Newham Council - Bluffers & bullies

 

Mr Mustard's client muddled up his paperwork and made a declaration that was wrong. He therefore decided to pay the PCN to see the back of the problem.

Mr Mustard thought the doubtless standard warning letter was a bit passive aggressive and whilst he knows there are people who make repeated false declaration his client isn't such a person.

As ever Mr Mustard likes to deal in facts and so he asked a very simple question about the number of prosecutions.

Mr Mustard had a feeling that he knew what the answer would be and his guess turned out to be correct.

Now either there is a problem with false statements which justifies a warning or there isn't and the dire warning shouldn't be there.

Mr Mustard guesses that there is a problem but the indivduals concerned will be well known to the council and the Newham Council shouldn't be throwing their weight around when motorists who hardly ever submit witness statements make a hash of one but save their warnings for the repeat culprits and then go for them.

Bluffers & bullies - not a good look.

The end.

Taking Camden to Town

 

Mrs D parked as above. Although previously helped by Mr Mustard, Mrs D thought she could deal with this herself. What she wrote on 3 November was clear and detailed, as follows:

 

That was a very well written, polite and calm request for discretion written by a person who perhaps doesn't know that no loading is generally held to also mean no blue badges but councils can opt to allow it, the signs don't tell you the answer. In Barnet, where Mrs D lives, the council have messed up the rules for this and a blue badge holder can defeat a PCN. Camden probably have it correctly defined in their traffic orders. That part of Camden which is south of Euston Rd is outside the scope of the blue badge scheme but this location is within the rules for blue badge use.

You have probably already guessed that Camden Council rejected the challenge.

The council blame the driver for not planning ahead when it is clear from the challenge that the situation was different on 3 November.

The information given to blue badge holders is not quite as clearcut as the council claim.

Barnet allow free parking in residents bays but the signs don't tell you that.

It would have been helpful if Camden Council had explained what and where the green badge zone is.

It doesn't matter whether Camden Council are satisfied a contravention occurred, or not. What they were asked to do was to exercise their discretion and they showed no sign of having done so with an open mind.

Note the nudge about future discount, a dire warning that it will cost you if you fight on. Mrs D agreed to make a donation to the North London Hospice and sent the Notice to Owner dated 6 January 2026 to Mr Mustard. He made the formal representations on 9 January.

Mr Mustard had Camden Council cornered and he also had a cheeky impossible question for them about reserving space on the public highway, hopefully they won't write such unhelpful guff in their future rejections.

Camden Council get 56 days by law in which to reject the formal representations and if they do not serve their response in time they are deemed to have accepted the representations and must cancel the PCN. Mr Mustard keeps an eye on the online balance. The 10th time he checked was 6 March by which time Mrs D had not received a Notice of Rejection but the balance was unchanged at £160. Mr Mustard went online on 6 March and sent Camden Council a message that pointed out the law and told them the PCN must be set to £0.00

On 12 March when he checked the balance duly was £0.00, Mrs D hadn't heard from the council by then nor had Mr Mustard. Not at all polite which is sadly a quality that often goes missing in council parking departments.

If you are a blue badge holder and was given a PCN for being on double yellows with a loading ban, it is time to ask for a refund if it was given out in Granary Street.

You are probably wondering why the informal challenge didn't pick up the council traffic order failure. It is because the assumption is that all signs which have been erected will have an underlying traffic order and 99.9% of the time that is the case so a rejection letter can reasonably be based on signage but 0.1% of the time Mr Mustard is there to spot the error. Mr Mustard expects that Camden Council will have corrected the traffic order map now.

Mrs D generously gave £80 to the North London Hospice. 

The end. 

 

 

 

Boxing clever ?

 

Mr Mustard has seen this location a few times recently as the camera is relatively new so all those people who used the junction with The Burroughs to go north up the A41 from Hendon Central tube station and then back south down the A41 on the other carriageway and have now been caught out. Whilst it is arguable that this is two right turns an adjudicator might well think otherwise as this one did. This is because causing the vehicle to face in the opposite direction is at the heart of the contravention.

Mr Mustard was rather confused by the fact that the seller registered the car in a random name (and then takes insurance, if any, in their real name and insures the random name as a named driver) because Muhammed Ali seemed rather random to him.

What this decision does show is that all of the peripheral information about insurance, DVLA registration, vehicle tax and where and when you are taking delivery when added together can prove your case so if you have it, use it, no-one else will prove your case for you.

Mr Mustard thinks that DVLA always give out the name of the new owner if the alleged contravention is on the date of sale. They should really give both lots of information to the council/TfL and leave them to decide who the keeper is and/or the time of handover should have to be declared as well as the date, given the trouble it can cause.

Please don't pay a PCN when you did not incur it.

The end.

Two in 2 minutes

 

Mr O parked in a bay with the above sign and received a code 19 PCN for being in a residents or shared use bay. Clearly the use isn't shared but it isn't a bay for residents only either so Mr Mustard would have argued the toss. It seems to be mostly in Hackney that they have residents bays and general permit bays, he has no idea why. However, he was busy working so left the client to argue for himself. This PCN, ending 651A did get cancelled.

However what also happened was that a Notice to Owner arrived for a code 19 PCN at the same location for the same vehicle but with an alleged contravention time that was 2 minutes later. A PCN had not been served on the day which is a complete defence. The number was 6520.

What happened, surmises Mr Mustard, is that the 'traffic warden' was unhappy with something on PCN 651A and cancelled it, issued 6520 and then printed out and put the wrong PCN on the vehicle.

What you may not know is that these two PCNs are consecutive, 651 and 652 as the final number is a check digit which makes it less likely that you will go wrong when entering it in a system.

The standard cancellation letter from Hackney Council is at odds with itself.

The PCN may have been correctly issued but it wasn't correctly served so that sentence is a bit slippery.

There has been an administrative error. It would be open and honest if the council said what it was.

It is a precedent if the council make a procedural error, they must cancel other such PCNs.

The point of this blog is that the more you know the better equipped you are to fight councils. Please keep doing it.

The end.

Internecine PCN warfare

 

Some motorists have a pessimistic attitude, that councils and TfL have it in for them. They shouldn't feel individually persecuted, councils have it in for everyone, including other local authorities (and possibly their contractors). Every motorist is a possible rich revenue source.

Here is a tribunal case in which Islington Council try to avoid giving Haringey Council £160 and fail.

 

 

An adjudicator decides the case based upon the evidence put in front of them. The argument put forward was 

Had there been an official diversion in place one would expect there to be diversion signs. The cctv at this location is within Frobisher Road so looks at the backs of the signs (they can be proven by library images). If Islington Council had proof of signage diverting them into Frobisher Road that would have been an exemption to the pedestrian and cycle zone. However, Frobisher Road is part of the 'Haringey ladder' and I would therefore expect any diversion to have been through a different 'rung' one without a school within it. it is easy to lose a case by not proving it. If the explanation was true it was not adequately evidenced.

Islington Council lost £160 (unless they make the employee pay) and Haringey Council lost a c.£30 tribunal fee. Both sides lost bundles of time.

The alternative is that councils let each other off but that isn't satisfactory either, as council employees piously tell us we should look out for signs, so what is sauce for the goose....

The end. 

Hapless Havering (Council)

 

This adjudication decision from London Tribunals (case 2250674991 & heard on 17 June) is, although couched in polite terms, a proper telling off.

Now as it happens Mr Mustard represented this same client the week before for the same weight limit at the same location (one visit to erect scaffolding and one to dismantle it explains the two visits) and the same thing happened to that PCN, a Charge Certificate was generated after the balance had been increased to £240 (although in the previous case not actually posted but that is another story) whilst a tribunal decision was pending as Havering have programmed their computer to send a Charge Certificate on day 29 which in normal times is too soon as the motorist gets 28 days from receipt in which to act and although 2 days are made as a service allowance Mr Musatrd posted an important letter to his solicitor and that took 8 days to get to Godalming from Barnet.

Mr Mustard knows that other experts are also experiencing the same Charge Certificate probably particularly with Havering but also with other councils, probably ones who rely on the same software or outsourcer.

What this experience tells you is if you have a Notice of Rejection from Havering Council which doesn't offer you the 50% discount you might as well go to the tribunal even if your case is hopeless as havering are hapless and will probably mess up. Just look how they were described

- Wholly improper

- Unlawful

- Oppressive

A local authority should be ashamed to be described in this way and holding an enquiry to fix where they are going wrong. However, they are too busy raising revenue to stop and do that, probably.

The end. 

 

 

Newham Council - missing manners

 

 

The same road as in the previous blog, this time for Mr H who has probably annoyed Newham Council by persistently parking in free bays and over-turning every single PCN, we are into double figures.

11 July - parked as above, given a PCN.

17 July - Mr H made his own challenge, that there was no sign.

14 August - Newham Council rejected it on the same nonsense basis as in other rejections.

Mr Mustard took over at this juncture. He took a different tack, a complaint, sent to Newham Council in the post, on 17 August. It socked it to Newham Council who get far too few such complaints.

 

 

What happened next? Nothing, it is discourteous and doubtless breaches some council policy on speed of reply but Mr Mustard knew that the council wouldn't want to commit an admission of their unlawful acts to paper so were never likely to answer in any meaningful way. What they did do was to put the PCN on hold and that played into the hands of Mr Mustard. He waited until 14 February and then wrote this:

Suddenly, Newham Council leapt into action and sent a most polite response, probably relieved that this was all over:

Mr Mustard likes to see the PCN value online set to zero so he knows the PCN won't come alive again later on. 

Councils should all respond to complaints about PCNs even though they try to tell you that you should follow the enforcement process but when a council is doing wrong you should both follow the process and tell them what they are doing wrong as the enforcement process does not contain a complaint mechanism.

More people should complain rather than accept bad council behaviour.

Feel free to crib any useful points from what Mr Mustard has written.

The end.