Why we need a parking ombudsman - #2

 

It was 7:20am in Islington when the plumber, from the edge of London, reached the site. He must have been out of bed at sparrow's fart, it was dark, he paid for his parking but selected zone B instead of E. The council happily accepted his £44.65 the same charge as zone E would have been.

At 9:01 he received a PCN which confused him as he had paid for all day. Mr Mustard spotted the zone problem. This is the sort of error for which all councils should exercise discretion and cancel. Mr Mustard made the informal challenge (the one in response to the PCN on the windscreen)

The second argument was a makeweight / just in case one but you never know.

A miserable rejection followed and ignored the bits that Islington Council didn't like:

Next came the Notice to Owner and the formal representation made was a repeat of the informal challenge.

A second rejection arrived.

The empathy faded when it came to the yes / no decision. Following a recent trend the discount was not offered again, it didn't have to be but it guarantees Mr Mustard will proceed to the tribunal as there is nothing to lose.

It was in April that Mr Mustard started the tribunal Appeal. As is currently common there was a 6 month delay as the number of tribunal Appeals has shot up and the number of adjudicators cannot be increased overnight.

It is usual for the council to lay out its arguments in a case summary. 

Mr Mustard regarded the RingGo excuse as a feeble one. Islington Council could negotiate a contract with RingGo that says they should refund for all payment errors such as wrong registration, wrong date or wrong bay number / type. They helpfully exhibited the RingGo terms, terms which the motorist has no choice except to accept because only one payment provider exists, this looks like an unfair contract term to Mr Mustard. Mr Mustard went to the RingGo website and clearly they will do whatever the council agrees with them as policy, that was doublespeak from Islington Council

Mr Mustard then looked at the rules of Islington Council as set out in the Traffic Management Order 2023/001 as contained in Regulation 19, you can go straight to (3)

More misleading information in the response. The council has a discretion to refund but it wrote instead that it was not obliged, did they even consider it for a second.

This is why we need an Ombudsman, to get unfair terms taken out of traffic orders, to make councils think more sensibly about the exercise of discretion and to not mislead the public.

The tribunal hearing arrived, the adjudicator had looked in advance at the paperwork and wasn't with Mr Mustard on the B or E argument but Mr Mustard pulled an ace out of his sleeve and identified a failure by the council to prove their case which the adjudicator instantly accepted and ordered the council to cancel the PCN. Justice was done but to some people that £44 could have really stung.

The end.

 

 

 

Barnet Council - just miserable to the sick

 

The above is an extract from the traffic order. Two minutes is quite a short time in which to get out of the car, walk to a nearby property, knock and take your friend's bag and help them to the car. If the passenger being collected is also sick it will take longer and such an exemption should not be interpreted too strictly.

In the case Mr Mustard has just handled Barnet Council were as miserable as sin. The driver, Mrs D, was collecting her friend to take her to hospital for an ENT appointment. Miss P had a frozen shoulder and reduced mobility of the other shoulder, she could walk as well as anyone with limited arm movement, so slightly impaired walking. It was February and so Miss P needing help putting on a coat. The car was in a residents bay, one that only operates for an hour a day. The observation period by the traffic warden was zero minutes. 

Miss P wrote the informal challenge and doubtless she thought in the circumstances the council would use their discretion. Not a chance. She slightly queered the pitch by stating they were only a few minutes which Mr Mustard would not have written, he would have pointed out the lack of observation.

The rejection letter included the following:

It is blatantly untrue that you cannot leave the vehicle. The traffic order does not say that and the High Court decided that in the case of Makda.

Mr Mustard took over at the Notice to Owner stage and made the formal representations.

 

Mr Mustard by concluding that the stop was within the spirit if not the letter of the traffic order.

The representation was rejected.

In the first two paragraphs the council try to say black is white. They they go on to say you need a visitor voucher for a brief stop, that is not why they exist, they are there for your visitors who are stopping for a while, not to pass through for a very short time.

Mr Mustard started an Appeal at London Tribunals. He relied on the boarding exemption. Barnet Council decided to fight it. Some of their summary argument follows:

Mr Mustard had an ace up his sleeve but having briefly addressed the adjudicator on the subject of assisted boarding the adjudicator said he didn't need to hear it as the evidence of the passenger and the hospital reports were adequate. PCN cancelled.

Resident parking is there to make life easier for residents, not to be used as a cash cow, which is how things appear to be.

The end. 

The Essex Act 1987

 

It was a lovely day in June when Mr Sandcastle (not his real name) went to the seaside at Holland-on-Sea and clearly so did everyone else. The traffic wardens were also sent out in force to generate some lovely revenue.

There were probably more people there than the amount of available parking space and a whole host of motorists decided to use the grass verge as parking spaces. Now generally inside London pavement parking, to call it that, is banned except where it is allowed, outside London pavement parking is allowed except where it is banned.

It turns out and this was new information for Mr Mustard that the Essex Act 1987 prohibits it. When decriminalisation came in this became an Act enforceable by PCN.

Mr Mustard took a look at the signage and smiled.

In this case the double yellow lines are usually held by adjudicators to apply as far as the garden wall so there would be the option to issue a PCN for that alleged contravention but it wasn't the case for Mr Sandcastle. The signs on which Essex County Council were relying related to moving traffic i.e. no vehicle, or even cycle, must drive past the sign. Mr Mustard duly made the informal challenge (in his own name as anyone could have been the driver not that you would ever catch Mr Mustard parking like this) that the sign was incorrect but the North Essex parking partnership ('NEPP'), acting on behalf of the council, said it wasn't:

It is a compliant sign but only when placed to reflect the correct set of rules. The sign for forbidding footway parking is like this:

and the signs, one of which may indicate the end of the ban, should bookend the affected area.

Mr Sandcastle waited and then received the Notice to Owner. Mr Mustard made the formal representations on his behalf and set out the argument more fully:

NEPP didn't want to admit they were cornered so they went quiet and let the clock run down to the point where by law they had to cancel.

Mr Mustard didn't mind at all the game that NEPP played, he was going to beat them at the tribunal if they had refused the representation, this way took time but saved time.

The signs are probably wrong all the way along the coast so if you have made this parking error you have a get out of jail free card but after using it please stop parking like this.

Waltham Forest - a cynical PCN in Maynard Road

 

Mr M started to turn right into this road and observant driver that he was saw the signs pretty quickly and reversed out before the car had passed the signs. That didn't stop the London Borough of Waltham Forest from sending him a PCN.

Mr Mustard made the challenge on the basis of the poor location of the signs and the council cancelled but it was cynical to send a PCN in the first place and no consolation that a penalty should not have been issued was cancelled without a fuss. Leisure time of both Mr M and Mr Mustard was stolen from them.

Some lease companies would have paid such a PCN and added an administration fee. Many nervous or busy people would have paid up.

This is why you need to check everything and fight back, There is good free help here. 

The end. 

Why we need a parking Ombudsman - #1

 

Legislation is written on the basis that a body given a power will use it in a reasonable manner. The faceless bureaucrats and contractors who wield the power have stopped caring what the public thinks and will dish out a PCN for any trivial contravention.

This car with the roof bars is in contravention if he stopped because of a stationary vehicle. You, the reader, already think that sending a PCN through the post to the keeper of this car is rather excessive as they could have stopped further forward which is what leads to the escape from the PCN, they stopped before the stationary vehicle and good reasons amusingly accepted by the older adjudicators as good reasons to stop and thus cancel the PCN were to 'light your pipe', 'read a newspaper' or 'admire the view'.

Mr Mustard has made the representation that the driver chose to stop where they did and could have exited had they chosen to and that in any event the alleged contravention is 'de minimis non curate lex' i.e. too trivial a matter for the law to concern itself with. Time will tell if this ends up at the tribunal or not.

This sort of PCN, trying to pilfer £160 out of the pocket of the motorist, shouldn't see the light of day and many lease companies would just pay it and thus remove the possibility of challenge from the keeper. That is why we need an Ombudsman to use the powers they could be granted to stop this sort of thing before it starts, to remove the worst excesses of council behaviour as the council itself won't do so, it is too profitable.

The end.

Barnet Council - automation or automaton error ?

 

Closed signs at Hilton Avenue N12

Mr Mustard has some semi-regular 'clients' who do their best but because they drive all day for a living inevitably run into a PCN from time to time. Mr P, in this case, doesn't trust councils so when he entered Hilton Avenue from Woodhouse Avenue on 2 September 26 thinking that the schools had gone back so enforcement was likely, he stopped and photographed the greyed out signs to prove they were closed when he was there.

The PCN which he should not have got was dated 8 September. 

Mr Mustard visited the location on 10 September, when he was passing, and by then they were open.

 

What the signs show the camera footage reviewer is a coloured tab at the top of the sign, red when they are open and blue when they are closed. This should be checked before a PCN is issued. The tabs exist because the camera is located behind the signs.

On 11 September Mr Mustard challenged the PCN on the obvious grounds that the signs were not visible. When he checked the balance on line on 30 September it was zero.

Mr Mustard thought he would find out how many people were affected so he made an information request.

There are an awful lot of signs for Apcoa to get round. The benefiting schools could do it far more efficiently.

As you probably know the cctv camera footage is selected by a camera which can identify a movement within a certain area and then save about 15 seconds of footage for review by a human being later. It is possible for the whole process of requesting keeper details from DVLA, authorising and issuing a PCN and popping it in the post could all be done without human hand. What is meant to happen is that a human being looks at each clip and decides if a contravention has occurred or not and thus whether or not to authorise a PCN. In the council year to March 2025 Barnet Council issued just over 100,000 moving traffic PCNs so 2,000 or so a week to be watched.

Now Mr Mustard suspects that either automation has crept in and the human stage is sometimes skipped or that the person or persons who do this have turned into automatons and not checked the simple facts i.e. are the signs open or not.

Whichever is true, 20 unlawful PCNs were issued when there were no signs facing the drivers. Amazingly 10 of them were paid so that is either 10 inattentive people or 10 lease companies (or a mix) who just pay things and charge an admin fee without bothering to see what they are administering. Mr Mustard doesn't know when or why refunds got made but it might have been because of his request for information.

Drivers need to keep their eyes open so they don't get a PCN and once they do as errors do get made. 

The end. 

Islington Council - miserable money grubbers

 

A heating engineer arrived to do his work in a customer's home at 7:20am and paid £44.65 to park for the day. In the dark he mistook an E for a B and so paid for the wrong zone but the correct amount. We don't know if the street light was still on nor how much light it might cast from so high up, clearly not enough.

Inevitably a 'traffic warden' came along and issued a PCN for not paying as on his equipment he only searches for zone E payments.

Mr Mustard made both the informal challenge and the formal representations on the grounds of unjust enrichment and procedural unfairness. Islington Council are fighting the Appeal and their arguments include the following:

 and the relevant RingGo term is:

It is a simple fact that Islington Council chooses the payment provider, the motorist has no choice in the matter and no power being obliged to pay for parking the instant it occurs and not in a position to download the terms and try to renegotiate them if they are unfair, which they clearly are.

We aren't talking about a small sum here, £44 is 3 hours of the London Living Wage (£14.80 an hour).

Should Islington Council want to do the decent thing the PCN ref is IZ38531710.

The end (almost, hearing on 26 October).