Camden Council stopped in their tracks

Here is the story of Mr W.

Mr W's adult son is staying with him for a short while and he buys him a modest 14 year old car to use - the son drives to Haverstock Hill one Saturday evening (1 February) and parks perfectly legally without any restriction until 8am on Monday 3 February. Socialising with friends the son decides he should not drive home so leaves the car where it is.

Early on Monday 3 February father& Son go to collect the car. It is gone. They report the theft to the police and are given a crime number. They give the crime number to the insurers.

5 February the police say they will take no further action.

7 February. The car is issued with a PCN and taken to the Camden Council car pound. It must have been the third PCN as the car was in a bay for which payment was required each and every day.

10 February. The insurers agree a car valuation of £1,100

11 February. The insurers pay out less the excess.

11 March. Notification is received (probably by Notice to Owner) of two PCNs. Representations are made and accepted, the PCNs are cancelled.

12 March. Notification is received (probably by Notice to Owner) of a third PCN. Representations are made and accepted, the PCN is subsequently cancelled.

17 March. Notice is received of the cancellation of a PCN.

25 March. Camden Council write to say the car is in the pound and notification is received by Mr W of the cancellation of two PCNs. The letter mentions that evidence of the police report was provided.

11 April. Camden Council write to demand £2,920 being the £80 PCN + £200 for the tow & 66 days overnight storage at £40 a night. The letter said the vehicle would be destroyed if the charges were not paid. As Mr W no longer owned the car, and was not liable for the actions of the thief, he ignored the letter as he had already provided proof of this. By now the insurer had owned the car for 2 months.

24 May, Camden Council wrote again. Here is the body of the letter.

At this point Mr W became concerned and consulted Mr Mustard. A very short letter was drafted which pointed out the car was stolen and reported to the police, that ownership had been transferred to the insurer as notified to DVLA and that Mr Mustard was now the representative of Mr W.

In less than two weeks Camden Council slammed themselves into reverse and sent the below:

The council had ample opportunity to verify the crime reference previously and had already cancelled three PCNs on the grounds of theft so that was just something to say to try and cover up why the writer's colleagues had been so useless up until then.

Other questions which arise are why the police did not tell Mr W that the vehicle was in the car pound as upon removal a record should have been made in TRACE a London wide record of all towed vehicles to which both the police and councils have access.

Given that £40 a night is being added to the bill councils should be more pro-active on getting cars released from the pound. Often the keeper or driver turns up very quickly as they need the car to get home in. If however, the car is stolen, and the police don't know or tell of the impounding, then a bill of £2,920 has already accumulated (on a vehicle worth £1,100) before anything substantive happens.

This is what the law says about removed cars:

That says, in terms, that as soon as a car is impounded the council should write to the registered keeper. Not doing so for several weeks whilst profiting from high storage charges looks like self enrichment.

As soon as Camden Council knew the car had been stolen they should have asked the obvious question, was an insurance claim made?

How did Camden Council manage to sell for £150 a car which insurers found to be worth £1,100 (an allowance must be made for there not being any keys). Who buys all the unclaimed cars? Is there a cosy arrangement with an employee of the car pound?

Why did it take the input of Mr Mustard to get this fixed? It often does. Parking managers across London know his name and his incredibly detailed knowledge of parking law and if they are wise, they sit up and take notice.

Have Camden Council now wrongly destroyed the property of the insurer? Yes.

Does the insurer know? No, probably not.

Camden Council are liable to the insurer for the amount by which the sale proceeds exceeded the costs due, which is of course zero, but only if they have taken the steps a competent authority would take to identify the true owner, which they haven't so they are probably liable to the insurer for the sum paid out (which Camden Council could reclaim from the operator of the pound).

Camden Council need to improve their procedures, that is for sure.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

 

White City ( Hammersmith & Fulham council ridiculousness )

So you have your car stolen when staying with family and naturally you report it stolen to the police as soon as you come out of the house and find it missing (can you find something which is missing?). The car gets smashed up and dumped in a White City council car park. Here is a photo of it (the black rectangle is where the numberplate was to be found, sitting there casually).

Now consider that the airbags were deployed, the front numberplate is on the bonnet, the front bumper is resting on the ground and clearly a serious accident has occurred.

What should a traffic warden do? Check the stolen cars database or issue a PCN? Traffic warden number 1 decided to issue a PCN (no there aren't ticket targets but you can see why the public think there are).

So did number 2, just 4 days later

and number 3 on the very next day

then we go a whole fortnight before traffic warden number 4 arrives (either the car park isn't patrolled very often or there are some traffic wardens with gumption)

 not traffic warden number 5 though some 3 days later.

The following month the police somehow come across the car (an ANPR equipped police car perhaps?) and give it to the insurance company who now own it, having paid out on the claim. The police take the five PCN and say they will sort them out. Somewhere the system breaks down as all 5 PCN are live with £195 owing on each one (150% of PCN value) on the H&F council website except for one which has been sent to bailiffs so is £202 which with bailiff's fees is now £512, which is how my client heard about it, the new owners of their former residence having been knocked up out of bed at 6am (the earliest time that a bailiff can call). The bailiff gets a phone number from the new occupier for the wife of my client but will not listen to reason about the car being stolen and not being her responsibility (she wisely refuses to give the bailiff a new address). A copy of the warrant (which is invalid in any event as it has the wrong address on it) is refused by the bailiff until she pays it (naughty bailiff, there is an absolute right to know by what authority you demand payment). Luckily the bailiff can't clamp Mr Mustard's client's car as he no longer has one.

Mr Mustard will be logging complaints with the council about their own actions as well as the bailiff's but he likes to share with you some of the stupidity he has to deal with.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update: 15 May 15

Out of the blue H&F have just cancelled these 5 PCN (as they jolly well should have done)

Find your car stolen & get no help from Barnet Council / NSL / Capita

probably stolen, joy ridden & then dumped

Regular readers will know that Mr Mustard has an agony uncle column in the local Times newspaper group of papers and he gets requests for help from time to time. One that didn't get into the column but onto the front page was the case of Lili who was unfortunate enough to have her car stolen and then find she had 11 PCN to deal with (she hadn't quite realised the scale of the problem).

Lili had told NSL the car was stolen but they wouldn't take her word for it until the local paper got involved when suddenly she was telling the gospel truth (and she was on her way to Church when she found her car missing - if you can find something that is missing?)

Here are some extracts from the correspondence:

extract from the Met Police victim of crime letter

So, clearly a motor crime has been committed, quite possibly the crime of TWOC-ing - taking without the owner's consent.

Barnet Council / NSL's first response of 29 May

so this first response doesn't think of the victim of crime as an innocent citizen, a law abiding citizen deprived of her mode of transport worth £25,000, oh no, what is more important is that she might be trying to avoid a series of PCN worth £110 each. Very generously, the council offer the innocent pensioner the opportunity to pay £55 for a contravention that she did not commit and as there are 11 of these PCN presumably the council would be happy to relieve an honest citizen of £605 for not doing any wrong.

email of 1 June to Barnet Council / NSL

So, the crime reference is provided. It seems highly unlikely to Mr Mustard that people would go round making these up. You can tell from the tone of the correspondence that the case is genuine (27 years of debt collecting means that lies jump off the page for Mr Mustard)

letter of 11 June

A follow up as a 70 year old keeps up with her correspondence faster than NSL do.

Data Protection Act; the Police will not tell Barnet Council anything

This final letter, before the matter came to the attention of Mr Mustard and the local paper, at which time things suddenly changed, is the unhelpful product of a closed mind. Sadly, after a while, many parking people succumb to the philosophy that motorists are lying scum and any cancellation is a let off. That is misguided thinking which needs to be changed.

The funny thing is that as soon as a journalist asks about the PCN they are all magically cancelled (except they are currently live on the council computer so reams of paper will still arrive) without any further evidence being provided.

The system is wrong. It needs to be changed.

Firstly, the honesty question. A Notice to Owner contains the following declaration.

A person who knowingly or recklessly makes a false representation regarding an important fact is guilty of an offence and on summary conviction may be liable for a fine of up to £5,000.

Mr Mustard thinks that the whole way that parking PCN works is the wrong way round. If you do nothing, and don't engage with the process, you end up being automatically guilty of the misdemeanour of others and could end up with a bailiff seizing the car that was previously stolen and returned because you missed a deadline or didn't respond.

Even when you do respond the council expect you to jump through a load of hoops rather than believing you.

What should happen?

There should be a helpline (not with ruddy Capita who have nothing to bring to the party except a call centre which has to deal with a myriad of call types and don't have the ability to actually cancel a PCN - unless you know otherwise?) which you telephone and give the relevant car registration and your contact details.

Then when a PCN is about to be issued to the stolen car, the hand held equipment erupts in a cacophony of sound, notifies the office, and then NSL telephone the owner, on behalf of the council, to tell them that the vehicle has been found and where it is.

A PCN is not issued (hasn't the motorist got enough to worry about without stupid paperwork?). Any or all PCN which have been issued during the period of the theft are automatically cancelled without further ado.

Result: the motorist thinks the council are wonderful.

Mr Mustard has added this idea to his draft parking policy.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard