Euro Car Parks and the CMA

Mr Mustard doesn't fight private parking charges (except his own for airport visits) but does keep an eye on things at a safe distance and tries to avoid parking in any private car park preferring council ones or, even better, free parking and a little walk.

His attention was drawn though to this story by another parking ticket expert and his own twitter account:

There's nothing like a bit of detail and Mr Mustard thought the reason why / excuse given by ECP didn't respond to emails was a bit ropey. Only a month ago a company which Mr Mustard helps with their council PCNs (they have to visit premises with a weight limit nearby but are usually exempt for necessary access) gave him a bailiff email. It looked a bit spammy to Mr Mustard and so he went to the website of the bailiff concerned. The email address on the website was different but rather than ignoring a demand for £1,000 Mr Mustard sent an email to the published address to check and it turned out that the email was real. The outcome was twofold, the debt claimed was paid and the bailiff company were asked to add the undisclosed address to change their systems.

Mr Mustard knows that a lot of you like a bit of detail and the full Final Enforcement Notice is available on the CMA website here or on this permanent link.

Now Mr Mustard is a Company Director, he knows he has rights and responsibilities and if he is away from the office he arranges for the company post to be opened and to be sent to him if it needs urgent attention. As a District Judge once told a Director of a company that Mr Mustard was suing, for failing to replace the cracked windscreen on a car he had purchased second-hand, 'Limited Companies don't go on holiday Mr Smith'.

Para 15 of the decision sets out how easily the veracity of the request could have been established.

Para 27b is worth a read as is 37b and 37cii. 

If you get a dodgy looking email, don't block the party until you have investigated thoroughly. 

Wickford Car Park - council in deep water difficulty

 

 

 

Hard to say what a car park is sometimes. Usually a piece of land with a defined entrance and a welcome to the car park sign but not always.

Mr J parked here 

Car in a coach bay

 

Of course he received a PCN.

Mr Mustard had two problems with the PCN. The first was that the car was not in the car park. The second is the vagueness of that class of vehicle.

A permit had been obtained 

A coach parking only sign is all well and good but it doesn't count for anything unless there is a traffic order which underpins it. Mr Mustard asked Basildon Council for it. Not us guv they said, try Essex County Council. Essex CC answered a different question about the highway but which showed the car park and the coach layby weren't governed by them. Pass the parcel went on for some time and Mr Mustard thinks he found the answer by his own efforts.

 The schedule from the traffic order:

The extent of the car park was not defined nor is there any mention of a coach parking bay. Mr Mustard suspects that this is one of those cases where the person who drew up the traffic order hadn't been to the site.

 

In the absence of a traffic order no PCN could stand. Mr Mustard challenged on the grounds of the vagueness of the PCN wording and on the following grounds for good measure:

51 days after making the formal representations Mr Mustard noted that the balance on line was zero. Mr J never received a letter to confirm the cancellation but that is clearly what happened and was inevitable. Mr Mustard only had to prevail at the tribunal on one of his 4 arguments to defeat the PCN and the council knew they were sunk.

It is always worth making a request for the traffic order for any bay or yellow line to compare with the signage or not, if it doesn't exist.

The end (and please don't park in coach, taxi, doctor bays etc). 

Barnet Council - your number's up

 

Older readers will get the reference to 'come in number x'

This was an odd case although Mr Mustard has now seen a second instance of it in a different borough.

For starters the PCN was for the wrong contravention, it was for code 01 but should have been for code 02 as loading was also banned.

The motorist, Mr D, sent Mr Mustard a copy of the PCN placed on his car windscreen which ended with the numbers 6618. That could not be found on the council computer and so Mr Mustard just kept an eye out to see what would happen next.

A month later Mr D received a Notice to Owner bearing a number ending 6607 for the same set of facts (date, vehicle, location etc).

What you need to know now is that PCNs are issued in sequential series by individual traffic wardens and that the last digit of a PCN is a check digit so the PCNs in this case were 660-7 and 661-8 and thus they had been consecutively issued at the same time.

What had therefore happened was that the traffic warden had decided something was wrong with 660-7 and issued a fresh PCN 661-8 intended to cancel 660-7 but accidentally cancelled 661-8 (or the computer took over and did it).

It was therefore an easy win as 661-8 was never served and Mr Mustard had proof that 660-7 was served.

Mr Mustard made out three arguments in his formal representations to the council.

1    Finchley Road as a description of the location is too vague (the keeper and driver may be different).

2    Loading is banned so the alleged contravention is incorrect.

3    The PCN was not served.

The Notice of Rejection didn't tackle points 1 and 2 and said that the PCN was either placed on the windscreen or given to the driver. It also waffled on about CPZ entry signage which was irrelevant as there was a local sign.

Thus it was an easy decision to start an Appeal at London Tribunals at which time a fourth Ground of Appeal was added which was the Notice of Rejection dated 14 August offered a 50% discount for 14 days from service and 2 days earlier it had already been removed. A council must be as good as their word.

There was no need for a hearing. Faced with an opponent with 4 straight arrows in his quiver the council cancelled the PCN.

The end. 

A mystery move by Barnet Council?

 

A lady, let's call her Miss K as the road in question was Kingsmead, EN5 (Mr Mustard used to live near it but had never heard of it) contacted Mr Mustard as below:

Thank you for agreeing to have a look at my PCN. I have attached photos of the notice from the Council’s online website.

There are 2 questions I would like your advice on:

1. Can I contest the PCN?

I had parked in a cul-de-sac; a quiet road, which had no road markings or parking restriction signs and (I had hoped) not blocked a driveway.

2. Can I contest the moving of my vehicle without any information left or sent to me about the whereabouts of it?

What was terrifying about the whole episode was that I thought my car had been stolen as all the other cars parked in the vicinity had not been touched. My house keys were in the car with the service book which had my home address (a silly thing to do, I know), which was extremely upsetting. My initial reaction was to call the police, but found some builders on a site nearby who subsequently told me a car was moved around midday. I then called the car pound number listed on the council website who tracked it to a nearby road. Although undamaged, it was partially placed on the curb, which in itself could be a parking offence according to the council!

Your time and advice on this matter is much appreciated .

Kind regards, 

Mr Mustard wonders if someone else moved the vehicle as this was in November when NSL were hearing to the exit door and removals were rarely done in Barnet at that time and less so relocations although the fact of the PCN being on the windscreen makes a council move more likely.

Mr Mustard duly made the 'informal challenge' the one in immediate response to the PCN on the windscreen. He kept it simple:

The alleged contravention requires part of the car to be adjacent to a place where the footway and carriageway are level and that is clearly not the case here.

He helpfully provided an annotated image:

It took only 3 days for Barnet Council to cancel the PCN. It was a PCN which a traffic warden should never have issued.

Residents get quite precious about 'their' driveway entrances and parking this tight to one, especially in a narrow road makes it more difficult and dangerous to reverse your car our (although one should reverse in but that's another story). At the very least you would be well advised to only park next to the full height kerb i.e. to where the back of the wheel was and Mr Mustard tries to leave 2m of room. Residents phone up the council if they are annoyed and ask for enforcement which means the nearest traffic warden will be sent round and for an easy life they just issue a PCN.

The end. 

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.