Due regard for the Highway Code - Barnet Council deny an exemption

This is a common scenario. You are the parent of a young child, you drive to school, you have to take them to the school gates or even into the building to make sure they are safe. This will take from 1 to 5 minutes. A traffic warden appears from apparently nowhere (but they do of course know where schools are and the good times for easy pickings) waits for zero seconds and issues a PCN. (The observed to and from times are the same).

An informal challenge (the name given to your response to the PCN before the issue of a Notice to owner) should be cancelled was made as follows:

Sometimes the council ask for proof of schooling but on this occasion they didn't. They simply rejected the challenge, made by the motorist themselves, outright as no exemption could apply.

Do the council have a copy of the Highway Code, ponders Mr Mustard. Let us consider the relevant extract:

'You may stop....while passengers board or alight'. 

That seems clear to Mr Mustard.

The danger is that the public rely on what a council says and expect it to be the truth. In this case Mr Mustard was advising the motorist in the background so should a blatant wrong isn't going to get the council anywhere. What worries Mr Mustard is how many similar and perfectly valid claims have been rejected by the council (NSL) and the motorist has subsequently paid up and lost their £55.

This exemption is one of the most common ones. How can Barnet Council get it so wrong? Oh, they want the revenue, is the suspicion.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

School zig zags - do your 3 point turn somewhere else

The above is the council's justification for school zig zags which have in the main been largely respected by the driving public with only 475 PCN having been issued up until May 17.

Mr Mustard wonders why a location, such as at the school in St Joseph's Grove in Hendon (right behind the town hall as it happens) therefore has restricted hours of 8.30am to 4.30pm whereas other schools have 2 or 3 sets of times, corresponding to the likely arrival and leaving times and possibly lunch times for a secondary school if lots of children are likely to be heading out of school. He can't see a need for a restriction at 11am for example.

Mr Mustard's client was unlucky. He was driving along and then realised he needed to go the other way, he pulled up on the zig zags to use the adjoining piece of road to reverse into and at that very moment another car came along and made it dangerous to continue with the manoeuvre so he waited, which made his stop a few seconds long and then the computer controlled cctv nabbed him. You can watch it here

Mr Mustard didn't think that was cricket so yesterday he wrote to parking management as follows, and he eagerly awaits their reply:

If you watch the cctv the car stops in order to reverse into the side turning and then go the other way. This is a perfectly reasonable manoeuvre but one which your camera picked up and then presumably a human being authorised the issue of a PCN. It is necessary to stop in order to reverse direction and normally it would be for a trivial time (de minimis) but in this case the driver very considerately stopped to avoid an accident as a car was approaching and then he reversed a few seconds later.

I agree that technically the vehicle stopped and that is a contravention but it is not the mischief that the zig zags are aimed at, which is parents/guardians/etc dropping off or collecting their children. There isn't a child in the cctv anywhere. I question the need for all day enforcement.

I think this is an unfair PCN and accordingly should be cancelled.

They might or they might not cancel, we'll see. If not, an adjudicator will get to decide the matter later on.

You, dear reader, will learn from this though, won't you?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

You can't do this Barnet Council

The school has an address in Byng Road and the school entrance is also there. You cannot therefore put school entrance markings in Wentworth Rd as the road does not contain a school. The ziz zag lines 1027 are prescribed for use outside schools, as the Traffic Signs Manual tells you.

A different idea would be to take the existing school roadway entrance and make it wider and create a safe drop off zone within the school grounds which are extensive and which would make Wentworth Rd quieter for residents as a by product.

Parents: a camera will doubtless go up at this location so do not stop on the zig zags themselves.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Camden High Street cctv midnight parking cowboys

We are lucky in Barnet in that the council never got their act together well enough (or they might have made a policy decision not to do so) to enforce parking restrictions by cctv. They did trial a $camera car last year but didn't find it to be sufficiently profitable so didn't order one. Thus Mr Mustard isn't very experienced at fighting camera issued PCN but he had to have a go as one of his PCN regulars left Barnet for an evening and got snapped. Their car was in the front section of the bay to the left of shot underneath the word "market". It was impossible to tell from photos taken, at midnight at distance, if the driver's side front wheel was perhaps half an inch outside of the different pavoirs which you have to assume is the parking bay. Mr Mustard is of a mind with Eric Pickles MP on this matter and his determination probably showed through in this appeal letter, that or Camden phoned Barnet parking to ask who he was and got told that every single rejected appeal goes to PATAS and Camden decided not to waste £40 in fees as the PCN is now at £nil value on the Camden PCN website.

I represent (redacted) as per the attached authority letter.

I don't usually send copies of parking ticket appeals to Uncle Eric, as he is affectionately known by the Barnet Bloggers of whom I am one (he is of course The Rt. Hon. Eric Pickles MP and I write the Mr Mustard blog) but given that he is proposing to step in and save us all from the scourge of inappropriate cctv parking enforcement, I thought he might like to see this one and I have permission of the car owner to email him but not for any publicity.

Here is what Uncle Eric said recently:

"We want to rein in these over-zealous and unfair rules on parking enforcement, so it focuses on supporting high streets and motorists, not raising money."

This caused some panic, by the looks of it, although they used the word "concern" at London Councils (they wrote on behalf of every London Borough but three don't use cameras for parking contraventions, namely Barnet, Greenwich and Kensington & Chelsea and well done to them) as their Transport & Environment committee wrote to Eric's colleague, the Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP on 20 November 13. In their letter London Councils trot out the usual trite nonsense about cctv being mainly used near schools, bus stops and major junctions.

Let's see where are Camden using it. Oh, in Camden High St, at 1 minute past midnight. No school open then is there? no bus stop and not at a major junction. I've just put the postcode of the Hawley Primary School into the Camden council website to find the nearest cctv camera. It's this very one (21C) in Camden High St. Just down the road there is another one. Neither of them can see the school. Is there a camera that can monitor the school? No.

I tried another Camden School at random. I chose Fitzjohn's Primary School, postcode NW3 6NP and the nearest camera is 600m away from where the school isn't visible.

I tried a third one. The Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children, postcode N1C 4PF, whose children must be particularly at risk of being involved in an accident with a vehicle. Is there a camera monitoring the school? No, the nearest one is 300m away in Crowndale Rd.

What should your camera operator be looking at for at midnight? I would suggest that violent behaviour (probably following alcohol intake) would be a better use of the resource. Your cameras are identified on your website as being for public safety. Issuing a PCN for trivial or non-existent parking contraventions does not fall under that heading.

Well done anyway. You have provided Eric Pickles MP with the perfect evidential riposte to the London Councils' letter.

Anyway, all of the above is comment to which your reply is not required or desired. Now I'll get to the substance of the representations.

Representations.

1. The contravention did not occur.

It is impossible to tell from the still photographs or the video evidence if one or more wheels of the vehicle is on the footway or not. Close to where the vehicle was stationary for a short while, note the headlights are still on, is a time plate

which permits parking overnight between the hours of 6.30pm and 8.30am the next morning. The problem comes in defining what area the parking sign relates to as there are no white lines to indicate the extent to which parking is allowed. Perhaps motorists are expected to guess that the area in smaller pavoirs, in the shape of an elongated trapezoid, is the area in which parking is permitted, but guessing should not be the order of the day on the public highway. Motorists are entitled to be clearly informed as to restrictions. There is no evidence that there is a wheel on the footway, in a part where footway parking is not allowed.

2. Is it carriageway or footway?

If the council are going to claim that the surface in the shape of a trapezoid is the carriageway, then I would argue that given that there is a kerb, that it isn't a carriageway, but in any event, unless the council has some sort of exemption from using the relevant markings from the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 (please send me a copy if there is such an exemption) there is a failure to properly mark out the parking area.

If the council are going to claim the area of the trapezoid is part of the footway then where are the signs that mark the start and finish of the permitted areas and the white lines to indicate the bay? The footway parking area is not properly signed.

3. Ambiguity

I am a lay person but I believe that ambiguity is normally construed against the causer so Camden Council should not profit from the confusion it has caused at this location and the PCN should be cancelled.

4. Trapezoid parking bay layout not legal?

I have seen only rectangular bays and parallelograms (for parking nose into the kerb at an angle) in the TSRGD 2002. Is this shape of parking bay legally allowed?

5. De minimis

If the council manage to prove where the footway starts and finishes their evidence does not clearly show a wheel on it and even if an adjudicator could work out from the evidence that perhaps the driver side front wheel is outside the trapezoid it can only be for a trivial amount (de minimis) and the law does not concern itself with trifles and so I ask for the PCN to be cancelled on that basis. The London Councils CEO Handbook says at page 54 that no PCN should be issued unless there is clear photographic evidence of an entire wheel outside of the bay.

I look forward to hearing from you that the PCN has been cancelled.

Yours sincerely



Mr Mustard

c.c. The Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP (by email)

(Camden Council would have been sent this letter by email but they don't provide an address to which representations can be made).

Feel free to cut and paste any part of this argument for your PCN appeal at this location or any similar one where the same argument applies.

Mr Mustard thinks it would be hard to find a clearer example than this one, of a council (Camden probably no better or worse than others) using cctv for revenue raising from motorists rather than for crime prevention or detection.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Parking Enforcement Policy

Conference programme

Before Mr Mustard tells you about enforcement policy in Barnet he wants to bring to your attention the 6th annual Enforcement Summit which you can get the details of by clicking on the Conference Programme link about. It is very interesting; the point of the programme is to improve enforcement i.e. screw more money out of the motorist but to be fair to the organisers there are sessions that look at this from the motorists perspective although not presented by a member of the public such as a travelling salesman which Mr Mustard would suggest is an idea the conference organisers could consider for next year.

Now to the main event. How Barnet Council enforce, in Mr Mustard's words (many less than the council use).

Funerals

Unlawful parking will not be condoned but patrols will be sent elsewhere unless someone complains in which case enforcement will take place. No concession available on a key route (where of course many churches will be located).

Mr Mustard doesn't like this arrangement. So if some miserable bugger lives next door and reports your funeral cortege as causing a parking problem then a traffic warden will pop round. This is an insensitive way of going on. Why not instruct parking wardens that any car with a photocopy of the Order of Service in the dashboard can be ignored on that day? The organiser of the service just needs to print twice as many copies.

Religious days

Unlawful parking on yellow lines will not be condoned but wrongful parking in marked bays will be allowed. Patrols will be sent elsewhere unless someone complains in which case enforcement will take place. 

As Religious days are not defined this is rather an unclear policy. It would probably be better to have a list of all religious dates of every religion and specify the streets in which enforcement will not take place and put signs up which the local religious establishments could be supplied with and put up and take down on the day. Big society in action and absolute clarity for the public because lack of clarity can lead to a £110 fine. Feel free to debate this idea in the comment box.

Schools

Mr Mustard didn't know but at school start time and end time (a moveable feast in some schools with after school events) you can park for 10 minutes in residential or a pay and display bay. 

What strikes Mr Mustard as odd about this is that during the clampdown last year on parking on the school zig-zags the council didn't mention this commonsense solution and instead deliberately sent traffic wardens to schools to issue tickets. If you have paid a parking ticket for this offence write to the council for your money back. If you email mrmustard@zoho.com he will provide you with a copy of the policy document that the council supplied him with under FOI.

North Side Junior School are allowed to use the lodge lane car park. This policy could be extended to every other school near a car park?

Bo-Peep and Alyth nurseries have their own identifier to permit them to park nearby. If these two nurseries have a concession shouldn't every other nursery?

Footway parking

If you park on the footway (footpath) inside a CPZ you will get a parking ticket unless you are unloading and are observed doing so (Mr Mustard thinks that delivery vehicles are the last ones that should be allowed on pavements as they are the heaviest and cause the most damage)

Outside a CPZ enforcement will only take place if it has been enforced in the last 3 months. If it is more than 3 months ago a local councillor will be consulted (which will lead to a postcode lottery).

Mr Mustard hopes that he has been of assistance.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard