Set out above are the legal requirements that must be adhered to before a council accepts a transfer of liability for a PCN for a vehicle on hire up to 6 months. For leases greater than 6 months the liability can be transferred to the effective keeper if there is a sufficient degree of permanence to the arrangement. Mr Mustard lost when he tried to get a lease of one year's duration accepted as valid for liability transfer. He has seen a transfer accepted for a 2 year agreement but not for anything in between. In leasing circles, a 3 year lease is common. The question though is a fact dependent one.
Whatever the claim, short term hire or long term lease, Barnet Council must be sent the paperwork to support the keeper's representations against the Notice to Owner. Studying that paperwork is a part of the process that Barnet Council decided not to bother with. The independent adjudicator did not like that. Will it change?
Before Mr Mustard shows you the chronology of documents and the adjudicator's decision he would just mention that this all came about because the resident's usual car needed some bodywork and so he had a courtesy car. The resident is Mr PP, for ping pong. A request to have a dispensation or temporary permit changeover, after all the car with a residents permit was in the garage, was refused, although it used to be normal 5 years ago. More work that the council cannot be bothered with. 'Putting the community first' is an empty worded mantra which still leaks onto council paperwork sometimes.
In the middle of all this Mr Mustard emailed a parking manager, as that often puts a stop to stupid nonsense, but the manager was happy with what the council was doing. One doubts he will be so happy after reading the tribunal decision which shines a spotlight on the council's way of (not) doing things.
Yes, you have read correctly, there were five, yes five, Notices to Owner.
Without the grit & certainty which Mr Mustard brings to the process most people would have given up way before the end of this saga.
In this case the most unattractive feature was that the council accepted a liability transfer when they shouldn't have and then wanted to ignore their own mistake (parking never ignore yours!) and have a second go at the resident due to their own error. What Mr Mustard didn't know at the time, although he had seen liability transferred without copy documents before, was the council's policy on just accepting the word of a 'reputable' company, ones who are members of the BVLRA (British Vehicle Leasing and Rental Association, a mere trade body) that a rental agreement or lease existed. Barnet Council had better start changing their process.
What happened in this case was that the garage, BHW trading as Veetec supplied a courtesy car to Mr PP. He signed a hire agreement for it, for a few weeks, but it was a contract with Circle Leasing. Concurrent with that was a one lease agreement between Circle Leasing and BHW. Therefore, there were two lease/rent agreements in place at one and the same time.
Barnet Council should have rejected both of them but for different reasons, the one year one because it didn't have the necessary degree of permanence and the short term rental one because it omitted the driving licence details. They did neither.
When BHW said the car was on rental the council should have noticed that the car was not being rented from them and should have refused the liability transfer.
The other problem was that because Barnet Council sent two Notices to Owner to Circle Leasing they charged two administration fees of £25 each just for saying who was renting the car. These fees, and Mr Mustard has seen them as high as £48, are an absolute rip-off. Time the DVLA was changed to record both the beneficial owner and the day-to-day keeper so the PCNs can be straight to the person who, most likely, was driving.
This was a jolly fun battle which Mr Mustard was 99% sure he would win and so it turned out.
Mr Mustard's advice is to try and avoid any sort of lease arrangement for your own car if you can as that way you get your own PCNs far more quickly and don't have to pay an extra fee for them, even if you get the PCN cancelled.
Yours frugally
Mr Mustard
Clearly Barnet Parking Dept is manned by totally thick and stupid people. Where to they get them from ? Do they drag them in off the street and sit them in front of a computer screen ?
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