Kingston Road, New Malden - yellow box exceeds junction

Mr Mustard came across this junction on the PePiPoo web forum, odd name but very useful site.

It is in the Kingston Road, New Malden at the junction with Elm Road (google street view is out of date so this is a relatively recent change).

The red sign says 'Give priority to Pedestrians and Cyclists at side road' which to Mr Mustard's eyes is unclear. Mr Mustard thinks it means give priority to pedestrians crossing the road at the give way markings and also give priority to cyclists who are riding along the cycle lane and going straight on if a motor vehicle wants to turn left across their path. Mr Mustard doesn't think the sign helps. Mr Mustard loves the double yellows though and loading ban (double kerb blips) but suspects they should be inside the cycle lane (Mr Mustard waits for comments to tell him he is wrong about that as he hasn't opened any of his signage guides). They should stop blue badge holders from parking there though.

Mr Mustard thinks that the yellow box is too long at both ends as if you extend the imaginary lines from the edges of the carriageway in Elm Road (the side road on the left) they would remove a car length of box at both ends. A yellow box junction should be placed, in the context of this location, 'at a junction between two or more roads' and Mr Mustard thinks that all of his readers, and for their part adjudicators, would agree that the green circle above is outside of the junction and therefore any car that stops there is not committing a contravention.

If you have a PCN at this location, or a tribunal hearing booked, and got caught at one end or the other of the box, please email mrmustard@zoho.com for free help.

The end.

 

Barking & Dagenham Council dig themselves a big hole

For years council staff could tell the public anything they liked about a PCN and the public would accept it was true and meekly pay their PCN. There were a small number of PCN experts but they were spread quite thinly. Nowadays, with the explosion in PCN numbers the number of experts has also grown and they help each other to learn and share knowledge. Thus, council staff are regularly tested and in rare cases councils are having to appoint barristers to fight us at the tribunal as we have uncovered fundamental flaws in the legitimacy of their PCNs.

Why, with the increased scrutiny, council (or possibly outsourced provider) staff, opposed in a tribunal case by an expert with an eye for detail, think they can tell a whopping great lie in a witness statement is a mystery. Here is the statement. Mr Mustard has redacted the officer's name as this case may be sent to the council's fraud department. ('Officer' just means member of staff).

Mr Mustard had watched the footage, the camera didn't move which suggested a fixed installation and he also didn't think staff would be poring over cctv at gone 5.30pm on Christmas Eve so he asked what sort of camera was in use.

So there we have it. A Witness statement which is patently untrue and leaves the witness open to prosecution. Mr Mustard will now ask the motorist (whose Appeal was decided on the grounds that the PCN was invalid so the witness statement wasn't considered) if he wishes to report the officer to the Fraud department. The council take fraud by residents sufficiently seriously to put it in their policy, will they equally investigate fraud by their own staff?

 The end.

Islington Council having a laugh

If a PCN offers the ability to make representations by email

a council cannot then in all fairness unilaterally withdraw the option (until they have stopped putting the method on Penalty Charge Notices and other documents) but for some unaccountable reason Islington Council have done just that (2023 isn't a good year for them, see previous blog post).

Mr Mustard often raises the concept of fairness with traffic (PCN) adjudicators as there is a duty on councils as pronounced by Lord Mustill.

One adjudicator wrote this in a tribunal decision:

 

Councils must act with honour, a concept which parking departments lose sight of when they focus on the money.

Mr Mustard will ask Islington Council to either accept emailed representations or remove the option from their documents.

The end.