To you madam, not £110, not even £55 but £nil

and the onus on the council is to apply some common sense

Mr Mustard is helping a lady who accidentally found herself in a section of the Lodge Lane car park at 5.05pm and became the lucky owner of a yellow plastic envelope containing a PCN.

Now the market is, of course, long gone at 5pm with most markets packing up about 3pm. The traffic wardens know the usual finish time and the wardens in North Finchley probably all set their watches for 3.30pm on a Friday afternoon in order to do some easy parking ticket issuing and avoid any management pressure for not having given out sufficient PCN (no, of course there aren't targets but go back to base without having issued any PCN and see how big the rollocking is).

Is it clear where you can and can't park? The PATAS case that Mr Mustard made a note of some months ago says not, so he is confident that after the council have paid the £40 PATAS hearing fee and he presents his arguments that the adjudicator will find in his favour. Thus the motorist is not going to pay the £110 value of the PCN within 28 days or even avail herself of the "generous" offer to pay £55 within 14 days as she hasn't done anything wrong and Mr Mustard can prove it.

In about 3 months, if it goes that far, Mr Mustard will bring you the result.

If you have a PCN issued in the red zone of the Lodge Lane Car park, don't pay it, email mrmustard@zoho.com and watch the PCN magically get cancelled (very slow trick which takes 3 to 6 months).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Not seeing red

A stall at Lodge Lane Car Park - seeing Green

A Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) was said to have been issue to Mr L's car alleging that it was parked in a restricted area within Lodge Lane car park. He says that the car was parked by his wife, and when he parked this car next to hers about an hour later he did not see any PCN on the first car.

It now transpires that he appealed to an Adjudicator about the ticket he received on the car that he parked, and that that appeal was allowed. The grounds of appeal in that case were the same as in this one, i.e. that the red lines which are supposed to demarcate the market (restricted) parts of the car park are so faded that the original white lines are showing through, making it impossible to know, particularly in the dark and when it was raining, whether or not a parking place lies within or without the restricted part of the car park.

I adjourned the case and asked the Authority to provide a map which showed where Mr L's car was parked within the car park, and which also showed the position of the parts said to be reserved for the market, and the position of all signs/timeplates to that effect. They were also asked to relate the photographs of the car taken by the Civil Enforcement Officer (CEO) to the map and other photographs produced. I also asked Mr L to produce copies of the photographs he sent to the Authority with his original representations.

The Authority now concede that they cannot say where within the car park Mr L's car was positioned, as the CEO's photographs were so dark, but point out that photographic evidence is not a statutory requirement. In effect they say that the CEO had recorded that the car was parked in a restricted section of the car park, and that should be sufficient evidence for this PCN to be upheld.

Mr L has produced photographs showing an area where it is indeed clear that the red lines have almost disappeared, giving way to the original white lines underneath.

I can do no better than to quote from my fellow Adjudicator Mr Chan in his decision:

The Authority said that photographs are not a legal requirement. This might well be the case but where an Appellant has alleged poor signage, a respondent Authority risks a direction that the PCN must be cancelled unless it produces evidence of adequate signage. The Authority has accepted that some of the red paint has worn away. It can see from the CEO's photographs that there was an issue with lighting condition. Instead of providing photographs under similar conditions to show how visible the lines would have been, the Authority produced images of the car park in broad daylight and when the ground was dry. Further, the date on which these images are taken is not identified. There is therefore little to no evidence which would enable me to conclude that the signage was adequate when the Appellant parked his vehicle.
   
In this case the Authority have no way of showing where within the red zone Mr L's car was parked. As it is clear that significant areas of the red markings have worn away to the point that they could not be relied on as adequate signage, and given that Mr L implies that his car was within one of those areas, I cannot be satisfied that the signage of the restriction that he is said have breached was adequate.

I therefore allow this appeal.

If it was dark it is most likely that the PCN was given out after the market had packed up and gone home for the day and so this PCN doesn't regulate traffic but simply becomes a means of trying to raise money for the Council. If you have a parking ticket from Lodge Lane Car Park Mr Mustard has some other arguments to use apart from the council's inability to prove their case.

Don't pay your PCN, look at the photos online and consult with mrmustard@zoho.com

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.

Lodge Lane Car Park

http://theonlygreenroom.blogspot.co.uk

Mr Mustard is assisting a resident who paid for 180 minutes parking using pay-by-phone but got a lesser amount of time and a parking ticket. I see there was also a case which went to the independent adjudicator last week where in the very same car park another person paid for 180 minutes but received only 30.

Mr Mustard wonders if there is a problem at location 7521

Mr Mustard would like to hear from you if you received less time than you believe you ordered or were charged a different price than is shown on the board. Email him at mrmustard@zoho.com

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard