New Year's Resolution - 2018

Things have got to change. Mr Mustard is now very busy in his professional life with work + travel exceeding 55 hours a week. There just isn't time for 30 hours a week of parking paperwork on top and any sort of private life.

In 2013 Mr Mustard's record shows that he fought 102 PCN to the end and only lost 3 of those. (That was before the advent of Moving Traffic & Yellow Box PCNs in Barnet which are much harder to beat).

In 2017 he fought 345 PCNs and lost 51 times so not at all shabby a performance (won 84%). The average citizen wins 50% of the time so it is always worth fighting as winning 50% of the time is the same, in the long run, as paying up at 50% all of the time.

As you will appreciate the amount of time spent helping you with your PCNs has quadrupled. This at a time when, since mid-October, Mr Mustard with his credit consultancy hat on has been collecting in more than £10,000,000 from 6,000+ debtors. The Administrator he has been working for (similar to a liquidator) has noticed the rapid progress made on debtors and put Mr Mustard in as part of the team for the next job. Thus Mr Mustard predicts that he will be very busy professionally in 2018. During December due to the pressure of work Mr Mustard became very slow at answering parking emails and was at times a week behind. Although he was lucky not to miss a deadline anywhere he very nearly did and this discomforts Mr Mustard.

The answer that Mr Mustard has come up with is to limit the number of PCNs that he manages. This will be achieved by Mr Mustard fighting the PCN, or offering advice, only in the following circumstances:

• you are mentally ill
• you have a physical disability or a blue badge
• you are old*
• you are impecunious i.e. living entirely on pension or benefits
• the council have blundered~.

(*Some people are old at 65 and others who he has met aged 91 & 92 would give youngsters a run for their money. You need to feel old as well as be old to ask for help please).

(~You will be surprised how many blunders one council can make and keep quiet about. They will feature in a blog once fixed, anonymously if required).

All PCNs that are currently in progress will be completed. For example, Mr Mustard has 

6 tribunal hearings on 3 January 18 followed by 

8 on 10 January and 

5 on 17 January.

There will sadly be a consequent drop in PCN related donations to North London Hospice. Mr Mustard asks all of his readers to donate to them anyway, to gives goods to the shops & to volunteer within the hospice or the shops if you have free time.

Don't just give in from now on and pay up. Assume that for PCNs stuck on your car the council will reject the first challenge and make the second one again once the Notice to Owner is received. If you think you are in the right then go in person to the tribunal, it can be fun, and argue your corner. You will win 50% of the time and the more you fight the better you get. You can get help on this excellent website, with a silly name, Pepipoo.

Mr Mustard would like to wish all of his readers all the best for 2018.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Selective attention to litter

with credit to the Barnet Press

The above items appeared on adjacent pages. The council crowing about how many Fixed Penalty Notices have been issued for littering (Mr Mustard will not defend you against one of those as he is against littering) and Richard Logue, a fine citizen from Mill Hill, bemoaning the fact that he and his team couldn't stand the state of his local park any longer.

A few points spring to Mr Mustard's mind:

1. If the council are issuing 12 FPN a day then their educational messages are not getting through. Any FPN is a failure to educate residents, and visitors, to not drop litter in Barnet. The state of the borough may make them think littering is normal. The cleaner the borough the less likely littering is to occur.

2. The penalties collected are retained by NSL under the terms of their contract. NSL are not a charity so it seems doubtful in the extreme that they are making a loss on it so we, the council tax payer, must be overpaying. It is also a question of public policy. Negotiating a deal where a private company directly profits from public wrongdoing, they are paid a fixed price so the more penalties they issue the more profit they make. It just seems wrong to Mr Mustard. He suspects that they will go for the easy targets like fag butts rather than tackling the big stuff, like bags of shop rubbish and dumping of fridges & mattresses.

3. The cleaning of parks does not have a high enough priority if 10 bags of waste can be removed from just one park. Are there sufficient bins in the park and are they emptied frequently enough?

4. Volunteers should not have to make up for Barnet Council's policy & performance deficiencies.

5. We all pay council tax because it is cheaper to pay collectively in order to keep our public spaces clean. Mr Mustard is not going to pay twice by also volunteering to clean up his local park (besides which most of his time is taken up in fighting parking PCN).

6. It is for the same reason that he won't volunteer to play at being a librarian.

7. If you want to be a volunteer then there are plenty of more worthy causes than Barnet Council, such as Age UK and the North London Hospice where your time will be genuinely appreciated, rather than just as a political message.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard


 

Lovely to be appreciated

Mustard in flower in Japan

Mr Mustard is happy if his 'clients' make a donation to the North London Hospice. He is even happier when he knows they are happy and realise what a huge hole he dug them out of. In this case the lady concerned, let's call her Alice Blake, did not have English as her first language and a colleague helped her but that nearly caused a process error as there was doubt as to whether or not the Owner had made the representations. The PCN value had been increased by 50% to £172 by the time Mr Mustard was on the case. He was able to file a statutory declaration at the Traffic Enforcement Centre that on time representations were made to Barnet Council and had not been responded to (sometimes the rejection letter is genuinely lost in the post & sometimes the council mess up but plough on regardless) and at the same time he asked the parking manager one question about the correspondence. Suddenly, whoosh, the PCN was cancelled.

The car owner concerned, Alice, sent this email:

Just wanted to say thank you for the work you did regarding my parking ticket issues. I cannot express how grateful I am for your help on the matter and your continued mission to help people who have been treated unjustly by the council. The work you do is selfless and invaluable and it is truly amazing that you are able to help so many people. I have made a donation to North London Hospice and I wish you all the best for the future; please be under no illusion as to how invaluable you are to the people you help!

It is both what you know (or the unknown unknown in this case, and whom you know).

Then her son, who had not previously contacted Mr Mustard, wrote this:

We haven't spoken before but you recently helped my Mum, Alice Blake, with an appeal that resulted in the PCN being overturned. I just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for your help with this case and also your continued commitment to helping people with PCN injustices. I've read through your blog on a fair few occasions now and it's humbling to see the work that you do. Councils abuse the fact that the PCN system is an unforgiving legal labyrinth set up to be as inflexible and unaccountable as possible and seeing your work goes some way to restore my faith in humanity.

I wrote many of the emails that my mum sent to appeal the PCN and at the time I was also dealing with PCN issues down here in Brighton. The threat of bailiffs and fines of several hundred pounds caused by administration issues created absolutely awful times for me, filled with stress, anxiety and above all, anger at the insanity of council parking systems. After many months of dealings with the council and TEC and many, many forms, I can finally say the ordeal is behind me and I give credit to the work and advice that you publish as it was absolutely invaluable for me, even though my case was outside of London.

I genuinely believe the work you do has helped pave the way for a more fair, accountable and just system for parking infrastructure in London and bought it closer to what it should have always been; a system that serves the people of London. Most of all you have my utmost respect for putting up with the awful, pedantic and bureaucratic parking departments of London in the name of helping people and holding councils to account.

Whilst it is awful that such intervention is necessary, it is absolutely enlightening to see you resiliently stand by the principles of fairness and fight. I wish you all the best and my family and I will be donating to the North London Hospice tomorrow.

Gilbert Blake

This blog often has dire stories so is is nice to bring one with a happy ending.

Mr Mustard's knowledge & experience helps him to correct some wrongs.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard's new charity arrangements

Mr Mustard has decided to formalise the way in which charity donations are made for his PCN help.

His raison d'etre

Mr Mustard is here, mostly, to fight against unfair PCN and to persist through the two or three possible challenges (PCN in the post have two possible challenges whereas if the PCN is put on the car there are three chances to argue) and through the Traffic Enforcement Centre if necessary.

If you only want to make the first challenge and then pay at 50% you don't need Mr Mustard as only a small percentage of informal challenges (as the first challenge in response to a PCN put on your vehicle are known) are accepted. Mr Mustard has completed 186 PCN in 2016 of which only 34 were cancelled at the informal stage, or almost 1 in 5, so the majority of informal challenges are clearly rejected. That is a story in itself as Mr Mustard prevails, in the end, 9 times out of 10 so clearly a greater proportion of informal challenges should have been accepted.

Disbursements

Mr Mustard attends the tribunal most weeks. That costs him £8.70 on the tube and usually £2 on a Boris bike. He also pays out £1.74 for every 'signed for' letter which has to be sent (for Barnet challenges can be made on line to barnet@nsl.co.uk) as you can't trust councils not to 'lose' correspondence. He makes most non-Barnet appeals to London Tribunals (formerly PATAS) on line but conversely Barnet ones have to go by post until they update their software. Then there are envelopes, paper & ink cartridges to buy. All in all about £1,000 a year is spent being Mr Mustard. That will be recovered from your voluntary contributions in the future.

£25 per PCN

At the start Mr Mustard will tell you if he has identified any possible grounds of Appeal. Do bear in mind that even if he has a number of tribunal decisions which support Mr Mustard's argument that no adjudicator is bound by any previous decision of any other adjudicator or even of him/herself. That may seem odd but is the way the Regulations have been written. It certainly makes the process more exciting for Mr Mustard. In recent times he won 8 & 7 Appeals then lost 4 & 3 in consecutive weeks! The difference was simply which adjudicator he was allocated plus the fact that the losing weeks had more moving traffic offences which are much harder to win.

If grounds are identified Mr Mustard will then ask you to send £25 to the separate bank account which has been opened for this purpose. If you are unable to afford this voluntary donation do please tell Mr Mustard. If you are likely to lose Mr Mustard will recommend that you pay up. If the discount period has passed then the PCN may as well be fought as there is nothing to lose and the discount may be offered again even when there is no legal necessity as councils are, in Mr Mustard's experience, more motivated by the desire to receive money rather than be taken to adjudication which costs them time and a c. £30 fee.

Bank details

Sort code: 16-00-38

Account number: 11395624

Account name: D R Dishman Charity

Please put your name or PCN number as a reference. Mr Mustard will pay the contributions received, less his disbursements, to the North London Hospice once a month & tweet the amount paid over.

Some people give the hospice more than £25 & some give their time or donations of worldly goods to one of the shops. You can still do this.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Please donate to the North London Hospice

Here is a lovely email which just dropped into the Mr Mustard inbox.




Ref: 14379
01 June 2015


Dear Mr Mustard

I am writing to let you know that we have received further donations in your honour and in return for help with penalty charges. The overall total, and absolutely incredible amount is £1,876, which is such an amazing amount for the Hospice. I would like to thank you yet again for your continued and much valued support.

The further donations have been made by Keith, Daniel, Barry, Frank, Natalie, Gerald, Leo,
Malcolm, Hilary, Lesley, Mr M, Linda, Barbara, Mr A, Miss K, Jacqueline, Chaim, David, Ilana and Harry.

In 2014 our specialist community team were able to carry out 6,754 home visits. Our vision is that everyone in our diverse community who is affected by a potentially life limiting illness will have equal access to the services and support they need to optimise their quality of life.

It’s through your support and generosity that we are able to achieve this goal.

Thank you once again for your kindness – it is very much appreciated.

Yours sincerely



Ivana
Fundraising Department
Tel: 020 8343 8841
Fundraising@northlondonhospice.co.uk

Mr Mustard supports the hospice because they looked after his late wife so well in 2005.

You don't have to receive a PCN in order to support the Hospice, you can make them a donation just because of the valuable work they do. You can donate here.

If you are cash poor but time rich, you could give your time instead.

Yours gratefully

Mr Mustard

get your walking boots on

Link to sign up

Please donate to the North London Hospice

Even if you haven't had a PCN

a log only started this year

Taking TASK to task

a PCN bailiff cannot do this

On 25 March 2014, Mr Mustard received a rather nervous phone call from a disabled man in a bit of a panic, who Mr Mustard will call Mr K. He had the following letter.

So Mr Mustard had a mere 3 days to stop the rot. This was a bit of a challenge. Mr K, being disabled, could not afford to lose his car which he needed to get to work.

On 26 March, Mr Mustard made a house call to Mr K. He looked at the site of the supposed offence and it wasn't correct. Mr K had parked in the same place as he had for years in a residents bay and had properly displayed his blue badge. The bay he was accused of parking in was a joint loading bay - free bay. The former had a single yellow line behind it and the joint bay had a double yellow line behind it. Looking at the council's photographs proved the contravention did not occur thanks to the single yellow line. When told that fact, the challenge, handled by an NSL employee on behalf of the council, was rejected. Amazing, awful, but not unusual, Mr Mustard thinks that Notice Processing Officers have money blindness.

In between the PCN being issue in October 13 and the bailiff letter, Mr K had moved. He had told the council early on although was a little slow updating the V5 (vehicle registration details - Mr Mustard advises you to tell DVLA of your new address for your vehicle and for your driving licence on the day after you move as that will save you loads of grief). The bailiff letter was sent to the old address. That meant that the warrant of execution (sounds pretty serious but not fatal) was invalid as it has to be reapplied for at the new address.

Fees claimed of £457 were excessive as although a visit had been made to the old address there was no point in the bailiff attending again as he was told that Mr K had moved and this could be confirmed by a database check or by asking the council. It was completely impossible even with 3 visits for the total amount due to reach that level. If a bailiff demands money you are entitled to a breakdown and to see the warrant. It is more transparent from now on as bailiff charges are being simplified.

Mr Mustard hastened back to his office and emailed the parking manager. They are on good terms and perfectly civil to each other even when they disagree.

Mr Mustard made the following 4 points:

1. Warrant invalid as to address.

2. Excessive fees demanded.

3. Contravention did not occur.

4. Council don't have a vulnerable individuals policy.

Less than 2 hours later the PCN was history and the matter had been added to the agenda for the next meeting with NSL. Of course, TASK are owned by the NSL group and clearly NSL PCN processing are not properly monitoring the behaviour of their in-house bailiff. NSL should be banned from using their own bailiff on the Barnet contract as there is a clear conflict of interest.

It was lucky for Mr K that he knew Helen Michael of Cafe Buzz (do go there when you are at Tally Ho, Finchley, N12 as the food is really rather good) and that she was able to introduce Mr Mustard to Mr K. Mr Mustard could see the stress that the bailiff's letters were causing and if Mr Mustard didn't have the knowledge that he does, and the ability to cut through the system, Mr K would have paid the £457 before that Friday, 28 March.

Instead he is making a donation to the North London Hospice. He is a peaceable law-abiding citizen who had done no wrong and did not deserve to be treated this way. Mr Mustard has yet to see a bailiff case that has been 100% correctly enforced. He doesn't yet see Barnet Council undertaking their duty of care to ensure that bailiffs follow the rules. They are lucky not to have featured on Panorama, the footage was in the can (but is now on the cutting room floor).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Voucher scratching for dummies

Barnet variation - scratch with a pen & lose £60

Some problems just don't go away.

Back in October, Mr Mustard blogged about the senseless policy of giving a parking ticket (PCN) to anyone who had the temerity to scratch out the panels on a visitor voucher (or parking voucher) using a pen instead of a coin.

Following his email debate with one the parking managers NSL were instructed to tell traffic wardens not to issue a PCN if someone had used a pen to mark off the voucher instead of a coin as clearly the voucher could not be used twice and that is all that matters.

Fast forward to 13 December and what happens? yes, you guessed it another pen scratched voucher leads to the issue of a PCN. Representations were sent in by the motorist and rejected and then he turned to Mr Mustard. Following an email from Mr Mustard to a parking manager NSL and its traffic wardens are again being reminded not to issue PCN in such circumstances. if you are affected do send an email to mrmustard@zoho.com and he will assist you.

What does this tell us about outsourcing? That when the staff report to someone else your message as a manager may not get through as you would like. It makes managing traffic wardens much harder as they are in a different building and not under your direct control so communications are much harder. It tells us that the back office either haven't got a clue, or are turning down representations that they know they should accept in order to get money into the coffers, or that a simple error was made. It also tells you that parking client side at the council are probably not sufficiently resourced to keep a close enough eye on what NSL are doing in the name of the council. If they were, Mr Mustard wouldn't keep finding things that are wrong, the parking team would.

The PCN was for £60. Mr Mustard gives his time for free and now, in 2014, asks those people whose PCN is cancelled to make a donation to the North London Hospice. This is the first one who has told him the amount (Mr Mustard doesn't need to know but it is nice) and a very generous £50 is being paid. Whatever you can afford will help others who have much more to worry about than a parking ticket.

A story with a happy ending. Thank goodness the motorist was introduced to Mr Mustard as he was elderly and was stressed by the situation and nearly paid £30 (the 50% for fast payment) to get rid of the problem. Much better that funds go to the hospice rather than the council.

If you have been poorly treated please don't pay the council but get expert help.

Anyone want to bet how long it will be before the next incorrect scratching PCN lands on Mr Mustard's desk?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Informal representations still count

the informal representations repository?

Mr Mustard has long suspected that informal representations, the first stage appeal (of three, see guide to the left) get largely ignored or overtaken by a Notice to Owner. Now, if that happens to you, you have a ready made appeal in the form of this decision by an adjudicator at PATAS 

case 213043539A

One of the points made by the Appellant was that her father in law made informal representations on her behalf but she was not then offered the discount again.

The Authority accepted that the representations were received but failed to find their way to the file due to an administrative error (Mr Mustard has personal experience of this happening especially for emailed representations). It said that this had no consequence as the Authority was not bound to consider informal representations.
The Authority's response is incorrect at several levels. First and foremost, the Authority is under a duty to consider informal representations. In R (on the application of the Hackney Drivers' Association Limited) v the Parking Adjudicator and Lancashire County Council, [2012] EWHC 3394 (admin), the High Court considered Regulation 3 (2)(b)(i) of the Civil Enforcement of Parking Contraventions (England) Representations and Appeals Regulations 2007 and held that it means that if representations against a Regulation 9 Penalty Charge Notice are received at such address as may be specified by the Authority before a Notice to Owner is served, those representations will be considered.

Secondly, the Notice to Rejection did not address the point despite it being raised in the formal representations.  It did not even offer to settle at the reduced rate when fairness would say that this was the least that the Authority should do bearing in mind that its "administrative error" caused the problem. I should also point out that the Notice of Rejection had not even properly considered the circumstances raised by the Appellant. The Appellant said that she was notified by the hospice that her mother was dying. The Authority rejected her claim on the basis that there was no evidence of an emergency admission to hospital.

The matter has been handled poorly from beginning to end. The issues surrounding the Appellant's personal circumstances are not directly linked to the legal issues in this appeal, but the legality of the Authority's actions has a legal consequences. I find that there had been at least two instances of procedural impropriety. I am allowing the appeal.

This isn't the first time that Mr Mustard has criticised the council's attitude to people who have relatives in a hospice and he wonders if the Notice Processing Officers know that you go to a hospice because you are going to die sooner rather than later. Are you reading NPOs? here is a link to our wonderful local hospice, the North London Hospice. They always need funds, please send them some.

Please try and remember when you reject an appeal that you are writing to a human being, one who might have made a small mistake when under stress. People's lives are more important than some grubby parking ticket.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Councillors do have hearts

An unusually positive heading from Mr Mustard you might think but only after he had learnt via twitter of a parking ticket being upheld in sad circumstances that made the parking ticket manifestly unjust. This made him really sad & very mad but has been tempered by some councillors' emails. We are meant to live in a civilised society. Parking tickets are not a sign of one.

If you do have to die, and we all will one day, then one of the most calm & comforting places in which to do it is the North London Hospice. Mr Mustard does his bit to support them and most of their income does come from donations. You could help, click here by giving time or money. Read the rest of this blog first before you decide.

You might need your hankie and a cup of tea is also recommended.

Mr Mustard tries to write short letters as everyone is busy but sometimes you just can't. There was so much wrong that he ended up on page 7. It was very wet on Sunday so Mr Mustard avoided the vegetable patch and got typing. He didn't stop for 4 hours and 5 mugs of tea.

Letter about a parking ticket sent to Barnet Council by Mr Mustard

For those of you who don't know Ms Pam Wharfe is the interim Director of Environment, Planning and Regeneration (paid £132,480 p.a.) which is the Directorate which contains the remnants of the parking department, 5 people, as enforcement and processing has been contracted out since 1 May to NSL.

The outcome of this email which was copied to every councillor was that within a few hours Mr Mustard had received emails from three councillors, one from each party as it happens, not that Mr Mustard cares, which showed that they do care and do know right from wrong.

Mr Mustard isn't going to tell you who wrote but the messages included:

To Ms Wharfe:

The facts make me despair. I have no doubt you will be contacting NSL to seek an explanation for this shambles. Please will you copy me in to your correspondence. If contact is made by phone will you confirm the date and time of the phone call? Please will you provide me with the response, if any, you get back from NSL.. I anticipate that at the very least the PCN will be cancelled.

I ask, in light of this email having been sent to me, that you revisit the position with regard to this PCN

to Mr Mustard:

I have just read the first letter – I am shocked – I hope the notice is cancelled.

Sod's law is that Ms Wharfe is not in today so my email has been passed by her PA to the Assistant Director of Highways, Declan Hoare (£86,823) to deal with. Let's see how long it takes.

Lessons to be learnt - One Barnet

The appointment of NSL as parking enforcement contractor was voted on by Cabinet Resources Committee on 14 December 2011. You can find the papers here. Basically without reading the multiple pages it was alleged that NSL were going to do a much better job than the in-house service and more cheaply to boot (look, no-one likes traffic wardens but if you have your own you can directly and swiftly influence what they do and you might just get them to use a more balanced and even-handed approach and inculcate some local knowledge and discretion) and yet the performance report for the first quarter for EPR (Environment, Planning & Regeneration) about which Mr Mustard will blog shortly shows that car park income is down from a budgeted £979,000 to an actual £376,000 (and the council blame the recession. Remind Mr Mustard when the recession started. Whenever it was, 2 or 3 years ago, it was well before the budget was set) and the special parking account is down from a revised budgeted £7,067,000 to £5,847,000 so is £1,220,000 behind budget. That is simply a disaster. This One Barnet nonsense scaled up from a £3m p.a. contract to £100m p.a. will be hideous leading to losses of possibly £36m p.a. instead of savings. Time for councillors to think very carefully.

So councillors, NSL, the outsourcer acts, and you take the flak. You can't out-source the risk can you?

You can't outsource the responsibility either?

You can't control what the outsourcer does.

The savings aren't yet coming through on a simple contract.

Will they come through on the really difficult ones like DRS & NSCSO?

Is One Barnet a panacea for all our ills? No, I thought now.

Grab the reins councillors and show us what you are made of. Maybe the time has come to start actually looking at the in-house option. You can control that and it may cost less than you think.

It may be the only way to stop Mr Mustard from exposing all of the failures that outsourcers make.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

#29 especially for basketball players

#30 - that 9ft or nearly 3m to you

#31 around the corner, an 8 hour bay in a 1 hour zone

#32 - obviously not a Barnet Council or NSL slogan

#33 - mind the pedestrians as you study carefully the change of zone signs

#34 - Do you see a parking bay?

#35 - Shouldn't there be a 60cm by 5cm white line here?

#36 - remember your lines!

#37 - a yellow line across a crossover - who would understand that? note faint white lines

#38 - nice Aprilia 1000cc V4 but no bay marking lines

#39 more confusion; is that a bay or not?

#40 - is that car in a bay?

#41 - the pole seems a bit short (left of brick wall)

#42 - a typical North Finchley sign - not legible

#43 - there is a parking bay here somewhere