Barnet Council Parking play ping pong and lose

Set out above are the legal requirements that must be adhered to before a council accepts a transfer of liability for a PCN for a vehicle on hire up to 6 months. For leases greater than 6 months the liability can be transferred to the effective keeper if there is a sufficient degree of permanence to the arrangement. Mr Mustard lost when he tried to get a lease of one year's duration accepted as valid for liability transfer. He has seen a transfer accepted for a 2 year agreement but not for anything in between. In leasing circles, a 3 year lease is common. The question though is a fact dependent one.

Whatever the claim, short term hire or long term lease, Barnet Council must be sent the paperwork to support the keeper's representations against the Notice to Owner. Studying that paperwork is a part of the process that Barnet Council decided not to bother with. The independent adjudicator did not like that. Will it change?

Before Mr Mustard shows you the chronology of documents and the adjudicator's decision he would just mention that this all came about because the resident's usual car needed some bodywork and so he had a courtesy car. The resident is Mr PP, for ping pong. A request to have a dispensation or temporary permit changeover, after all the car with a residents permit was in the garage, was refused, although it used to be normal 5 years ago. More work that the council cannot be bothered with. 'Putting the community first' is an empty worded mantra which still leaks onto council paperwork sometimes.

In the middle of all this Mr Mustard emailed a parking manager, as that often puts a stop to stupid nonsense, but the manager was happy with what the council was doing. One doubts he will be so happy after reading the tribunal decision which shines a spotlight on the council's way of (not) doing things.

Yes, you have read correctly, there were five, yes five, Notices to Owner.

Without the grit & certainty which Mr Mustard brings to the process most people would have given up way before the end of this saga.

In this case the most unattractive feature was that the council accepted a liability transfer when they shouldn't have and then wanted to ignore their own mistake (parking never ignore yours!) and have a second go at the resident due to their own error. What Mr Mustard didn't know at the time, although he had seen liability transferred without copy documents before, was the council's policy on just accepting the word of a 'reputable' company, ones who are members of the BVLRA (British Vehicle Leasing and Rental Association, a mere trade body) that a rental agreement or lease existed. Barnet Council had better start changing their process.

What happened in this case was that the garage, BHW trading as Veetec supplied a courtesy car to Mr PP.  He signed a hire agreement for it, for a few weeks, but it was a contract with Circle Leasing. Concurrent with that was a one lease agreement between Circle Leasing and BHW. Therefore, there were two lease/rent agreements in place at one and the same time.

Barnet Council should have rejected both of them but for different reasons, the one year one because it didn't have the necessary degree of permanence and the short term rental one because it omitted the driving licence details. They did neither.

When BHW said the car was on rental the council should have noticed that the car was not being rented from them and should have refused the liability transfer.

The other problem was that because Barnet Council sent two Notices to Owner to Circle Leasing they charged two administration fees of £25 each just for saying who was renting the car. These fees, and Mr Mustard has seen them as high as £48, are an absolute rip-off. Time the DVLA was changed to record both the beneficial owner and the day-to-day keeper so the PCNs can be straight to the person who, most likely, was driving.

This was a jolly fun battle which Mr Mustard was 99% sure he would win and so it turned out.

Mr Mustard's advice is to try and avoid any sort of lease arrangement for your own car if you can as that way you get your own PCNs far more quickly and don't have to pay an extra fee for them, even if you get the PCN cancelled.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Emergency PCN - nothing must come before revenue raising

Here is another decision by an independent adjudicator putting to the sword Barnet Council's terrible moral standards. When driving along and an ambulance wants to come past we should all make way for it if we can. Would you want your ambulance delayed because other motorists refused to get out of the way for fear of receiving a £130 PCN? - no, Mr Mustard thought not.

There really does need to be an outside body to keep a tight rein on the dubious moral standards exhibited by local authorities, and Barnet Council are not alone in this. There hasn't been a survey of the opinion of residents in Barnet for some time but the low regard in which Barnet Parking was held will not improve whilst harsh decisions like this one are being taken.

Sod traffic management, this is all about the revenue.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Saracens zone / Barnet Council / signing scandal

The independent tribunal which may ultimately decide the fate of a contested PCN is obliged to publish a register of decisions. You can find it here (select Statutory Registers). That is how Mr Mustard fell over the decision (he reads the Barnet decisions daily).

This PCN was placed on the car. The driver may or may not have made a challenge at that stage. At the Notice to Owner stage representations must have been made (otherwise you cannot get a tribunal hearing) and clearly Barnet Council rejected them. As the signs are changed to reflect the next match date, photographs are taken to prove they were done. Thus, the council had the evidence that at least one of the signs on which people rely was not correct. In this case the car was parked in Bittacy Road which can only be accessed from Bittacy Hill so it was one of the main signs on the north eastern edge of the zone which was not updated. Thus it was patently unfair to even issue PCNs within the zone that day when the council knew that people could innocently enter it, their actions were entrapment.

Barnet Council therefore rejected a perfectly good representation.

The motorist then made an Appeal to the tribunal. At that stage Barnet Council could have done the decent thing, the honest decision, and not fought the Appeal. Instead they have the effrontery to admit they didn't update the signage, the only legal method by which the date of the match can be communicated to passing traffic, and still maintain they are entitled to £110.

Mr Mustard would have asked for costs if this was one of his cases (there may well yet be one if the motorist thinks about it) as he thinks that the behaviour of Barnet Council is both vexatious and wholly unreasonable, which are two of the three criteria which can lead to costs being awarded (costs are rarely awarded, the third limb being 'frivolous').

Mr Mustard wanted to compare the number of PCNs doled out on 2 November 19 (the match day in question) with previous match days in 2019 but he couldn't as the council have so far only published the data up until September. Come on Barnet.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Eastleigh B.C. - incompetent or bluffing?

Bluffer's Park in Toronto

For a traffic enforcement authority to get a simple law wrong, or to deliberately mislead a motorist in order to raise revenue, are both things which should not happen. Luckily the motorist, Mr D, had faith in the advice he received from Mr Mustard (whose name did not appear on the file).

The facts: Mr D parked his car on double yellow lines in order to deliver glass to a customer. He got ticketed. This had happened to him previously in Barnet and when it did he produced his delivery documents and the council always cancelled.

Eastleigh saw it differently.

If you are unloading something bulky or heavy you are not in breach of the restriction, you are exempt. Mr D couldn't believe the answer so he wrote again and got the same nonsense back again:

The second answer was worse than the first one as it said you cannot unload, a patent lie. Now Mr D had to wait for the Notice to Owner. Once he had it, he made the same representation of unloading. He got knocked back again and that opened the door to the relevant tribunal, the TPT.

It is impossible to be continuously loading. You go out of sight of a traffic warden when you enter the delivery premises or if they are around the corner. Funny thing is that rule isn't in the Eastleigh traffic order which allows for loading and unloading.

Mr D made his application to the tribunal and all of a sudden the council woke up to reality and threw in the towel, for this nonsense reason:

It is fortunate that Mr D had overturned previous PCNs whilst he had been engaged in unloading as otherwise he might have believed Eastleigh Council and given then £35 or £70 (depending at what stage he gave up). One member of staff, at least, needs some training in the basic rules of parking. Perhaps they could have a read of the Highway Code

It would seem that Mr Mustard's work will never be done.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Please help a blind person to see again

Credit or debit card or cheque book (yes, some of us still have one) at the ready please.

Mr Mustard has blogged about the charity Second Sight on a previous occasion.

The plan for the charity in 2020 is to sell 5,000 copies of the above book Outgrowing the Big which will fund 5,000 operations. This is the last year of active fund raising as the hospitals are moving onto self-sufficient and sustainable models.

£20 is the cost of restoring sight to one blind person in Bihar and to help you spatially, as he couldn't have put a pin anywhere near the correct location without a bit of help years ago from a friend who visited the hospital to help out, Mr Mustard has given you a useful map.

 

Mr Mustard would like you to buy a copy of this book. You will enable a blind person to see again and if you can spare £20 what better way would there be to spend it. This isn't a book to buy and just leave on your coffee table, it is also a good and varied read, here is one page to whet your appetite:

Mr Mustard is lucky enough to have 2432 twitter followers, who will be tweeted a link to this blog. If just 1% of you buy this book on this link then 24 people will be able to see clearly again. If you are cash rich but time poor, you might just want to donate instead, Lucy, the driving force behind Second Sight, will be happy and grateful for either.

Do please buy the book or give something. 100% of your donation goes on saving sight, nothing at all on administrative costs.

With thanks

Mr Mustard

https://www.secondsight.org.uk/ 

Barnet Council not good at thinking of risks - Saracens

Here is the risk register that was cobbled together by Barnet Council to offer some crumbs of comfort for the stupid 30 year loan of £22.9m to Saracens.

 

It seems that no council employee (or 'Officer' as they are so grandly titled) considered the possibility of relegation and the effect on the club's finances or even on crowd size such that the enlarged stand may not be needed. This risk affects the ability to repay.

Mr Mustard isn't being wise after the event. He never thought it was a good idea to lend to Saracens especially when a multi-millionaire was their backer and could easily afford a new stand.

The Council did obtain a report from external accountants about making this loan. The external accountants should have obtained fully detailed Annual Accounts from Saracens and management accounts for recent months and given the rumours about the salary cap breach they should have gone though them with a fine tooth comb. They probably weren't being pushed to be overly diligent, it was just a box ticking exercise, a fop for the public, that, or the breaches were hidden out of sight, which makes Saracens not a fit and proper company to be offered credit.

There must be an awful lot of back covering going on in the Barnet Council offices at Colindale at the moment. There is a meeting on Wednesday of the Financial Performance and Contracts Committee but that isn't going to decide anything, it is merely going to 'note' the report that the Deputy Chief Executive, Cath Shaw (by coincidence she is a bit of a rugby fan) is presenting.

The council are still bending over backwards for Saracens, despite the well publicised failings with the salary cap. The two fines, points deductions and agreed relegation are all very good reasons to cancel the loan and demand repayment of the sums advanced so far. There are no extra assets from which the £3.2m could be recovered and Saracens are several million down in fines, further eroding the available assets.

The council know they can walk away:

The council admit and recognise there are 'significant financial implications' but still want to leave the door open for further lending. A bonkers stupid decision.

There will be a definition in the contract, which Mr Mustard has not yet seen, but which a member of the public has asked for via the What Do They Know website, of the term 'Material Adverse Effect' but one would hope that the council's lawyers have written it to cover such a financial morass as the one which Saracens have got themselves into by their own reckless actions. Councillors on this committee should be given the definition and should really of their own volition ask to see a copy of the contract which they are absolutely entitled to see. Decisions should not be taken on a contract without seeing a copy of the contract so you know what you are deciding on.

If the council don't hold the view that the current state of events is a materially adverse one then that would be wilful blindness.

The sum in question is petty cash to the multi-millionaire behind the club. Just ask him nicely for our money back and let's put it to better use.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Puller Road - one unlucky motorist

When Mr Mustard read the above tribunal decision he thought it was odd as he knew that unless cars on both sides put a wheel on the kerb it isn't possible for lorries, ambulances, fire engines etc to get through. 

When the google car went down the road for the first time in 2009 cars were clearly parked partially on the pavement and nothing has changed since.

 

Mr Mustard also thought that it was a road in which the London wide pavement parking ban is not enforced. He decided therefore to extract from the published PCN database the PCNs which were issued in Puller Road in 2019. Here they are:

The council statement to the tribunal, that footway parking isn't permitted (in that PCNs are issued) which should be the truth, clearly isn't. There really does need to be sort of sanction against local authorities which tell patent lies to the tribunal.

You might also wonder why the traffic warden issued a PCN for parking on the pavement to just one car in the road when he could have issued 50. I think it is because they know if they do that one neighbour will come out, will call another one and before you know it the residents will be up in arms and the traffic warden will receive robust verbal feedback. So what Mr Mustard thinks they do is hit one car and then scarper.

Do make sure that you don't put a wheel on the kerb, anywhere in Greater London, unless a bay is marked out or you are 100% sure it is a road in which the council turns a blind eye.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard