Why traffic wardens might not be popular

If Barnet Council ever wondered why the traffic wardens that they allow NSL to foist on us, at lower rates of pay then the council used to give them, are unpopular then maybe this decision by an independent adjudicator at PATAS, could be one reason. The traffic wardens are quite simply out of sight of their masters and out of control.

The Appellant attended this hearing.

The Appellant parked his vehicle outside his house in a permit bay and displayed his disabled badge, but the wrong way up. The Enforcement Authority accept that he can park there with his disabled badge, but say that as it was displayed incorrectly this Penalty Charge Notice was properly issued.

The Appellant produced a letter from his neighbour, Mr L, who was there at the time and states that he saw the civil enforcement officer around the vehicle. He told the officer that the Appellant was allowed to park there with a disabled badge and the officer replied that the badge was not correctly displayed. Another neighbour came out and said she would get the Appellant to show his disabled badge. She went to get him, but as she did so the officer issued the Penalty Charge Notice. It was on the vehicle when the Appellant came out. The officer would not let the Appellant open the vehicle door and show him the badge. An argument followed. The officer's notes do not mention any contact with the Appellant or his neighbours.

I found the Appellant to be a credible witness & believed what he told me & the evidence of Mr L.

Whilst the badge must be displayed so that all the correct details can be seen, if before the Penalty Charge Notice is issued there is an opportunity for a badge in the vehicle to be shown to the officer so that he can check it is valid and then be correctly displayed, it is inequitable and unreasonable for the officer to proceed to issue a Penalty Charge Notice.

The appeal was allowed.

This isn't funny but traffic wardens are now known as Civil Enforcement Officers. A misnomer if ever there was one.

What Mr Mustard likes about this story is that the neighbours rally round and help each other just as they do in Mustard Avenue. The bad behaviour of council representatives leads to big society behaviour. Ironic really.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Obstructing the Armchair Auditors - the evidence

listen to ‘Visit to NLBP 6 July 12’ on Audioboo

As readers will know any resident can pop along to the council during a set time in the year, usually in July, and inspect the Accounts for the council tax year that just ended in March.

This right is conferred under the Audit Commission Act which includes the following within S14

A person who has the custody of any such document and—

(a) obstructs a person in the exercise of a right under this section to inspect or make copies of the document, or

(b) refuses to give copies of the document to a person entitled under this section to obtain them, is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine...

Let us look at the evidence to see if obstruction has taken place.

Mr Reasonable, Mrs Angry and Mr Mustard went to North London Business Park. We were there for hours and didn't achieve much in the way of an armchair audit because the documents that we wanted to audit were so heavily redacted as to make the task impossible. Now listen to the 30 second extract of the meeting, the first voice you hear is Mr Reasonable, then Mrs Angry and then a senior lady officer telling us why the documents had been redacted (when they shouldn't have been). Mr Mustard often tapes council meetings so that he can accurately transcribe what was said and to avoid those "he said, she said" arguments

So what did the senior lady officer say about the suppliers' invocies we were looking at "on the redaction that's what they've asked us to do" and other words confirming that suppliers have been approached and redaction has followed.

So, now look at one of the invoices that Mr Mustard asked to see (blue post-it note added by Mr Mustard to hide some invoice and personal data)

In fact this is two copies of the same invoice. Needless to say the bottom section is what Barnet Council provided.

Mr Mustard was surprised that the item description was redacted by Barnet Council supposedly at the behest of the supplier, London Councils.

At the meeting when he obtained the useless copies the fourth visitor, Mr J, had mentioned that London Councils also opened their books up for an annual audit. Mr Mustard thought he would take advantage and see if he got the same redacted copies. This is what he sent at 5.37pm on Wednesday:

I am interested in your accounts for the above year. All I want to see are the invoices issued to Barnet Council for the year for using the services of PATAS which will only be 5 or 6 documents I believe.

I can turn up on 9 August as I am in central London that day but thought you might consider simply scanning them and sending them to me as that would be quicker for both parties and as we are now within the inspection period.

I look forward to hearing from you

The following morning at 11.36 the reply arrived. Mr Mustard has thanked London Council for being staggeringly efficient and very helpful. Look how much you have to learn at Barnet Council.

Not only did Mr Mustard receive all of the invoices without a single crossing out, he was also given useful extra explanation.

Just one point of clarification. The unit charges stated on the invoices are rounded to 2 decimal places, as this is the limitation for inputting data into monetary fields on the accounting system. The actual unit charge to boroughs during 2011/12 for the fixed costs of PATAS is £0.4953 (instead of the £0.50 itemised on the invoices). The correct unit charge is reflected in the total cost charged to Barnet - for instance, in respect of the first quarter, 35,846.5 x £0.4953 = £17,754.77 as correctly entered on the invoice

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further information. 

The invoices don't seem to be a state secret, do they?

What conclusion should one come to about Barnet Council?

They are being obstructive. Why? They seem to acting under the assumption that they have some sort of obligation to safeguard data that the supplier of is happy to be released ( Mr Mustard wasn't intending to blog the A4 lever arch file of invoices he obtained from Barnet Council - they were in order to increase his knowledge and so he could try and ascertain if the council tax payer was receiving value for money - he has only blogged this one page out of 200 so that you, the council tax payer, can see for yourself how bloggers get messed about by Barnet Council ) they think they are in a castle that they have to defend, they have forgotten they are public servants and that everything they do is with our money.

You also look pretty stupid today Barnet Council officers.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bogged down at the Annual Audit

British Toilet Awards

Barnet Council love putting themselves forward for awards and Mr Mustard thinks they are in training for the British Toilet Awards. Otherwise why would they be going to the trouble of escorting any of the bloggers to the toilet when they visited North London Business Park to inspect the Accounts of the council when they are opened up for audit once per year as required by law. The 3 bloggers Mr Reasonable, Mrs Angry and Mr Mustard were joined by a parking expert who was acting on behalf of a local resident. It is the case that one can simply turn up between 9.30am and 4.30pm and ask to see whatever documents relate to the year ended on 31 March. The bloggers had quite a list and being generally quite businesslike had sent their list in a week or even two weeks ( Mr R is so organised) in advance so as to cause the minimum disturbance.

Now for those in the know we were in Training Room 6 about 25 metres up a busy corridor from the cafe which overlooks the lovely courtyard. The toilets are situated at the other end of the cafe. Now one would think that we could have been treated as if we were respectable residents (no-one was wearing a hoodie, carrying a knife or sporting love and hate tattoos on their knuckles) and allowed to walk 25m on our own to the toilet and to pick up a cappuccino on the way back but no, if we headed for the escape hatch door, a young and embarrassed employee would appear at our elbow and escort us to the toilets and then stand outside looking embarrassed until we had adjusted our attire and reappeared. It transpires that no other guests have been treated that way in the past and hopefully they won't be in the future.

When he returned to Room 6 after his second coffee, Mr Mustard found the following text appear on his mobile phone

"Is this a fascist state? - no, just Barnet Council"

which was sent by an employee called redacted

Mr Mustard really wonders what Barnet Council think and he thinks they are bereft of ideas for dealing with the bloggers. It would take more than some perfectly polite young man walking with him to the toilet to upset a debt collector of 25+ years experience, maybe you could buy a ball and chain for the next visit or Mr Mustard might even turn up in a convict's uniform. The council were somewhat short of manners when it comes to receiving guests as well. The norm in any business meeting is to offer tea and coffee. If the audit had been taking place at Grant Thornton Mr Mustard can guarantee that there would be a tray of drinks and biscuits in the room 2 minutes before the meeting started and if the meeting went through lunch a tray of snadwiches and fruit would arrive. Mr Travers was not in the building, he was probably on the beach in East Sussex. Would you be so good Andrew as to slip one of your minders a tenner out of your £1,000 a day so that your guests can be properly accommodated. Don't you have to be in Barnet though when the statutory Audit is going on being as how you are the part-time S151 officer?

If any councillors want to meet with Mr Mustard to explain perhaps why One Barnet is such a good thing Mr Mustard will personally put the kettle on and willingly make you a tea or a coffee because that is polite before he then tries to put a hole in your argument.

If any senior officers want to pop round perhaps because they think have been unfairly reported of in this blog as, say, being piss-poor at procurement and that henceforth you should be known as the Prince of Procurement rather than Captain Chaos then you too would be most welcome and given tea or coffee after which we could study a list of what has gone wrong in procurement and what has gone wrong. The first list will be much longer than the second.

Now having got the housekeeping out of the way we moved to the documents themselves. Mr Mustard wanted to look at the invoices of 3 suppliers of agency staff and of PATAS. He limited one of the enquiries, about Hays, to just one month in order to limit the workload. He was not presented with a file of original invoices as he expected but with copies which had been redacted and he has now taken home the copies of copies that were made for him and which look like they are set to become exhibit A in his formal complaint. Barnet Council had crossed out anything that he wanted to see such as the names of consultants, hourly or daily rates, number of hours or days worked, the project they were working on (sometimes) and this is just utterly and completely wrong.

Here is the invite to pop along and inspect the accounts. Do turn up without notice if you fancy looking at any invoices at all for the year ended 31 March 2012

S15 Audit Commission Act 1998 says that information about "a member of staff" can be redacted. Mr Mustard did not ask to look at such information; he plays by the rules. He does expect to be able to look at the invoices for supplying a senior consultant, or even a junior consultant, from Agilisys or iMpower, and that has been denied to him and will lead to a complaint. These people are in effect deciding who will provide our services in the future. They must be accountable to residents.

Mr Mustard wanted to take a look at the invoices from PATAS (the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service) and again he only asked for 3 months worth in order to save time of council staff. The time of the legal department was wasted in redacting all the unit prices. Now not only are Barnet Council wasting time but they are wasting time on redacting information that is in the public domain on the London Councils website as it is they who manage PATAS and they charge each borough a fixed annual fee based upon the number of parking tickets issued in a previous year and a fee for each case that is appealed to them. Mr Mustard is shocked at how little the redactor knows about their world of work. The fees of PATAS will be the subject of a future blog post.

S14 of the Audit Commission Act says that

(3) A person who has the custody of any such document and—
(a) obstructs a person in the exercise of a right under this section to inspect or make copies of the document, or
(b) refuses to give copies of the document to a person entitled under this section to obtain them,
is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.

Mr Mustard will have to consult his solicitor but he thinks that the redaction of a price from a London Councils' invoice is an obstruction. A level 3 fine is £1,000 so one day's pay lost is no big deal for black hole but the loss of face would be enormous.

Our time was also wasted whilst the legal department finished off the redaction of some documents on the grounds of supplier request. Another completely unacceptable way of going on. Both the lateness as they had at least a week to prepare and the fact that suppliers were consulted. 

Barnet Council need to get out of this fortress mentality. If they don't want to be criticised the best way is to behave in a way that does not allow them to be criticised. Mr Mustard has long advocated that he wants them to become a boring council and leave him with nothing to write about. There is no sign of that happening for some time.

Mr Mustard needs to go now and draft his email of complaint to Andrew Travers. It will not contain any criticism of the staff who will just have been doing what they are told.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard