Address problems

 

DVLA, Swansea: Lovely place to work, it must lift your spirits as you arrive there each day?

You must make sure that the address for your vehicle as recorded by the DVLA is full and accurate. get your V5 registration document out now and give it a once over. The address on your driving licence must also be changed at the time you move.

Wrong addresses cause havoc. Whilst councils should make enquiries if they get post back some of them, Barnet included, just make a note and then plough on as if nothing has happened.

That wasn't the problem in the case that Mr Mustard is about to highlight, that was a case of a number of properties having the same number, different supplementary letters, ABC etc, and also a house name which started with that letter and that is why Mr Mustard suspects that everything went astray, the motorist knowing nothing about a PCN until the bailiff clamped the car and were paid in full.

Mr Mustard then usually makes a Subject Access Request, goes meticulously through the processing and finds the errors. Once he points them out councils usually back off. In this instance they agreed to refund back in November but haven't managed to do so yet. This is probably a side effect of the change of PCN processor from NSL to APCOA which, masterly understatement follows, has not gone 100% smoothly.

Mr Mustard watched the cctv. The PCN was issued at a problematic yellow box junction situated at the exit of the B&Q access road in Crickleood Lane and with an exit only junction to the other side. People often 'barge out' from the side road even though they should give way. That then causes a stop in the box. In this case the stopping was after such an event.

There is absolutely no traffic management purpose to the PCN. Access to B&Q was barely affected, any incursion into the box was trivial, the box is painted beyond the exit, the car could have moved forward if the driver has chosen to do so & therefore the stop was not due to a stationary vehicle (a legal requirement) and the box needs a repaint as it will be much less clear at ground level where the end of it is.

If the DVLA address had been 100% perfect Mr Mustard would have saved hours of work and got the PCN cancelled at the beginning.

Luckily the parking manager agreed to not pursue the PCN which should never have been issued in the first place.

Almost the end.

PCNs in London double in a decade !

Here are the stats taken from Annual reports issued by London Councils, the mouthpiece for councils in London and the body which has various statutory functions.

Bare numbers are hard to follow so here are some charts to make it digestible.

First, a chart of the overall numbers, please keep your eye on the scales on the left as they are all different:

The dotted line is Excel's idea of the trend. Anyone can see they are on a steady upward trajectory apart from the year to March 2021 which is when covid hit.

Next, parking PCNs

Again down in covid when lots of us stayed home

London is getting more built up and that means more people and more cars which will explain some of the increase. The main driver is, in Mr Mustard's opinion, simply the number of traffic wardens on the street or, for TfL, if they added extra cameras on Red Routes, which they have.

Next is bus lanes of which there have been a few new ones over the period:

Finally the main reason for the increase, moving traffic PCNs for stopping in box junctions, not turning in the direction shown by blue arrows, doing U-turns where banned and 'school streets' and 'Low traffic neighbourhoods' which clearly aren't low traffic, they don't stop the unwanted traffic, they just punish it, deliberate and innocent error alike. Mr Mustard suspects that the number of these will drop as Londoners get to know where they all are and change their routes and/or travel times to avoid PCNs.

PCNs are meant to be a deterrent.

Clearly they aren't otherwise there wouldn't be nearly 10 million PCNs a year issued in London. Mr Mustard's clients, or potential clients, have done their best 99% of the time.

Just to get a ball park idea of the money involved let's assume that every PCN is for £160 and that they all get paid at the 50% value.

9,457,848 times £160 at 50% =  £756,627,840

That is money which the government would otherwise have to give councils towards their costs or that they would have to raise through council tax.

Of course, the whole sum isn't profit, there is a massive industry and hundreds or thousands of council staff behind this. 

When he has time away from his day job and the 50 hours a week spent fighting PCNs, he will look at the major costs of Barnet Council to collect their 278,209 PCNs issued in a year.

What is abundantly clear is that PCNs don't work. The stick has failed. We need a different solution.

The end, for now. 

 

 

Newham Council are cheats - #51

 

This sign is unreasonably long.

The motorist managed to interpret it correctly and parked legally.

In the first place that is the wrong contravention as the car was within a bay so the correct alleged contravention would be for parking in a suspended bay.

The council get asked a simple question by the adjudicator and they go silent because they simply cannot prove their case and rather than being honest and admitting what happened they try to ride it out. The ambiguity was settled in favour of the person adversely affected by it, that is normal.

Ionut should never have been issued with a PCN, his car should never have been towed, the council should never have rejected the representations nor should they have opposed the tribunal Appeal.

Cheats, as proven by door bell footage.

Cyber attack problems - Kensington & Chelsea

 

The cyber attack on Kensington & Chelsea Council has been widely reported. The above is an extract from the Frequently Asked Questions section on the council website.  There have been real knock on effects, even though parking software is usually an externally provided service, as the below letter shows which relates to an on street PCN issued on 13 August and challenged on 26 August which was day 14 so preserved the 50% discount:

Some small observations.

Why was there a 'significant backlog' prior to 24 November 2025 ?

The identification of the 6 month limit is correct but the guidance of the Secretary of State contains this:

Mr Mustard suspects that a Ground of Appeal of delay if raised at London Tribunals will tend towards the council being given a fair bit of leeway. If Mr Mustard were instructed as representative he would be looking for a comprehensive explanation and timeline as to what steps have been taken and suggesting that the passage of time prejudices the motorist and that should take priority over the council's technical problems.

Mr Mustard's suggestion to help the council get back up to date is simply to cancel historic PCNs, clean the slate and start again, bang on time with everything. One suspects that the thirst for revenue won't allow for this solution to be applied.

The council has taken a reasonable approach though and Mr Mustard will be sending in both sides of the blue badge. It is a common error for people who live in the suburbs to think that the badge applies everywhere when in fact they are of limited application in central London. If you don't go there often it is easy to forget.

How kind of the council to still be willing to accept the motorist's money. However, as the challenge to the PCN was made within the 14 day limit they are obliged to honour the discount offer stated on the PCN.

The end. 

 

Redridge Council - not as smart as they think they are

 

Mr Mustard has met Redridge Council a few times. They are not the smartest operators in PCN enforcement. They lose to the public 63% of the time at the tribunal and 86% of the time to Mr Mustard.

Mr M knows Mr X. He is the smartest and hardest working of PCN fighters. Redbridge must have heard of him. They should have seen the writing on he wall earlier.

The problem is this case is one of assumption, that a PCN will arrive in the post in two days. It is a rebuttable presumptuion, it might take a week and only the recipient can say the date on which it was served thus rebutting the assumed date of service. Smart councils build in a few days of leeway into their software before going to the next stage. Redbridge are not such a council.

The LGO don't know the law. A PCN is not a fine, they are only issued by Courts.

The LGO was also overly generous in allowing the council to let My Y make out of time representations he having previously been prevented from doing so and a year having passed which causes prejudice and the council having been out of order in the first place. They should have invited Redbridge Council to close the PCN.

Mr M knows that representations were made and the one sensible thing Redbridge did was to accept them. They would have a faced a tribunal hearing otherwise, wasted £32 in fees and been put to the sword by Mr X.

In the last 7 years Mr Mustard has won 19 of his 22 tribunal cases against Redbridge. Here is one which is germane.

That is the same problem as with Mr Y but 2 years earlier.

Clearly Redridge Council are a bit slow to learn................................ 

It can't be the money can it?

The end, until next time. 

Free chances at PCN adjudication - London Tribunals

If you have a Notice of Rejection from a council in London and are unsure of your chances of winning at adjudication then the following statistics may help you make your mind up. Councils bluff all the time and reject challenges against PCNs which they know will lose if an adjudicator sees the arguments so also knowing that most people pay up like lambs the Councils have nothing to fear by rejecting your representation.

There is no cost for the public to go to London Tribunals and the council will have to pay £32 which they never see again. There is a very slim chance of costs being awarded against you if you are vexatious, frivolous or wholly unreasonable. In the year to 31 March 25 there were only 74 awards of costs against the public out of 42,907 Appeals which is 1 in 580 so very rare (as the legislation says they should be). The total awarded was £5,080 so an average of £68 per case.

If the council does not offer the 50% discount in the Notice of Rejection (there is no legal requirement for them to do so) and given that you do not have to pay a fee to go to Appeal at London Tribunals and as the chances of being made to pay costs is almost zero, why wouldn't you do it?

The fact is that many cases are won by default. Here are the statistics for the year 2024/25.

There is a 75% chance that Hillingdon will not contest your Appeal at London Tribunals and so they will have to cancel the PCN. That is therefore the borough that motorists should fight every time. There is only a 4% chance that Greenwich will throw in the towel so you do need a half decent case in that Borough. Overall there is a 26% chance, 1 PCN in 4, that after starting the Appeal you won't have to do anything else.

Looking at your overall chances of winning they are as follows:

You should certainly fight the top 8 authorities in the list every single time as your chances are better than 50/50 and you have a one in four chance against the best authority, Southwark, a borough that has a good team of officers dedicated to attending the tribunal hearings.

To save you time looking here is the alphabetical list.

The meek will not inherit the earth, they will meekly pay out for PCNs which they could beat.

The number of PCNs issued in the year 2024/25 in Greater London was 9,457,848 (thanks to a massive increase in the number of restrictions on driving down certain roads which are still invitingly left open to traffic movement and monitored by cameras) and so the 42,907 PCNs taken to Appeal at London Tribunals is a piffling 0.5% or only one in every 220 PCNs issued.

If the 45% beaten at Appeal is overall representative of whether a PCN was correct or not that is four million PCNs which aren't being over-turned which could be.

Stop giving up people, be like Mr Mustard, learn everything you can about the subject and get stuck in and fight. The more you fight the more you learn and the better you get.

The end. 

Newham Council are Cheats - #50

 

There has been an awful lot of building work in Westfield Avenue and because of this Mr Mustard can't find the exact location using google street view but wonders if it is the one shown in the below photograph

What we see here is a bay adjacent to two live traffic lanes edged with double yellow lines. As Mr Mustard wrote in a recent blog the double yellow lines apply to the bay in which the two cars are placed which appears by the shape to be designed for vehicles. The double yellow lines should not be there.

What Newham Council claimed in this tribunal case was that the location could be used for picking up and dropping off passengers. To do that one would have to stop on the footway, the driver might even have to leave his vehicle to find his passenger. Should Newham Council have wanted the space to be used for that purpose they should have marked out a bay and provided a sign with the relevant rules. Newham Council didn't provide any photographs of signs at the location about setting down: had they done so they would have proved the area was not footway.

Newham Council have got the lines wrong and provided a dubious explanation about the location, as well as designing an ambiguous layout, Mr Mustard thinks they are cheats.

The end.