Justice for (not of) Solomon

One would think by now that the law about continuous contravention would be clear to every enforcement authority in London but no, word hasn't gone as far out as Redbridge, who gave Solomon's car a PCN on 20, 22, 26, 29, 30 October and 2 November for being parked partially on the pavement. A review of the location in question, Chadwell Avenue, RM6 shows this to be completely standard.

Mr Solomon Adegun having left 2 wheels on the footway, just like everyone else in that area, had the misfortune to be selected to be a bad example by Redbridge Council and was duly issued with 6 PCNs.

 

Having made formal representations against all 6 PCNs to Redbridge Council, who rejected them all, the heinous individuals, hoping in the process to grab £660 out of Solomon's wallet. Applying the justice of Solomon would have seen them receive £330 but that was not to be. The independent adjudicator correctly identified that the car had not moved and that Redbridge were trying to make a super profit of £550. The adjudicator stopped the nonsense, cancelled 5 of the PCNs 6 of which which cost the council c. £180 in tribunal fees and awarded them £110 so they went home losing money.

Should you know Mr Solomon Adegun, who might live in Chadwell Avenue RM6, do please put him in touch with Mr Mustard as he would like to see a photo showing how far on the pavement the car was, possibly not far, or if Solomon was singled out for special treatment. Mr Mustard can be emailed at mrmustard@zoho.com

End

Beastly in Bexley to the elderly

An independent adjudicator stopped the rotten treatment.

This is not the way that any council should treat an octogenarian, even one who clearly still has all of his faculties and fighting spirit, by rejecting representations and forcing him on a personal trip to Chancery Lane whilst covid still rages.

Mr Mustard salutes you, Mr Devine.

End.

Hackney - illegal pursuit of PCNs

Back in November 2021 Mr Mustard won an Appeal at London Tribunals that neutralised the Traffic Management Order prohibiting motor vehicles at a certain point in Mount Pleasant Lane - as the certain point which Hackney Council described couldn't possibly exist.

It is the case that decisions by independent adjudicators at London Tribunals don't set precedents, an adjudicator being able to decide one case one way and the next case, apparently the same, a different way. This is because cases turn on little factual nuances. However, in a situation whereby an Adjudicator has found a fundamental and clear flaw in a traffic order it is likely that the decision to cancel a PCN will be followed by other adjudicators. The odd thing though is that unless the motorist who got the PCN challenges the PCN on the grounds that the Traffic Order is invalid then the adjudicator, who probably decides 100 cases a week all over London and so won't remember a case he decided weeks or months ago, won't do what Mr Mustard did and look really closely at the description within the traffic order and a map and get his measuring tape out.

The adjudicator decides Appeals based upon the representations and arguments which have been made, not normally adding any of his own, being independent after all.

Here is the decision that must have put Hackney Council into a panic.

A council having discovered that a traffic order is effectively invalid should take the appropriate administrative steps to draw up a new order, correctly stating the location, and not take any further action against people who have outstanding PCNs. In addition, having realised that they have issued thousands of invalid PCNs they should proactively refund everyone affected. That isn't, unsurprisingly, what they did as PCNs are all about the money. Hackney Council told the local paper that everything was hunky dory, and unless the motorist challenged the validity of the traffic order, Hackney Council would present what they knew was an invalid traffic order to the adjudicator. Mr Mustard knows of two cases where the traffic order was challenged as part of the Appeal and Hackney Council quietly folded their hand on those two cases.

Mr Mustard also knows, as the register is a public document, of all these people who fought their PCNs in front of an indepndent adjudicator at London Tribunals and lost, because Hackney Council submitted as evidence a traffic order which they know does not have an enforceable location of contravention stated. This was dishonest.

Mr Mustard has a friend who is a retired lawyer and he now works pro bono (for free) for people who have been the subject of injustice. We can easily locate the school and the business but the other listed victims could live anywhere, although they most probably live in London. Mr Mustard needs your help to track them down. Please, if you know any of the people listed above, please show them this blog post and get them to click on this link for the story in the Hackney Gazette, and ask them to email mrmustard@zoho.com so that their details can be passed to the solicitor who will try and get them their money back.

End.

Stop the rot

Mr Mustard expects that most drivers/residents will know the Golders Green station area as will many coach travellers as it is a stop on some long distance National Express journeys (e.g. Manchester to London). Here is an aerial view

Mr Mustard didn't realise when he snipped the image but there is a handily placed bus to demonstrate bus scale, Mr Mustard having drawn a line to show a gap of 10.9m into which a bus is meant to fit at the lights if going south down the Finchley Road and navigating around the island with the clock on it.

Why is Mr Mustard writing about this subject? It is because of this tribunal decision.

Mr Mustard looked up the coach in question to find it is a Mercedes Benz Tourismo and longer than the gap between the traffic lights and the yellow box it was going over.

Thus, as Mr Thacker said, it is impossible to not overhang the yellow box.

As the adjudicator pointed out the stop was due to red traffic lights not due to a stationary vehicle so absolutely no contravention had occurred and this behaviour is, in the words of regular reader Fraser 'ruthless, venal and rapacious' and Mr Mustard would add stupid and procedurally unfair.

It is hard enough to safely drive a coach through London especially around busy junctions without having to worry if you might get wrongly ticketed by some numpty at NSL who doesn't know the rules and thinks that because the computer controlled cctv has selected this as a possible contravention, that it must be so. In fact, two people are meant to watch the cctv extracts before pressing the PCN button but Mr Mustard suspects that the task is either not being performed or not diligently or with any real thought.

Mr Mustard is going to send this case to the relevant labour councillor who can start to bring some common sense and some law abiding behaviour to the parking / PCN department.

The end (or at least perhaps the beginning of it for revenue raising).
 

Barnet put a PCN camera at a goldmine

Mr Mustard recently read his first tribunal decision at a new location 'Ballards Lane Junction With Nether Street And Chaville' which is the crossroads adjacent to Finchley Central tube station. Whilst there is an exemption for turning right and being prevented by other vehicles waiting to turn right, he can see this is going to be problematic as the road is painted to allow a right turn from the middle lane and it is easy for the car in the right hand lane to block your exit because it is has to swing and is accordingly much wider that when alongside. People are going to get stuck as they can't see what their exit is like and the merciless cctv computer will be churning PCNs out by the thousand.

Mr Mustard will avoid turning right from Nether Street into Regents Park Road (i.e. over the tube bridge). If you look like you might get stuck, just go straight on, turn around in front of the tube station and then come back up to the lights and turn left. You will save yourself £130.

The turn right markings should be changed to remove the right turn advice from the middle lane.

The end.

Hackney Council are hilarious

Whilst looking for something else Mr Mustard fell over this decision (2210093938) and then fell about laughing at the pathetic defence Hackney mounted, which they would have instantly rejected if made against one of their PCNs.

Hackney Council - do they or don't they like PCNs?

Mr Mustard had long harboured the idea to publish an evidence pack in relation to a hearing to take place about a Penalty Charge Notice. This was to help people udnerstand the process.

It is hard to know what Hackney Council really think when they waste time taking themselves to the tribunal? with a win or a loss both being equally futile.

Thus when Mr Mustard saw that the London Borough of Hackney were defending a PCN issued by London Councils (the umbrella body for all councils in London including Hackney) he thought he really ought to see what it was all about.

It was a simple matter to send an information request to the London Borough of Hackney and was done on 18 February, just 2 days after the hearing, when the matter would be fresh in the mind of the relevant council officer.

One expects a request to be answered within 28 days (Hackney only manage that 72% of the time) and they failed in this case, only responding on 26 April (they did apologise). However, the response was unexpected.


Mr Mustard doesn't stand any nonsense. He followed up the following day.

The sample evidence pack Mr Mustard provided was for a case in which Hackney Council were opposing Mr Mustard at the tribunal that very day - they lost, the main part of the decision simply saying 'I am not satisfied that the Enforcement Authority have rebutted the fact that the Appellant was actively unloading for the time in which he was observed.'

Mr Mustard is looking forward to seeing all the internal documents about his information request to see who doesn't know what an evidence pack is when the council produce between 500 & 1000 of them a year.

Mr Mustard doesn't let the grass grow under his feet so decided to request a copy of the evidence pack from the body which produced it, London Councils. They also made a bit of a mess of his request and passed it on to London Tribunals, a body not subject to FOI law. Mr Mustard asked them to withdraw their request and happened to see a member of the administration staff whilst at the tribunal hearing centre and point out that he had not made a request and it should be ignored.

That problem pushed aside London Councils responded well within deadline, although they did carry out some pointless redactions, such as the PCN reference and vehicle registration, both of which are published in the tribunal register.

When Mr Mustard studies an evidence pack he leaves sections E and B to last.

The cover sheet A lets you see what sections you have.

Section C gives you a copy of what the contravention is all about although you have to put it together from the heading 'London Lorry Control scheme', the alleged contravention, 'restricted street during prescribed hours without a permit' and 'exceeding 18 tonnes MGW'.

Section D didn't contain what it should have done, the DVLA record, but ownership was not disputed.

Section E is where we find out what fabulous argument Hackney were deploying in order to try and escape from liability for £550 (ouch). The argument was that the refuse lorry was being used to remove refuse. All well and good but why didn't it have a permit? no mention of that and thus not actually a challenge which fell within any of the categories on which challenge is specified as allowed on the PCN (which follows the stipulations of the law). It was a request for a goodwill cancellation. Do Hackney themselves show much latitude when you the motorist makes a mistake, not in Mr Mustard's experience with them sending PCNs, which they have illegally issued, to bailiffs (a story for another day).

London Councils flatly rejected the challenge on the grounds of a lack of a permit. They offered to accept 50%, being £275.

Hackney decided to chance their arm at the tribunal. Their Grounds of Appeal are set out in the final 3 paragraphs of the case summary at B. They are, in essence, a request for mitigation (mitigation which London Councils should have really granted as this is a highly technical error, a simple permit oversight, but them's the rules). The problem for Hackney is the law which says that adjudicators cannot take mitigating circumstances into account, they have to consider if the contravention occurred and it certainly did (if you accept that there is a control on lorry weight).

As it happens the decision shows us that the adjudicator also thought the PCN shouldn't be pursued as he invited London Councils to walk away.


When they didn't he had no choice but to uphold the PCN. Mr Mustard notices that the relevant Traffic Management Order wasn't in evidence and that is the defence he would have run in a skeleton argument filed with 3 days to go (although London Councils are more nimble than their members and would probably have made good the lacuna in their evidence) as before advancing your defence the enforcement authority have to prove their case.

None of this administrative waste of time made London a better place. All council tax payers have been badly served by this nonsense.

The end (until the further information arrives).