Cancerlation - no chance.

Mr Mustard is a busy man working full time and fighting councils PCNs in his 'spare' time. He gets tired just like anyone else who works hard but what keeps him going is helping people less fortunate than himself. A Mr Mustard shouldn't, in a civilised society, be necessary, but parking departments have gone so far down the raising revenue at all costs route that they have lost sight of humanity and need someone to tug on their chain, hard, and use the oxygen of bad publicity to try and make them change their ways.

This next decision of the tribunal isn't of a case that Mr Mustard dealt with but it makes him sick to his core of council parking departments. This heartless decision was by Barnet Council.

The vehicle belonged to Motability so we know that the motorist is physically disabled.

The appellant appeared before me today accompanied by Redacted, both of whom made submissions.

The contravention alleged in these proceedings was that this vehicle was parked in a disabled badge holders bay without displaying a valid disabled badge.

There was no dispute that an expired disabled badge was on display in the vehicle.

The appellant gave evidence as to her serious medical condition she living with cancer and other disabilities it being clear from her appearance that she was very unwell.

I accepted that although the appellant had intended renewing her badge she had overlooked that renewal due to the very serious health issues she was experiencing at the time together with a family bereavement.

I noted that her renewed badge was valid from 19-12-17 she not receiving it until 05-01-18. (The PCN was dated 7 December 2017)

I was satisfied that the contravention had occurred and acknowledged that the council had cancelled a previous penalty charge incurred by the appellant's vehicle on the ground of 'first time cancellation' but I was satisfied given the appellant's personal mitigation that this was on appeal a suitable case for the exercise of the council's discretion and I would invite it to cancel this PCN.

Why doesn't the council think that someone living with cancer, who is visibly ill, doesn't merit a second PCN cancellation. Is that just one mistake you are allowed in your lifetime, or one a year? We should be told.

Would any reasonable person not just cancel a PCN for someone who qualifies for a blue badge but doesn't put it on display for whatever reason, given that if they did, they would qualify for free parking.

Are cancer sufferers just a source of revenue for Barnet Council? Yes, they are.

No criticism can be made of the Adjudicator. Their legally defined role is to decide if a contravention has occurred or not. They will always do their best to find a legal escape route in deserving cases but in this one they did not have one available.

The exercise of discretion, or mitigation, rests entirely in a council's hands. They are so blinkered in parking departments as to whether or not a contravention occurred, and the revenue they raise, that they forget to be human.

Part of the fault for this rests with councillors who delegate too much power to council staff, or 'officers' as they are over grandly titled. Councillors need to set out circumstances in which all PCNs should be cancelled and that should include blue badge holders who forget to put their badge out, who place it upside down, who forget the clock, or who have health problems that cause them to overlook something.

Something in Mr Mustard's brain tells him that PCNs are not issued by Barnet Council until a blue badge has been expired for 14 days, in this case only 10 days had elapsed. It would have been a far better solution to issue a warning PCN for £0.00 which would have alerted the badge holder to the problem and prompted them to renew their badge.

Councillors are going to be knocking on your doors asking for your vote. Ask them what they are going to do to make PCNs less about revenue generation and to make the borough a nicer place in which to live without fear of miserable penalties.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Nasty Newham Council

Mr Mustard has a client who doesn't like bothering him so tries to sort out parking tickets themselves and this sometimes goes wrong and the odd PCN ends up with a bailiff. That isn't too bad a problem as the car belongs to Motability and is used to transport a disabled person so cannot, in law, be removed by a bailiff (although they will threaten to remove it to bully you into paying). The physical needs of the disabled person are clearly quite severe as they qualify for a Motability car and their mental needs are such that they have a litigation friend under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Newham Council have ended up with a PCN at the bailiff stage against the Litigation Friend as that is the name recorded on the V5 registration document rather than the disabled person. That record will be amended.

Newham have their own bailiffs who work under the umbrella name of OneSource which is a shared service company (OneSource Partnership Ltd has filed dormant accounts) owned by the boroughs of Havering, Newham & Bexley.

To ensure the life of the disabled person was not disrupted by the wrongful removal of the car Mr Mustard emailed OneSource as follows:

As you know, a Motability car cannot be clamped or removed by you for two reasons. The first is that it is not the property of A (the litigation friend) or B (the disabled person). The second is that a car used for the transport of a disabled person is exempt, and a Motability car is patently such a vehicle & is so used.

What came back, after a bit of email ping pong, was this:

We are aware that Motability vehicles cannot be removed. Please be aware that under the standard terms and conditions of the Motability scheme the registered keeper of the vehicle is liable to pay all outstanding penalties and fines and failure to do so is likely to be regarded as “breach of contract” and may lead to the cancellation of the agreement and/or to you being refused Motability finance in future. oneSource Enforcement Services will notify Motability of all cases where we believe the scheme is subject to misuse and a refusal to pay has been identified.

As Mr Mustard was writing as a representative the use of 'you being refused' clearly points to this being a standard wording. Mr Mustard had heard of such threats before but not seen them in writing. The 'paramount' privacy statement and the threat of disclosure seem somewhat at odds with one another?

He was unhappy with the proposed actions so he emailed OneSource again.

You are hereby cautioned not to intervene in a private contractual arrangement to which you are not a party and in which your proposed actions would amount to a Data Protection Breach. I would suggest you consult the borough's in house legal team / information experts before you take such a step.

This email has been copied to my solicitor.

That was 2 months ago and no further email has been received by Mr Mustard which is the usual modus operandi of an authority caught in a compromising situation - go quiet and hope the problem goes away.

One bailiff letter has been sent since threatening that they will take control of goods but they have no right of forced entry to premises and as both the disabled person and the litigation friend are in receipt of state benefits they are unlikely to have anything worth the costs of seizure and sale.

The whole way in which councils go about chasing debts due (& there is one here although there is an 84% chance Mr Mustard would have beaten the PCN if given it at the beginning) from the disabled and/or mentally ill is just wrong, it is based on the blunt use of force. There needs to be nuance and finesse and a tailored approach. Offering time to pay to people who don't have the money now would be a much better solution for both parties but councils rarely offer instalments and the bailiff approach of pay it all or else leads to resistance to paying anything. 

What it probably needs is one council to analyse current results for all PCNs involving the physically or mentally disabled (this will show up by the nature of the contravention i.e. blue badge slipped off dashboard cases) and then try a new approach of inviting instalments, arranging a meeting with the vehicle owner if there are multiple outstanding PCNs to both try and stop further PCNs being issued and to see what arrangement can be made about current ones or to establish if the financial situation of the person is so hopeless that writing off the debt is the only logical step. What the council are meant to do is to make 'due adjustment' for the disabled. It isn't greatly in evidence.

Councils automatically increase unpaid PCN values by 50% as soon as they possibly can. They do not have to do so. The regulations say 'may' increase not 'must'.

Sadly, Mr Mustard thinks that in a year's time, nothing will have changed.

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

Kicking you when you are down

Bailiffs are like the school bully, however, they can be stood up to.

Mr Mustard has so far seen the effects of four bailiffs in action. Their behaviour has not been pretty. They have a difficult job to do and don't do it very well at all. The bailiff who was in the wrong in clamping a Motability car was rude when unclamping when he should have been polite and apologetic.

Here is an example of a badly written bailiff's letter, bullying and a conflict of interest all in one A4 sheet.

click to enlarge

A badly written letter

Now in this case there were three warrants so the "s" of warrant(s) shouldn't be in parentheses. On the second line there is reference to "warrants" in the plural which would be wrong if there was only one warrant and this letter is evidently used in all circumstances. 

There is reference to client(s). Generally there will only be one client being collected for but it should be clear.

It isn't clear why the date of seizure of the vehicle is put in a larger font size or why a continental date format is used when a short form date format is used at the top of the letter.

The amount outstanding "as of today" cannot include an extra £30 a day. What NSL mean is please add £30 on for each extra day after the date of the letter up to the date of payment.

To prevent further enforcement action you could, in this case, file a form N244 for a personal hearing in front of a District Judge in your local County Court. The exhortation that "you must make a full payment" is to try and bully you into paying without considering your other options.

"Please call in to the call centre" must mean by telephone but Mr Mustard expects that when one of his friends says they will "call in" that he can expect a knock on the door not a phone call. A pity that the number of the call centre is not given. We are expected to guess that the telephone number at the top of the page is the one for the call centre? It is impossible to telephone the call centre at least 24 hours before payment unless you delay paying for 24 hours. The normal process would be that you decide, after a lot of thought, to pay and then you do so almost instantly. Thus you couldn't go back 24 hours to warn NSL / TASK that you are going to pay. In addition, the moment that you have paid you are entitled to the return of your vehicle. Councils that clamp and remove cars to a pound are expected to provide a round the clock service for their release.

Bullying

The reason this letter is a bullying one is that an out-of-time witness statement was filed with the Traffic Enforcement Centre ("TEC" - attached to Northampton County Court) and their decision on 7 November 13 was that the PCN would not be put back to the start of the process so that representations could be made. The Order of the TEC (essentially a Court) gave the applicant the option to file a form N244 for a local Court hearing within 14 days of service of the Order. Therefore nothing should have been done before 22 November 13. This bullying letter is 10 days premature, looks like an abuse of process and is the responsibility of Barnet Council who have a duty of care with regards to the behaviour of their bailiffs as it is the Council who are the creditor. The letter is designed to harass the recipient into paying up. 

If Mr Mustard sees another letter like this one, sent before time, he will start a complaint with the view to it reaching the Local Government Ombudsman.

Conflict of Interest

Barnet Council outsource its parking enforcement to NSL. It isn't clear from this letter who gave the instruction to proceed with enforcement but Mr Mustard has all of his money on NSL. So this means that NSL decided if their own bailiff Task Enforcement should proceed down a route which would lead to the car being auctioned off (it was worth something approaching £3,000 although seized cars somehow don't sell for their true value) and at that point Task (part of NSL) would bank their considerable fees. It simply cannot be right that the company that makes the decision profits from it. We are always being told that NSL don't make more money if they issue more PCN, well they do if the PCN end up for enforcement with the bailiff that they own. The Contract with NSL needs to be changed so that either Barnet Council make decisions affecting the bailiff (if they don't already and Mr Mustard hasn't seen that in the NSL contract) or NSL should be barred from giving warrants to Task.

Conclusion

The more closely Mr Mustard looks at parking enforcement the murkier it seems. Over the festive break he will decide what his plan is for 2014. It will probably include, amongst other things, the introduction of a voluntary charitable contribution for his personal assistance with a PCN appeal (but only for the 97% of cases that he wins) and talks for motorists, such as:

• How to park and not get a parking ticket
• The appeal process in outline and some standard arguments
• Dissecting the evidence pack prior to a PATAS hearing

If you have a group which would like Mr Mustard to educate them (for 20 to 30 minutes) do please get in touch at mrmustard@zoho.com

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Well done parking client side

Mr Mustard is about to do a rare thing and dish out some praise. He knows he is a nuisance to the parking client side and in the past he has criticised them (mostly anonymously he hopes although now he thinks about it he did name the Parking Manager, who is an interim, and suggest he really ought to leave and let a permanent staff person take over but that was before they had met and now the name of redacted won't again appear in the blog) but roughty toughty parking staff can look after themselves OK as they are cut from the same block as Mr Mustard, a former tax officer and currently a debt collector. 

Mr Mustard thinks that they are starting to get the hang of him. Last year Mr Mustard was disappointed when they didn't send flowers to the bereaved lady who they had unfairly ticketed outside of the hospice and they are now perhaps coming round to the view of the leader when he is approached by Mr Mustard on parking matters "but you'll be right Mr Mustard won't you" although he was then persuaded the opposite on that occasion by his staff. Actually Richard, Mr Mustard thinks he is right on the question of parking tickets from 2011 but perhaps for the wrong reason. Mr Mustard will correct that before the Ombudsman gets involved.

Anyway, Mr Mustard is sure that he told you about the "client" (friend, acquaintance, whatever) who had picked up 13 parking tickets and 7 of them were with bailiffs who could have set up a camp outside her property. They couldn't clamp the car because it belonged to Motability which tells you that the person gets the higher level of payment for her disabilities and given that the accommodation is rented and the client was under strict instructions to make sure sure the bailiff couldn't get in (and they can't break in for parking debt) the whole problem was going to go away within 12 months if his client kept her nerve.

Mr Mustard only found out yesterday that the bailiffs had been called off in mid-August when he first complained to the leader and the parking team about a PCN from 2010 still being chased, and there were also six from 2011, two from 2012 and four from 2013. The PCN included ones that simply should not have been issued including two for being more than 50cm from the kerb when the car clearly wasn't.

Anyway, on Wednesday something went wrong and a bailiff from Newlyn (in the news on the Mr Reasonable blog) clamped the Motability car in the Lodge Lane Car Park. He was also rude to the person concerned when she pointed out he couldn't clamp a car that wasn't hers and she had a physio appointment to get to. Mr Mustard got on the blower, the bailiff rang his own office and probably got told to remove the clamp sharpish, as that is what happened.

Now Mr Mustard was going to file a formal complaint to the council as they are responsible for the actions of bailiffs contracted by NSL on their behalf and stick the bailiff himself in front of the judge who issued his licence in the hope that it might get torn up but he had a pleasant surprise. The parking client side felt bad about what had happened, they had caused stress and inconvenience to a disabled motorist. They were under the cosh from Mr Mustard for the old PCN and he was busy appealing every in-time ticket to PATAS which costs the council £40 out of their budget each time (97% of the time Mr Mustard wins) and so they very generously chucked the towel in on every outstanding parking ticket perhaps because the bailiff gave them the opportunity to do so. It looks like Newlyn management and NSL will be having some discussions very soon about their behaviour and may have to pay for some of the tickets.

They also recognised that Mr Mustard was also providing a valuable advice service to transgressing motorists by educating them about where they have gone wrong and trying to stop it happening again (this is not as easy as it seems). Mr Mustard has suggested to the council many times that they should be running courses on how to park legally but that sits ill-at-ease with the budget requirement to make £7million nett from parking.

Anyone, well done parking client side (you know who you are and have had Mr Mustard's word that your name will not appear in this blog unless you want it to), pat yourselves on the back for a good decision.

Now Mr Mustard must go and continue with business as usual. He has a PATAS form to complete for someone who drove away before the PCN had started to be issued. A favourite trick of traffic wardens to claim otherwise.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Free bailiff training - Motability vehicles - do not clamp them

how Invalid Carriages used to be - no choice, this was it.

Eligibility: 

The Motability Scheme enables disabled people to lease a new car, scooter or powered wheelchair by exchanging their Government funded mobility allowance . 

If you receive either the Higher Rate Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance (HRMC DLA), the Enhanced Rate of the Mobility Component of Personal Independence Payment (ERMC PIP) , the War Pensioners’ Mobility Supplement (WPMS) or the Armed Forces Independence Payment (AFIP) you may be eligible to join the Motability Scheme.

DVLA

Now when a person with a motability car gets a parking ticket PCN the V5 will come back showing the name Motability, care of the name and address of the disabled person. A Motability car is leased for 3 years (5 years if specially adapted) and never belongs to the motorist so it cannot be seized in payment of their debt. In order to send you a Notice to Owner the council asks the DVLA for the registered keeper details so they know from the off that the car in question is a Motability car. When the bailiff starts work the first thing they do is a HPI check to see if the vehicle is on hire purchase etc and to check who is the current registered keeper. This will throw up the name of Motability and this tells the bailiff that he/she must not clamp the car.

The bailiff

The bailiff's vehicle will be fitted with ANPR equipment. This means that as they are driving to see a debtor the ANPR will alert them to any vehicle they pass which has an outstanding debt on it which their firm has been instructed to collect. Today the car of a friend of Mr Mustard was parked in the Lodge Lane Car Park. 

She has picked up a right assortment of parking tickets which due to a misunderstanding of the process she has not properly appealed. Thus invalid parking tickets e.g. one for being parked more than 50cm from the kerb when the whole car was not so parked, turn into a debt that cannot be contested. Her oldest parking ticket is from December 2010 and it is an abuse of process for the council to continue to chase it but the council don't agree. The ombudsman will have to eventually get involved as Mr Mustard has lodged a complaint on behalf of another motorist in respect of a July 2011 parking ticket and the clamping and subsequent removal of a car. The decision will affect all old parking tickets which should have been written off.

A bailiff clamped her car in the Lodge Lane Car Park. He claimed he could even though he was told it was a Motability car. Mr Mustard got on the blower. The Parking Process Manager didn't answer (lunch time). The Parking Manager's number came up as unobtainable, apparently it does that if he hasn't logged in, how useless a phone system is that? Next call was to the Streetscene Director who was in a meeting (he had two more senior levels of management to go to after that). A helpful lady answered who tracked down the Parking Process Manager (PPM) who promised to call Mr Mustard - the telephone has not yet sounded but doubtless there are loads of other complaints to sort out.

By the time Mr Mustard had made 3 calls for his distressed friend, who inevitably was on battery low and needed to get to an appointment for some medical treatment, the bailiff had spoken to his office and returned and mixed in with some rudeness he removed the clamp. This action looks like a calculated act to bully a disabled pensioner on benefits into paying up. Barnet council are responsible for the bailiff's actions and will be held accountable.

This PCN was the subject of a long email on 11 August about old parking tickets and he was promised a response within a week of 28 August. Perhaps if the response had been sent this August 2011 PCN might have been cancelled and the council could have avoided this bad publicity.

Next

Mr Mustard will hopefully get his call from the PPM, they are on good terms as they often have to correspond!

A formal complaint will be made to the council.

A Form 4 will be filed at the County Court which issued the bailiff's licence and Mr Mustard expects that the judge will not be amused.

Prevention

If you have a Motability car and an outstanding PCN sent to bailiffs for some reason, Mr Mustard suggests putting a note in the windscreen of your car saying "This car belongs to Motability, clamp it at your peril".

Bailiffs take note

Every time you step out of line and Mr Mustard becomes involved Form 4 will be completed and you will be explaining yourself to a judge. Don't say you have not been warned. Do your job within the confines of the law please.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard