Wake up NSL

In the contract between NSL and Barnet council it is the responsibility of NSL to use forms that are compliant with the law. Parking is supposed to be their area of expertise. You would think then, that the correct email address for the Traffic Enforcement Centre would be known to them and put on all forms. Here is a form TE3 that was issued on 1 August 14.

note that the email address provided for the TEC is customerservice.tec@hmcourts-service.gsi.gov.uk which was stupidly long in the first place and has now, sensibly, been changed to the one shown in this extract from an email which Mr Mustard received on 16 July 2014.

If you now send an email to the long wrong email address which is on the form that NSL sent you it is going to bounce and cause you to have to hunt for the new one, of tec@hmcts.gsi.gov.uk thus having your time wasted and causing you extra stress and inconvenience.

Luckily the motorist concerned knew Mr Mustard and he knew the correct address so the difficulty has been side-stepped but 99% of the people who get these Orders for Recovery will not know the TEC address has changed. Ironically if you don't update the address on your V5 (car log book) you will get some sanctimonious words in a rejection of your representations from NSL, on behalf of Barnet Council, telling you that you should by law have updated the address within 14 days of moving. Looks like someone needs to remove the plank from their own eye.

This really isn't good enough service.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

NSL - out of order again

There is a safety net built into the PCN enforcement process to catch you if you don't receive the Notice to Owner or if the Notice of Rejection of Representations does not arrive.

The way it works is that the Traffic Enforcement Centre (part of Northampton County Court) agree that a batch of PCNs can be registered as debts and enforced as if they are county court judgments (although they don't count towards your credit rating).

Under Civil Procedure Rule & Practice Direction 75 this fact must be communicated to the debtor (i.e. the registered keeper of the vehicle) within 15 days of that batch being agreed (7 days in the contract with NSL, Mr Mustard thinks) i.e it must reach the debtor within 15 days thus allowance must be made for time in the postal system. The TEC keep a note of the deadline for each PCN which is 36 days after the date of their decision.

Barnet Council then send you a form TE3 Order for Recovery which tells you this. The TE3 has a date on the front by which you must file a form TE9 to return your PCN to the Notice to Owner stage (if you didn't receive the Notice to owner the first time) or have a PATAS hearing (if you didn't receive the Notice of Rejection). You get 21 days in which to file your form TE9 (by email is best).

(NSL have cut a big hole in the safety net by being slow to act. Here are the dates of a case which, thanks to the rejection of an in-time TE9 as being out-of-time, Mr Mustard got dragged into (luckily for the motorist concerned).

29 Jan 14: TEC agree debt registration 

13 Feb 14: Official deadline to issue TE3 Order for Recovery

28 Feb 14: TE3 issued

6 Mar 14: 36 days after debt registration = deadline for TE9

10 Mar 14: Witness statement TE9 filed (rejected as late)

21 Mar 14; Deadline for TE9 set by Barnet Council/NSL (incorrectly)

So what you say this is just a one-off? No, Mr Mustard had a case he was dealing with in November 13. Ah, so at least 2 cases then which would be 2% of the cases that Mr Mustard deals with in a year. Therefore, with 165,000 PCN issued annually we could expect there to be 330 such cases in a year. How many were there?

6,193 (let Mr Mustard repeat that)

6,193

yes, 6,193 not issued within 7 days at May 13 (since presumably 1 May 12 when the contract started).

So that is 6,193 PCN not processed in accordance with the contract or within the Civil Procedure Rules and thus illegally pursued.

We don't know how many went to bailiffs and were paid, completely illegally.

We don't know how many people paid up in fear, completely wrongly.

What we do know that the contract with NSL is a One Barnet contract.

We know that it is a disaster.

We know that we paid for a service we didn't get.

We do know that KPI.9 Processing Services has a zero tolerance for failure. Mr Mustard will be checking that this KPI has not been paid for in 2013/14 given that it has obviously been consistently failed (and 2012/13 was still being negotiated last time Mr Mustard looked).

So if the thin client side can't manage such a simple contract what hope is there for the contracts with Capita and Re:  (bloody stupid name for a joint venture)? Absolutely no chance at all that these much larger and more complicated contracts will:

a) perform

b) have contract terms that are properly enforced.

The only way to be 100% sure of what is going on in a department, is to run it in a hands-on style.

The NSL contract isn't working (this is not the only process failure).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

4/4/14
Amended by Mr Mustard to change the 15 days which he changed to 7 back to 15!

Bolt out of the blue or Justice delayed is justice denied

an old bolt to match an old PCN

Mr Mustard thinks that there are possibly 8,000 rip van winkle PCNs which have been pulled out of their state of sleep and subjected to new processing. Someone, and who that is Mr Mustard does not yet know, at Barnet Council doesn't think they have to abide by the Code of Practice issued by London Councils which says that if there is a delay in processing at any stage of the process of more than 6 months the PCN should (emphasis by Mr M) be cancelled. Rules are of course only for little people. Some parking rules are in the Highway Code and we are expected to abide by those but apparently the council can treat other Codes as optional.

How might you hear about your PCN lurching back into life after a year of gathering digital dust on a hard disk? 

You might get a letter giving you 7 days to pay before the debt is registered with the Traffic Enforcement Centre at Northampton County Court (which acts as a clearing house for PCN across the land - no actual hearings take place there). The next document you receive would be the Order for Recovery.

You might get the Order for Recovery.

You might get the Charge Certificate (and you can do nothing much at this stage in the standard procedure except wait for the Order for Recovery or pay, as if)

You might get a Notice to Owner (if that is the case and it is more than 6 months since the Penalty Charge Notice simply write to Barnet Council and tell them they are out of time, full stop).

You might get a letter or a visit from a Bailiff which is the least palatable option.

What can you do?

The first step is to send an email to mrmustard@zoho.com with copies of every document.

If you have the Order for Recovery (form TE3) it will have with it a form TE9 which you can complete with one, and only one, of the four possible grounds. The 4 grounds are

1. I did not receive the Notice to Owner

2. I appealed against the Notice to Owner within 28 days and heard nothing back

3. I appealed to PATAS on time but heard nothing back (not very likely)

4. I have paid.

If you do this on time, and you can do it by email to the TEC, then, for option 1,  the PCN will go back to the beginning and you will be able to appeal or, for options 2 & 3 it will be listed for consideration by PATAS and presumably for option 4 the money will be chased down as a clerical error has probably occurred, be ready to prove payment. Mr Mustard doubts there will be many option 4 cases.

If the PCN has already reached the Bailiff in the form of a warrant of execution then as well as filing the form TE9 you will also have to file a form TE7 which is an application to file form TE9 outside of the time limit and you will need a good reason for being late which might be that you didn't receive earlier documents about the PCN. Mr Mustard can help you with these.

When a bailiff is sniffing around you need to move fast (the same day) to make sure he doesn't get your car removed before you have filed the forms with the TEC.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Missing any forms, get them here.