mentions the oft quoted case of Davis v Kensington & Chelsea which adjudicators usually follow the logic of. She wrote that she had no recollection of 3 May 2021 (nor does Mr Mustard as it was the May Day bank holiday. He went for a walk at Ashridge the day before and helped move furniture the day after as they are in his diary, but for that day nothing. Mr Mustard suspects that almost no-one would know what they were doing unless it was a major event).

Note: When a motorist starts quoting previous adjudication decisions at a council that council ought to stop and realise they are facing a motorist who is well informed and likely to take them to the tribunal. Not their way, Ealing Council want the money too much so reject perfectly reasonable representations.

6 April 23: Ealing reject the representations. They waffled on about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (missing the irony that they took most of them out, including this one). They claimed they had to be fair, correct and consistent and cancelling this PCN would set a precedent. That was absolute tosh, each PCN has to be considered on its own merits. Adjudicators are not bound by their previous decisions, let alone councils.

13 April 23: Mrs X instructs Mr Mustard as her representative on the usual basis that eh charges absolutley nothing for his help and if the PCN gets cancelled a donation is made directly to the North London Hospice.

15 April 23: Mr Mustard started the Appeal to the independent adjudicator. Here are the simple grounds he started with:

Ealing Council have now incurred the £25 tribunal fee.

18 April 23: The tribunal register the Appeal and notify Ealing Council.

20 April 23: Ealing Council throw in the towel and cancel the PCN. 

Even in their response they have to poke Mrs X in the eye twice more, once about it being a contravention (that has not been tested, it was still an alleged contravention if an adjudicator had not considered it) and secondly that a two year delay didn't set a precedent for cancellation for any similar or additional PCNs. (Ealing have Mrs X's vehicle registration and so know if there are any more PCNs. They know full well that any other moribund PCNs are more likely than not going to be expunged by an independent adjudicator).

22 April 23: Mrs X was delighted with the outcome. Her daughter had been helping her and this is what she emailed to Mr Mustard.

Mr Mustard is always pleased when the people he has helped make donations to the Hospice and/or to PePiPoo in grateful thanks and that is all the reward he needs.

Council staff need to think a bit harder about what they are doing to people. If they had to sit at a desk opposite people, real human beings, and tell them that their representations, perfectly reasonable ones, ones with track records of success, were being refused they would struggle to do it and the miserable, mercenary, monstrous, machiavellian maladministration which the general public currently has to endure, would abate.

Think about it council parking staff, you are dealing with real people. You may behave like automatons but you are affecting real lives.

The end.

Ealing - Pandemic parking enforcement

Full marks to Ealing Council for responding to Mr Mustard's FOI request, made on twitter, in a mere 2 days. Other authorities are saying they don't know when they'll be able to answer, perhaps after 40 days or not at all. One is even nudging requestors to withdraw the question.

A worrying number of traffic wardens are off sick. Many of the ones who aren't sick should be redeployed to something more useful.

Mr Mustard has followed up for a more precise answer as this does not answer the question. You can see why Mr Mustard is confused when you contrast the above with what Ealing are tweeting and what is on their website.

Congestion? there is almost zero traffic, at levels last seen in 1955. A bogus justification for a PCN.

If a loading bay is dangerous, it is in the wrong place. High Streets are deserted, there is plenty of space for commercial vehicles to unload, another false reason to enforce.

There must be a better easier solution than making tired NHS staff working long hours jump through administrative hoops. Barnet, for example, allow free parking in residents bays, Ealing could do the same.

Overall, it doesn't look like Ealing Council have pared back enforcement very much, the main limiting factor will be the number of traffic wardens who are fit to work.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update: 9 April

Having had a less than full and frank response to one of his questions, Mr Mustard asked for it to be answered. It was at the second attempt.

It wasn't, of course, a 'further' question, but a request to answer what was asked the first time. The first answer was not accurate as claimed, Mr Mustard really doesn't understand why councils, and Ealing are not alone in this, try to pretend that black is white when it clearly isn't.

Mr Mustard had asked which contraventions, per the standard PCN code list, were no longer being enforced.

The accurate answer is none at all, they can all be enforced.

So that's it, more or less business as usual in Ealing when it comes to issuing PCNs.

Ealing Council - data hoarders

Monster storage

Mr Mustard has the useful habit of keeping an eye on every PCN which he has touched which is still, as far as he knows, live in a council's eyes. This can lead to him checking a PCN every 2 weeks for 3 years or more, and surprised though you may be at the thought, moribund PCNs do suddenly take on a new life sometimes. Recently Harrow Council, for example, suddenly having woken up sleeping PCNs from 2016 which they should have written off and started sending out Orders For Recovery, preparatory to instructing a bailiff. Pretty tough if you had moved 18 months ago, as being clamped will be the first thing you know.

Delay in processing a PCN should be fatal to a council's case if you can get it to the tribunal as this recent decision shows.

Mr Mustard has some 2016 PCNs from Ealing Council which he has been keeping an eye on. They had been to a bailiff whose behaviour towards a blue badge holder Mr Mustard had complained about. It is a rare council that does anything with a PCN after the bailiff has failed and having done nothing since 2017 Ealing Council should have at the least set the balance to zero, as they had abandoned chasing, or actually deleted the data in accordance with their stated policy. Mr Mustard thought he would find out how much old data they were keeping. Here is what he found out.

That is an awful lot of data and Mr Mustard cannot see that it is proportionate or necessary so he has challenged Ealing Council as below:

Let's see what sort of response arrives.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Ealing Council issue a permit for a non-existent car

Mr Mustard's client accidentally used the letter 'O' instead of the number '0' when applying for a residents permit. Ealing Council issued it with a letter O where the number zero should have been. When the traffic warden wandered down the street he did not find a permit with the exactly matching registration and so issued a PCN. Unsurprisingly the resident challenged the PCN as O&0 look pretty similar unless you are a typeface buff and then you know the letter is round and the number is oval. The council rejected the challenge but didn't point out the incorrect permit issue.

At this juncture Mr Mustard was consulted, he guessed the problem, got his client to talk to Ealing Council permit department and hey presto one cancelled PCN and the client told to correct the permit entry (why the council couldn't do it is a mystery).

Given that if Mr Mustard wants a part for his car or to park it using PayByPhone or RingGo he enters his registration number and gets told the make, model, age, emissions etc etc of his car, he doesn't see why the council can't check to make sure they are issuing a permit to an actual car in existence. Thus, he has written to Ealing Council as below.

What do you think readers? Ealing Council will agree and amend their systems or reply saying the onus is on the motorist to get it right, completely forgetting that it is their onus to check the paperwork and not issue permits to vehicles that don't exist?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Do bailiffs bully the disabled?

Without access being offered, entry would not be legal

Mr Mustard's client has got herself in a bit of a pickle. A proud person, she didn't want to bother him with her Ealing PCNs as she thought she could sort them out herself. Thanks though to being ill such that she has to be checked up on every 2 months and suffering from depression due to her illness, lack of money and general quality of life, she has not beaten the PCNs and they have ended up with bailiffs.

Last June she asked Mr Mustard for help with the bailiff at a time when he was so overrun that he couldn't deal with bailiff matters (he also prefers to stop tickets reaching that stage) & passed her the details of a bailiff advice helpline. He told her not to worry as the bailiff could not remove or clamp her car. Guess what happened next? Yes, in September 16 a bailiff acting for Ealing Council clamped the car. Mr Mustard was on his way to the parking tribunal when it happened. He only had time to text the bailiff to tell him he could not clamp the car as the blue badge is permanently on display. Mr Mustard found out later that within 30 minutes the clamp was removed. That bailiff at least realised the game was up having chanced his arm with the wrong person. Mr Mustard's client may be ill but she will not be bullied.

Just before Christmas with perfect timing a second PCN reached the bailiff stage. Now Mr Mustard, as a debt collector in real life, accepts that bailiffs have a job to do and they have draconian powers of removal of goods. There are though also some limited checks on their power. In a civilised society parliament has decided that disabled people will not have their mode of transport removed. In addition, your home is your castle and forced entry cannot take place without specific court consent (for a traffic PCN, it can be for a magistrates court debt) which Mr Mustard suspects would not be granted against a disabled person claiming PIP as they won't have any assets worth the cost of seizure & sale.

The first Notice was delivered on 23 December 16. It was for 2 PCNs.

The next one came on 6 January (perhaps even bailiffs have some time off)

Just another 6 days and here is the third letter, just for one of the PCNs, not for both for some reason.

Another visit on 20 January, for both PCN this time. By now, the bailiff, or at least a bailiff, must have seen the car as it is parked off street outside the property in a disabled bay and with the blue badge clearly visible. It was also the case that the blue badge formed part of the representations which were made & the badge was issued by Ealing Council so they know they are sending a file to bailiffs for goods, nearly always the car, to be seized when the car is exempt by law from seizure. This is information which in Mr Mustard's view should be communicated to the bailiff by their client, Ealing Council (or any other one) at the start so that the disabled do not have their car clamped in error. The previous clamping by a bailiff in the employ of Collect Services may be a factor in them not having clamped or removed despite their many letters and in fact means that in their records they knew from the start of this correspondence that they could not remove the car.

The question is why are they hand delivering letters which state that they will remove 'your Vehicle' when they know it is exempt?

Only 4 days to wait and a third PCN has reached the bailiff stage.

Ooh, a different letter was issued on 3 February. The bailiff didn't need ANPR as the vehicle is usually parked outside the address on the warrant. Another threat to remove which the law will not allow. The balance cannot have increased if a bailiff (enforcement agent) has called recently as the debt already included 3 separate visit fees, one for each PCN, of £235 a pop.

Nearly a month went by, one of the warrants had expired and was not renewed so the debt dropped.

 Another 10 days, another letter.

On 13 March the ANPR letter was again sent containing another threat of illegal action.

Another 11 days and another visit and another illegal threat to remove the car

Another 10 days again, another letter threatening to break the law.

A month until the next letter, sorry if you are already bored, try imagining receiving all these letters especially if sick and living on benefits.

On 8 May Collect had got themselves a new template and sent a different letter about an appointment that never was and again illegally threatening to remove the car.

Just 3 days later back to one of the other letters

Mr Mustard can't quite read the date on the next letter but thinks it may be 10 June. It might be the final roll of the dice by Collect or else they saw that the Newlyn bailiff had only gone and clamped the same car on behalf of Brent Council, a matter about which a solicitor is still waiting a response from Brent Council, the clamp having only been removed after it was in place for 6 days.

Mr Mustard wonders if Ealing Council keep a close enough eye on what their bailiffs get up to, whether sending the debts of Motability car drivers and blue badge holders to bailiffs is even reasonable given that the power of the bailiff is to seize goods and they can't seize the car (and secondhand household effects are pretty worthless) and whether sending 15 letters threatening the removal of an exempt item is harassment (a question which Mr Mustard will ask his lawyer tomorrow but feel free to comment if you are one).

It really isn't very attractive to threaten to break the law in order to enforce it.

How has it made the lady herself feel? Like this:

There are right and wrong ways of doing your job. If the above message is the result of how it is currently done, it is undoubtedly the wrong way.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

It takes 18 months for Ealing Council to do the right thing

The above image is Ealing Council's reverse date order log of all events for one PCN. If you look at the seventh line from the bottom you will see that it is a statutory document which has been returned. The only document issued at that stage was a postal PCN for a bus lane contravention. That should signal a pause in the process whilst the council establishes why the document came back (somewhere between the DVLA and Ealing Council the address got mangled, it was correctly recorded at DVLA). Did it stop the process? did it hell as like. The very next day the council issued the Enforcement Notice (not to be confused with a Notice of Enforcement) which is the bus lane equivalent of a parking Notice to Owner. From 15 October onwards every action taken by Ealing Council was ultra vires, 'beyond their powers', or just plain illegal to you and me, as well as immoral but council parking departments are often a moral free zone.

Mr Mustard's chronology in forward date order is easier to follow:

Following the filing of a witness statement, the council get the chance to reconsider their position and cancel, the smart choice, or to refer the matter to the tribunal. They chose the latter and then got hit with one of Mr Mustard's skeleton arguments, the type of argument which a certain adjudicator has said looks nothing like a skeleton, it being more than bare bones:

At this point many councils recognise they are in for a battle and gracefully withdraw, especially as failure looked inevitable on the PCN service point alone, but no, Ealing Council let the matter go to a hearing. Mr Mustard had 6 hearings that day and didn't expect that disposing of Ealing would slow him down much. The Adjudicator was more than fair to Ealing, who had been given 7 days notice of the skeleton argument so had ample time to respond to it, and he asked them to clarify two points which was too much for Ealing. Finally after 18 months of almost relentless pursuit (a bit of a hiatus in the middle) they withdrew the Appeal which automatically means the cancellation of the PCN.

Late is usually regarded as within 4 days of the hearing.

What a palaver, one which Mr Mustard is never defeated by, he simply reacts properly and in time to every piece of paper.

Ealing Council were bang out of order in continuing to escalate the case after the return of the postal PCN. Just looking at the file at that time would have revealed the address error and they could & should have sent a fresh PCN to the correct address or cancelled (a fresh PCN might have been out of time but that isn't the question today). The way they were headed the matter would have been with the bailiff before long and bailiffs don't listen to not had the PCN stories, they just take your car (generally speaking). Ealing Council are guilty, in Mr Mustard's view, of an abuse of process. What a pity there isn't a regular external audit scheme to check that they are not misusing their powers.

Councils have more power than they can be trusted with.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Some councils are making it harder to challenge PCN

A public body has a general duty at law to be procedurally fair. They should not therefore add further stages into a process which is enshrined in law. Mr Mustard has noticed some councils (not Barnet) make you go through several extra input screens before you can actually state your challenge, this will exhaust some people whose attention span or determination is not as great as Mr Mustard's (Mr Mustard has been prompted to write this blog post because a gentleman who has asked for advice about an Ealing PCN did not know what his contravention code was. You have to know where to look as it is in tiny type).

You only need the 52 but having tested the system Mr Mustard has discovered that you can type in any existing code number and see what 'sage advice' is being given for that particular contravention code.

On the home page of Ealing Council (they are not the only guilty party, Southwark is the same & there will be others) you find this car icon to roll your mouse over

That changes the box to this one, click on 'Manage & View'

That takes you to this screen which you think will be the place where you make a challenge or representation (a challenge to an on street PCN or a representation to a postal PCN, Notice to Owner to Enforcement Notice - documents with similar purposes, to notify the vehicle Owner of a contravention)

Having chosen 'Challenge a parking ticket' you get to enter your PCN number and contravention code (a number from 01 to 99) in the boxes

Click continue and you then get offered some reasons to choose from. At this point Mr Mustard ignores the proffered options and simply clicks 'continue' as he does not need to read any partial, misguided advice.

However, for the purposes of the blog he duly clicked. He found he was only allowed to click 4 reasons so he pressed F5 and could then click the rest. Why would a council want to limit the public's search for information?

For funerals a council could ask for more information or they could take account of the tone of the challenge and perhaps decide that the person is telling the truth. They do not have to check, it is an option. Why should the public trust a council which does not trust them?

The phrase 'the PCN remains valid' is misleading. It was certainly validly issued but it wasn't valid if it contained an error in the street name or bore the wrong registration number or if the traffic warden put it back in their pocket having not served it for some reason. Don't rely on non-service as a reason to challenge, find some other ground of representation. Mr Mustard is merely pointing out here the misleading language which councils use in an effort to get you to give up and pay (Mr Mustard doesn't do that).

Ealing Council seem to have omitted all sorts of other possible reasons, such as 'I was not the Owner of the vehicle' which is a statutory ground so this is very poor of them.

A sign that prohibits all vehicles (including cycles except if pushed) has no words. It is a round white sign with a red border. (Hardly anyone seems to recognise that sign). The flying motorbike sign (a motorbike on top of a car) does not mean that motorbikes and cars are prohibited but all motor vehicles and so Ealing's explanation about picturing the type of vehicle is just plain wrong.

I'm a visitor, I wasn't aware of the rules (which is a naughty way to try and get you to implicate yourself) could have the explanation that the rules were not properly signed.

You could live in Ealing and still be the victim of cloning.

The advice that Ealing are giving needs to be clear, comprehensive, accurate and meet with the Regulations & any Court decisions; it doesn't.

 

Loading; if you were moving home and unloading your possessions then you won't have loading paperwork but you might have a new rental agreement which it would be better to produce. If you are helping a friend then a letter from them is the best thing to produce.

Not everyone uses a breakdown emergency service. If you break down and your partner is handy with mechanical things, they may have come out to help you, or a friend or neighbour. Best to produce a letter from them explaining what happened. 

There is not a 24 hour limitation. If the breakdown was following an accident after which you were hospitalised for 48 hours that would be a reason beyond your control and grounds for cancellation.

If you do as Mr Mustard does and ignore all the peripheral nonsense and simply click continue, then you get this screen. Ealing are not helpful, they make you enter your registration number again. Really, Ealing, anyone would think you were trying to make it difficult for the motorist.

https://ealing.xrxpsc.com/OCM/Default.aspx

Would you like to cut out the cr@p & go straight to that screen, then simply click here.

Mr Mustard then thought he would make a quick comparison of the sage advice being dished out by Southwark for code 01 to see if it was the same, it wasn't.

Their loading explanation is better except that you don't have to have multiple items so a single trip is fine, unlike what Southwark say. A fridge, new or used, is one item and it is usually bulky &/or heavy so counts as a load. You do not have to provide official paperwork as you might have an old fridge which you are lending or giving to a friend as you have purchased a new one.

To cut the cr@p in Southwark, use this link.

Local authorities, eh, what can you do with them.

Mr Mustard's conclusion is that some councils don't really want you to challenge your PCN, just to pay it. That process has of course been made really easy.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard