NEPP - awful people.

Mr Mustard wrote in July about the problems faced by Mr C who received 3 PCNs when on a double yellow, only one is due as it is a continuous contravention. 

Parking on a double yellow isn't twice as heinous as parking on a single yellow, it just means that doubles apply 24 hours a day and singles don't, you should not be parked when you shouldn't on either line type. Mr Mustard hid in the shadows and advised paying PCN #1 and disputing #2 & #3. That turned out to be the easy bit as after the PCNs had been issued in October 2019 there were some changes of address.

Mr Mustard keeps an on line eye on the balance of every PCN he is asked about. The people he helps vary in how responsive they are to his emails. It was in April 20 that Mr Mustard could see that PCN #1 was paid, PCN #2 was 'not found' presumed cancelled and PCN #3 had risen to the charge certificate value of £105 

Mr C sent an email to NEPP of his own volition on 6 April 20

This revealed that PCN #2 had been cancelled for being issued within 24 hours of PCN #1. As to PCN #3 this was the response

The Order for Recovery is the last stage at which you can take an in time action to stop the process. There is a tight timetable and if you snooze you lose. What the NEPP employee is saying, and this is probably the most stupidly vicious letter Mr Mustard has ever seen, is that even though they know Mr C has moved they are going to keep on sending documents to the old address. The writer is very fortunate that after a lot of thinking Mr Mustard decided not to leave their name on the bottom of what they wrote even though they are supposedly a 'Parking Business Specialist'. As ever, there is the offer to accept 50% for a PCN which isn't payable. Without Mr Mustard providing true expertise & backbone, this might have happened.

Mr Mustard decided on a different approach, out of time representations.

The response of 20 April 20 was as unhelpful as the previous one and wrong in various ways.

The law says an enforcement authority may 'disregard' (i.e. ignore) out of time representations, it is not debarred ('not able') to accept (as in 'consider') them. Pretending you cannot do something rather than saying you are unwilling to do so is misleading. There is no better word on this question that that of the Secretary of State

The much parroted line about the DVLA is a smoke screen. A council can only ask for an address once, at the Notice to Owner stage, so whether or not a motorist updates DVLA is irrelevant. The omission to do so, and Mr C hadn't said whether he had or hadn't updated DVLA, doesn't make the sending of a Notice to an out of date address validly served.

The much quoted 24 hour rule is also bunkum. There was one contravention. Authorities have the option to tow if the vehicle remains in place in contravention but that costs money and doesn't generate multiple PCN revenue.

There was a slight delay. Mr C had many problems in his life and so didn't send the email which Mr Mustard had drafted due to a 'lack of motivation period'. Mr Mustard stepped out of the shadows. Mr Mustard emailed NEPP

More nonsense flowed from the keyboard at NEPP on 19 June 20

Now he was working direct Mr Mustard could get on a bit faster. He emailed back on 24 June and was rather hoping that the recipient would realise they were dealing with a representative who knew his stuff and turn sensible.

Whilst there was some back pedalling by NEPP at this point 'contrary to my prior knowledge' = I know nothing, NEPP then introduced new rules in their email of 1 July 20 that are not part of the law. Oh dear, they really don't know Mr Mustard.

Mr Mustard couldn't understand why NEPP wouldn't simply accept a change of address provided to them by a motorist. 99+% are honest and straightforward, tarring them all with the not trusted brush which isn't borne out by the light of experience is stupid and discriminatory.

On 4 July Mr Mustard set off for Lands End to ride to John O'Groats so was a bit busy. He got passed around a bit between various parking enforcement agencies in Essex, NEPP being a mere agent although owned by the same councils, and he sent this complaint on 1 July 20 just before he went.

This did have one side effect, on 14 August 20 the PCN was cancelled in response to representations which Mr Mustard hadn't made? Why is NEPP exercising its discretion all of a sudden? Because they are wrong but don't want to admit it, fools.

Mr Mustard was then busy on other things and it was February 21 before he followed up on the lack of a proper response to the complaint. He received a short message on 3 February 21 about the PCN. It wasn't cancelled due to discretion, NEPP had broken the law and sent a Notice to Owner out of time. By this time you are beginning to wonder what they did get right, not much is the answer.

Partly due to the pandemic Mr Mustard didn't get back to this file again until June when he chased the response to his complaint. Many don't get answered as it is thought that motorists won't care once the PCN is cancelled but Mr Mustard does care.

Mr Mustard was sent a copy of an emailed response to his complaint that had been sent on 9 February but unfortunately they got his email address wrong which would surely have generated an advice of non-delivery? NEPP did nothing about that.

Thus on 21 June 21, Mr Mustard had the official response.

Mr Mustard has rarely received such a load of old flannel. If the person who wrote the letter which contained statements beyond her understanding was a 'junior member of staff' then she shouldn't be let out on her own and the word 'specialist' should be removed from her title.

Then it is all Mr Mustard's fault that he knows too much! more clearly than the specialists who were writing to him.

Then follows a non-apology 'if' there has been inconvenience. This is not a pleasing way in which to write.

The writer anticipates a 'difference of opinion' which is churlish but accurate. Mr Mustard knows what he is about and NEPP don't is the biggest difference.

The second page isn't much better. The reason that NEPP have to believe that the keeper resides at the new address he has given isn't a legal requirement. You do not have to reside at the address at which you wish to receive your mail, you may provide a service address as a motorist if you wish as any failure to respond to legislated documents can lead to the motorist being timed out of the process. Clearly if you provide an address in Outer Mongolia there may be grounds to think it isn't correct or it may be a fact that you are an expert in mining on secondment and mining for gold for 6 months.

The line that a copy 'Notice to Owner was produced for informational purposes' is odd. The legal department told Mr Mustard this:

Moving on to page 3, the copy was marked with a copy stamp. The letter ends with victim blaming when NEPP have illegally issued a PCN, illegally issued a Notice to Owner, wrongly said they cannot consider representations out of time, wrongly refused a bona fide change of address and so on. NEPP are institutionally incompetent and malicious.

Mr Mustard was starting to think he was banging his head on a brick wall and didn't like the victim blaming in the final sentence. Mr Mustard has a list from the DVLA of when they released information to NEPP. They only asked and were given the information in December 19 (ownership details as at 26/27 October 2019) so any change of address after December 19 would never have reached NEPP.  He emailed on 29 July 21

A response was received on 18 August 21 which goes on with the victim blaming.

They really aren't very bright at NEPP. They think the DVLA address is the only valid one, conflating your duty to keep your address for your vehicle up to date with notifying NEPP of an address. In addition, this is to apply a policy which doesn't exist. NEPP need to write a policy or more simply accept changes of address at face value until they are shown to be wrong. 1000 people at DVLA are off with Covid, there will be delays.

Mr Mustard is sure you can think for yourself of situations which make NEPP's position look pretty stupid. Try this one. You get PCNs at the end of October 2019, as in this case, then you sell the car in November 19 and tell the DVLA. You move home in December 19 - will you be notifying DVLA of all future changes of address? no of course not. What you will do is tell NEPP of the new address so that all future statutory documents reach you. Will you be able to provide NEPP with a copy of a DVLA showing a new address? no, of course not as someone else is now the registered keeper.

NEPP have posited an absurd proposition which operates to the disadvantage of motorists everywhere.

Mr Mustard is going to leave the final word on service to an experienced adjudicator (not a precedent but legally persuasive).

Sadly, there is no mechanism to protect us from enforcement authorities and their agents who don't know what they are doing.

The end.

Nextdoor is a cesspit

My friend Jess Gold was the victim of some inattentive driving, by the driver of a van exiting a side road, New Oak Road, into Long Lane which she was cycling along on her Brompton. The van has come over a give way line without checking that the route was clear. Jess was, unsurprisingly, all shook up after being deposited off her bike and failed to get the details of the witness. We need to find her. Here are the details:

The only point of this post was to try and find the witness who happened to be black and by saying that it helps to find her although if you were wandering along Long Lane that day and saw what happened your evidence will be useful no matter what your skin colour is.

One of the responses would be astonishing if it was said to you at a social soiree but seems to be pretty normal for Nextdoor

I don't see a problem in stating skin colour in this instance and saying a lovely white woman would also have narrowed the field as to who Jess needs to make contact with.

The rant goes up to 11 though in the longer paragraph and is completely irrelevant to the subject in hand and not really what you want to read when you have been the innocent party, knocked off your bike and which luckily left Jess without broken bones, just a bit battered. 

What do we know about Jess? This

She has also gone into print about the A1000 dedicated cycle lane. What the public probably don't know about Jess is that she has a toddler who she takes out in her cargo bike and it is fortunate that she was not on that bike on that fateful day.

Her profile is silent on the question of drivers and she is absolutely entitled to 'pursue' (note the bad spelling of 'persuit') the offending driver and I would do the same (although it would be easier as I usually have cameras running front and rear). 

There is no evidence that Jess hates everyone who drives, she herself rents a vehicle when it is necessary.

Being in favour of cleaner air for everyone, in favour of a safe dedicated bike lane can only be good, she isn't campaigning to remove cars from the A1000, just to keep the current space allocation and there isn't a shred of evidence to support the viewpoint that she thinks she 'owns the road'.

How cycling along the major road when a van comes out of the side road, over a give way lane and takes you out can be equated to a cyclist not conforming to 'road standards' is quite a stretch of the facts.

This is why I don't do or say much on nextdoor and one friend has deleted her account.

Now, on the helpful side, we need to find the 30 year old black lady and anyone else who was in that vicinity on Wednesday 6 October 21 at about 11:30am

Thank you.

Derek

PCNs - Exercise of discretion - #3 Bexley

 

Here we are, the first substantive set of policies on discretionary cancellation. A reasonable number of policies covering some frequently encountered situations and a first offence policy widely applied (which is good).

Mr Mustard takes issue with policy 6 as it simply isn't a legal requirement that a CEO (traffic warden) sees boarding or alighting going on. If you have a young child and park around the corner from the school the CEO can come along, issue a PCN in 40 seconds and be gone, whilst the parent is around the corner or even inside the school gates as drop off has to be at the class room or some other official handover point.

End.

Enfield traffic warden takes up limbo dancing

Mr Mustard has deviated from his 33 blogs about the use of discretion for two reasons, Barnet haven't answered yet, it is promised for today, and something caught his eye whilst cycling.

Leaving his car at home Mr Mustard took the lovely cycle path from near The Chicken Shed Theatre which takes you most of the way to Enfield Town away from the traffic to visit his favourite bakers (Holtwhites, do try them, coming soon to Palmers Green) and pick up various goods but managed not to pay for or receive the two croissants he fancied when he got home. Oh well, another day.

To vary the route slightly he took the off-road route through Hadley Woods which is found by taking Chalk Lane adjacent to Cockfosters Underground Station and then going down the side of the The Cock Inn.

He already has one PCN to fight there and it is popular with traffic wardens but this latest PCN takes the biscuit, Mr Mustard does not think it is possible for a public servant to stoop any lower.

Mr Mustard's eye was caught by a hand written note on a car so, it being in a public place, he stopped to read it.

The note says: 'That's a pedestrian drop kerb and I got a ticket for parking on it, hence the gap to the yellows'.

The car was parked where the silver car is in this google street view image (a car being in the way almost all the time to enable photographs of the surroundings).

Most pedestrian dropped kerbs have tactile paving so whilst really happy with the love shown by one motorist for another, Mr Mustard thinks his/her thinking is as defective as that of the traffic warden.

This isn't a place for people to cross the road, the pavement on their side simply runs out. There is no corresponding dropped kerb on the other side of the road. It isn't a vehicular entrance to a property and it doesn't lead to a cycle path. Those are the three bases on which a PCN could be issued.

Mr Mustard doesn't know who got the ticket and he would be delighted to assist the motorist if you happen to know them. 

The PCN that was issued is as about a miserable a PCN as it is possible to issue. The traffic warden is either not very good or desperate but there is no call for desperation, people manage to park wrongfully all the time and it is the genuinely in the wrong who could be given PCNs not people who have parked legally after the seductive ending of the double yellow lines and the knowledge that this stretch is always well parked up.

There was no traffic management purpose to this PCN, it is revenue raising pure and simple.

The end.

PCNs - exercise of discretion - #1 Barking & Dagenham

 

The Secretary of State publishes Statutory Guidance to enforcement authorities as to how to exercise their powers when it comes to parking PCNs. The same requirement does not exist for moving traffic and bus lane PCNs but any half decent authority would also develop policies for responding to challenges against those types of PCN.

As you can read above, enforcement authorities, councils basically, 'should' formulate and publish their policies on the exercise of discretion.

'Should' means exactly what it says. It expresses a strong assertion or command rather than a wish. The SoS should have said 'must' to avoid any doubt.

Mr Mustard decided that it would be useful if he had those policies so could better help motorists who had fallen into error but who might be 'let off' in certain circumstances. Accordingly, he emailed all 33 enforcement authorities in London on 9 September and is going to blog the responses one at a time in alphabetical order. Some are commendably comprehensive and others are lamentably non-existent.

Barking & Dagenham start the alphabet and their reply is hopeless.

Mr Mustard knew that there weren't centrally organised policies about discretion as that wouldn't be the exercise of discretion but a dictatorship and the DfT would not say an enforcement authority should do something it had already done itself!  There isn't a London Council code of practice on the use of discretion. 

He sent a reply, he does not expect to hear anything else.

A bad start, it does get better but there are other hopeless cases at the end. He'll give those authorities a little time to pull their socks up and send a complaint to the Secretary of State at the end of all the laggards.

End.

Honourable Haringey

Mr Mustard was consulted about this story which resolved itself thanks to the enquiries made by the local democracy reporter. Mr Mustard, however, carried on digging. The car was towed from a spot on the left of the following picture, which is from 2021 and is in White Hart Lane near the car boot sale site.

What Mr Mustard found, was that since June 2021 those lines that you can see which are single yellow, should have been double yellows. They were in 2020 as this photo shows.

Mr Mustard is going to look back once he has obtained the Traffic Orders which existed prior to June 2021 (when changes were made within the White Hart Lane zone) to compare the lines which should have been there with what was actually there in case there has been an even longer standing problem.

So far, after a perfectly pleasant exchange of emails with the traffic orders officer, it was accepted that the single yellow lines should have been doubles and will be repainted and also that the school keep clear zig zag lines needed signs which are now to be erected.

Subsequently Mr Mustard asked if all wrongful PCNs would be refunded and to his pleasant surprise (it shouldn't be a surprise, any enforcement authority which has wrongfully demand a penalty, and possibly removed what turned out to be legally parked vehicles, should put their hand up and refund without demur) Haringey Council, via a Technical Officer, sent Mr Mustard this lovely email:

No need for you to wait if you were one of the affected parties. Contact Haringey Council, quote your PCN and ask for a refund. There isn't an email address for parking so best start at customer.services@haringey.gov.uk

If you have a current PCN, point out that the single yellow lines should be doubles and that the PCN must be cancelled as it was issued 'ultra vires' (outside the pwers of the council).

Any problems, do email mrmustard@zoho.com

End.

The Unhappy Man (with a PCN)

So here we are in 2018, a lovely view of a local pub in Englefield Green and no single yellow line but the pub reserving road space (they may or may not have a delivery coming but still shouldn't put trip hazards in the road). There are no single yellow lines in this road at this time, only doubles to stop obstructive and/or dangerous parking.

The tall hedge on the right is now gone, replaced by a small development that is close to completion.

Mr Mustard contributes to the PePiPoo forum (silly name but a good site) where you can get good free advice on various problems with officialdom including for private parking charges which Mr Mustard doesn't fight.

He came across this question.

Mr Mustard took a look at the images which had been made available:

This photograph was taken by a traffic warden

Mr Mustard knew immediately that this wasn't a council sign (or else the sign shop is staffed by nincompoops, not the case, they are employed to patrol the streets). The reasons are:

- the screws holding the sign to the pole are not the way that signs are affixed, always done with an adjustable metal hoop at the back. Also, none of the pole should stick out above the sign.

- the roundel is correct but it is so universally recognised that no words are required. Oddly, you might think, the roundel means 'no waiting' not 'no parking'. Look at the similar signs where you are, they have no words and 'no parking' is not an authorised variant of the sign.

- Between means Tuesday to Thursday. The PCN was issued on a Monday so isn't valid.

- Between the time and the am/pm suffix should be a space.

- The arrow is superfluous. There is no line in the opposite direction. Guidance requires one sign within 15m of each end of the line and at 60m intervals on long lines.

In summary, only the roundel is correct (although Mr Mustard hasn't had the opportunity to measure it & it too could be wrong).

It may surprise you to know that traffic wardens don't know what the Traffic Order, which sets out the rules for each section of road, says. They rely on the same signs as the motorist. In order to issue a PCN the following applies:

If the traffic warden was competent, he/she would not hold the belief that a penalty charge was payable, as no contravention can occur unless adequate legally compliant signage is in place. 

Since this PCN was issued, two things have happened

1 - the line has been painted out and the signs removed. This is because the traffic section was asked if the signs and line should be there. At least the council can be praised for their swift action in that regard.

2 - The PCN has been challenged as to not do so would, at the next stage, make the registered keeper guilty by default.

Who painted the line and erected the signs remains a mystery. It could have been the builders who wanted more room to get lorries in and out of their site (the sign & lines arrived once work had commenced) or the pub, who seem to regard the road space as their own. It could equally have been anybody else but that will probably remain a mystery. Here is the scene today:

A barrel across the dropped kerb is partly understandable but still shouldn't be there.

Whilst we are on the question of signs, here are some more that Mr Mustard has spotted in his travels.

The sign above, seen whilst on a walk in Bramfield (try the lovely pub, The Grandison with good beer and food) makes the same 'No parking' error.

At least this sign in The Meadway ask politely and says Thank You.

This sign, numerous example of which were erected in Hampden Way, at the very edge of Barnet, also repeats the 'No parking' error. More likely than not, contravening vehicles will be relocated not removed. This doesn't look like an approved sign to Mr Mustard. He hasn't emailed the Parking Manager much recently, time to do so.  

Mr Mustard

Update 28 September:Runnymede Council say this (not the pub then!)

Until Mr Mustard sees the actual Order, properly advertised, he won't believe it exists.