Payback for a small error in Haringey

 

Copyright: https://www.picpedia.org/highway-signs/e/error.html

Oh dear me, another random tribunal decision which contains a council error to go with the motorist's driving error. Funny how councils (and Haringey are typical in this regard) don't want their errors punished whilst making millions out of motorists every year.

We see that the council filed the correct form in the wrong place and wanted forgiveness. That is similar to paying the correct amount but for the wrong vehicle or the wrong location or scratching out the wrong day on a visitor voucher for which hundreds of penalty charge notices are issued and ruthlessly pursued every year.

They don't like it up 'em Captain Mannering.

The end.

 

 

CPZ = Controlled parking zone: how do they work?

 

The above map shows the extent of one of the CPZs which blanket the whole of the London Borough of Camden. Therefore, if you are parked on a single yellow line in Camden which does not have a time plate, and you think it is a good place to park, that may not be so as you have missed the zone entry sign which applies.

Here for example, is the sign which you drive past at Chalk Farm Road just before you turn left into Castlehaven Road. It is a busy spot but you are still expected to spot the sign and memorise the times (hopefully you know what day of the week it is today so can limit your attention to that day's entry).

Ironically Camden Council themselves had forgotten they had recently increased the daily end time to 11pm. They therefore put into evidence with the tribunal a rather muddled collection of evidence about when the CPZ times applied and once Mr Mustard queried the consistency of their evidence, coupled with his own photographic evidence, Camden realised they had right royally messed up and cancelled the PCN the day before the tribunal hearing.

As a complete aside Mr Mustard doesn't know why anyone from Barnet, who doesn't have reduced mobility or a big load to shift or some other compelling reason, would drive to Camden from Barnet given the Northern Line goes straight through it and the amount you have to pay to park nowadays.

The biggest reason why people get PCNs on single yellow lines is optimism.

They think that as it is Sunday or it is 10 at night that the yellow line will not be operational. Stop thinking like that, you are setting yourselves up for a fall, at £130.

You need to think differently and become an observant driver. One police driver training exercise used to be that the driver has to memorise every sign he passes (or speak it out loud) and then the instructor will randomly ask him/her what the last sign of a particular type was and if the driver can't remember they have to stop the car, walk back and check. Drivers quickly learn to be observant.

As you drive along you need to be observant for:

- speed limit signs 

- red route signs (no stopping) 

- banned turns: left, right, straight on

- compulsory direction signs: must go left etc

- traffic and pedestrian lights

- yellow box junctions

- other traffic, horses & pedestrians

- no motor vehicles signs (the flying motorbike) which are often at the entrance to part time 'school streets'

to which you should now add

- cpz zone signs.

It is clearly the case that to drive in London without picking up penalties by the bucketload you need to drive with your full attention on the road so switch off everything you don't need (do you really need your satnav or route app as that can lead you into trouble when a historically ok route has recently changed) and start to drive. Consider joining the Institute of Advanced Motoring or ROSPA, stop driving by rote, look through the windscreen and start really looking for signs, you will be amazed at how much you have missed in the past and you will save money.

An alternative way  to find out the hours of a single yellow line in London is just the appyparking+ app (other apps may be available) which although chargeable would pay for itself as soon as you avoid a single PCN.

In summary. if you find a single yellow line without a sign you have missed a zone entry sign on your route somewhere. It might be half a mile back. Parking bays, on the other hand, are always signed locally so you can trust what you see.

If you don't take a risk you won't lose the gamble and £130.

The end.

Six of the best for a teacher

 

Another random tribunal decision which Mr Mustard came across.

 

The whole point of 'school streets' is to prevent through traffic not to penalise people with good cause to visit the location. There was no traffic management purpose to these PCNs, they are just revenue raisers.

Mr Mustard doesn't think that a council treating its employees in this way is the best way to retain existing talent or to attract other teachers to Tower Hamlets to fill its vacancies.

Trying to cane a teacher for £960 was clearly unreasonable. (There is no guarantee that another adjudicator would take the same decision, tribunal decisions are not precedents but may be legally persuasive although the facts each time may well differ. You can ask another adjudicator to follow this decision).

The end.

Permit me to explain - not broken / broken

 

This is a story about a PCN and demonstrates the power of persistence.

The motorist made an informal challenge, a perfectly reasonable one. People who are regular users of visitor vouchers should be given the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong, not hammered for a penalty.

Here follows the informal rejection

The response ignores the fact that if the problem is with the council's system the payment system might also not be functioning correctly. Councils also take no responsibility if the system they force you to use, no matter how cumbersome or ineffective, is faulty it is you who has to do something to get around the problem.

The Notice to Owner duly arrived and this time Mr Mustard made the representations. They were short and to the point and completely different.

This time, the PCN was cancelled but not for the reason Mr Mustard put forward, even though he had hit the bullseye, but because the previous challenge had been revisited and Hackney Council did a reverse ferret.

Suddenly a permit system outage, on 17 July 24, had been found. Now why wasn't that noticed when the first challenge was made. Was it because apathy rules and most people don't stick at the fight and give up after one rebuff, Mr Mustard has to be knocked back twice and then he goes off to the tribunal for an independent decision.

Hackney Council probably didn't want to admit that all the code 12 PCNs they give out, when signs are like this one and don't say 'residents' are liable to be beaten.

Off you go then and fight yours.

Don't give up, you have to persist to win.

The end.

 

Unfairness built into the PCN system

 

You park your car up for 10 days as you know you won't use it in that time due a personal matter and use an unrestricted bay. It is probably only marked out to keep you away from junctions and to keep passing traffic more central. You return to your car and find that during your absence it has had a 24 hour disabled bay painted around it and you have two PCNs. You make informal challenges to the PCNs which get rejected and then you make formal representations against the Notices to Owner and one of those is rejected (and the other was pending).

The motorist started an Appeal at the tribunal, who are independent, and as soon as he did that Ealing Council cancelled both PCNs.

Lots of things wrong here to think about.

Firstly, why did a 'traffic warden' (Civil Enforcement Officer) issue the first PCN and why was the second PCN issued?

Taking the second one first, when a bay operates continuously you only commit one contravention when you park. You do not magically commit a fresh contravention each day. The second PCN was therefore unlawful from the off.

There are an awful lot of traffic wardens who do not see the obvious clues.

Firstly, they should come out of the base each morning armed with a list of about to be painted bays so that they can be aware of them and not issue a PCN in this situation rather than give out clearly unfair PCNs which the public have to spend their time fighting and not everyone is as robust as this motorist was. Anyone of a nervous disposition might just pay up, anyone who can't afford to pay the full penalty value would rather pay 50%, or anyone with a lease car might see the lease company pay it and recharge them and add a fee. The concept of innocent until proven guilty does not work in parking, here the burden of proof is reversed.

Secondly, the traffic warden is required to check that signs and lines are correct. Surely they must see how crisp the lines are as compared to the free bays, they should also see the chalk lines which are placed so that nice straight lines get painted and chalk lines are quickly washed away so the clues are there if you look for them.

Thirdly the traffic warden will have a mental map of their patch and should know this disabled bay wasn't there last time they came this way.

Fourthly they should notice that the bay has been incorrectly painted as there should be two transverse markings, one to mark the end of the bay pay and one to mark the end of the disabled bay.

The traffic warden (s) get 0/10 here.

Now we look at the Notice of Rejection. Is that perfect?

The council knew when the bay lines were painted and the motorist told them that when he parked the disabled bay was not there (it really isn't something you would make up). Did they check the list of vehicles which were parked there when the lines were painted, by the same council (Ealing) or their contractor. That is a logical thing to do. Many authorities do it when they suspend a bay. The letter does not say if they checked the notes of whoever installed the bay. If Ealing Council don't have such a procedure they are being unfair to the public.

The paragraph which starts with 'Although we sympathise...' is utter bunkum. They have been told the bay had not been painted and thus there was no sign to face and you cannot comply with a sign which does not exist. Their sympathy is crocodile tears.

Pretending that they are somehow prevented from cancelling this PCN due to a need to be fair is self-serving nonsense. No-one else knows if your PCN is cancelled or not and every PCN has to be considered on its own facts. The Statutory Guidance of the Secretary of State says that a council can cancel a PCN even if it is correct. Ealing Council were being unfair to this motorist.

Even a decision by an independent adjudicator, a qualified lawyer, doesn't set a precedent so no decision by a council employee, or their contractor, will do so. It is a sentence included to try and make out that the council are hidebound 'we would love to cancel your PCN but our hands are tied...' no, they aren't.

Then comes the very generous offer, oh so tempting. You did nothing wrong so you can pay 50% of the penalty for being innocent. Luckily this motorist said no.

There is a threat which follows closely. If you take us to the tribunal we will come after you for the 100% the whole £130.

So that's 0/10 for the Notice of Rejection.

Many motorists give up at that point as they think the tribunal might be a scary place with judges in wigs and gowns and a lot of formality which they won't be able to cope with. It isn't at all like that. The hearings can now take place by video call so you don't have to troop into central London, as Mr Mustard has been doing nearly every week for a decade. The hearings are informal and if you did attend one in person it is just you sat across a large desk from the adjudicator on the other side and you have a chat about the PCN, that's it.

As soon as the Appeal was started at London Tribunals, where the independent adjudicators work, Ealing Council threw in the towel, cancelled this PCN and the other one. What happened to precedent? surely this is unfair on all the other motorists whose appeals they are still contesting?

What do you know? it was all a big bluff. If you think you are in the right ignore all the bluff and bluster which the council come out with, start down your chosen course and challenge the PCN, make representations against the Notice to Owner, and then go to London Tribunals with your Appeal against the Notice of Rejection. Put all thoughts of the discount out of your head except the notion of having a 100% discount.

Ealing Council are no worse than any other, they are playing the system as best they can to maximise their income. They had all the facts about this PCN at this disposal from the off, or at least they should have done. They tried to crowbar 50% out of an unfair PCN, it didn't work and they burned a tribunal fee of c.£30 in the process.

Never take a council at face value, put your PCN on www.ftla.uk to receive independent expert advice from multiple experts which includes Mr Mustard.

The end.

Rotten eggs in Newham

 

A strange case which Mr Mustard stumbled upon.

 

This is a really strange PCN given that the location does not exist and Mr Mustard thought that all of the locations within a borough are pre-loaded into the equipment used by 'traffic wardens'.

Cannon Cars don't appear for any other case in the register of PCNs taken to the tribunal so are not habitual offenders.

How Newham Council thought they would win at the tribunal given that the address could not be substantiated will probably have to remain a mystery. The first duty on a council at the tribunal is to prove their case which was clearly impossible.

The end.

Seeing round corners - scientific breakthrough in Barnet

 

A US soldier tries to aim an StG 44 with a Krummlauf attachment over a cover. (Creative Commons)

Many motorists think traffic wardens are sniping at them as they appear out of nowhere, issue a PCN and disappear again in less than a minute.

In a recent case brought to him by a local resident with whom Mr Mustard is acquainted the resident in question was expected to see around a corner as the traffic warden clearly had.

The car was parked in this short bay, it has room for 4 average cars but this being Ravenscroft Park, a very desirable address in High Barnet, many residents can afford better than average cars.

Residents parking bay in Ravenscroft Park, EN5

Note that the bay is labelled as being for residents and although the image cuts the end off the bay is about 20m in length. A car within that bay was given a PCN. Although there were signs for roadworks, no suspended bay signage was visible from the bay.

Around the corner to the right is Blenheim Road, a cul-de-sac so unless you are visiting a friend or playing tennis there is no reason to go there.

The sign on the bay looked like this:

Thus it is clear that the bay in question, the suspended bay, is in Blenheim Road not in Ravenscroft Park. The 'side' of 17 Ravenscroft Park is the left as you look at the building i.e. as you would read a sign which was actually in Ravenscroft Park, which is the boundary of Blenheim Rd.

The number of required spaces is 7 (these are imaginary spaces as only pay only bays in Barnet are divided by painted lines) and you can't fit 7 spaces into a 20m parking bay as they are generally held to each be 5 metres long.

The type of parking space which is suspended is a Pay to park space. Here is the sign in the bay from around the corner in Blenheim Road.

and the bay itself

It is abundantly clear that this is the suspended bay, it having the reference 9189 and looking to be about 35m.

One can also see that a suspended bay sign on the pole in that bay could never be seen around the corner in Ravenscroft Park except by a stupidly keen traffic warden (no. 798 who is newish and needs retraining).

This was an obviously invalid PCN. The resident challenged it, not wanting to bother Mr Mustard with such an obvious error which they expected to be cancelled without demur. No such luck. Mr Mustard hasn't seen the challenge that was made as he didn't need to and it was to the effect that an error had been made but it was rejected. This may be evidence that nowadays there isn't a proper consideration of informal challenges, as ones before the Notice to Owner are known, they are all just rejected as apathy rules and most people then give in. Mr Mustard isn't most people.

Mr Mustard doesn't mess about. He emailed a parking manager at 09:36 on Valentine's Day. The message contained just 110 words and a photograph. It included a complaint about the traffic warden, a request for retraining and a suggestion that the council might want to avoid the tribunal and cancel the PCN.

As a measure of the reverence in which Mr Mustard is held by the council, or maybe the opposite, he received a same day reply at 10:04 confirming that the PCN was being cancelled and management would be looking at the CEO's actions.

Everyone in the borough should get the same prompt and high standard investigation of the challenges they make to PCNs.

If the legislation included a penalty to be paid by a council if they blunder like this the quality of PCNs and of the consideration of representations would markedly improve.

Don't take a chance when parking, the traffic warden might be just around the corner, you can't see him, but he can see you, apparently.

The end.