If you miss a deadline Barnet Council will routinely increase your penalty by 50% from £130 to £195. It is programmed into the software.
If the council miss a deadline, one which has deemed them to be due no money at all (and this only applies to parking PCNs) they will calmly carry on as if nothing has happened and break the law with impunity as there is no mechanism to penalise them for their wrongdoing. The whole story is contained within Mr Mustard's skeleton argument, a document filed 10 days before the tribunal hearing.
Probably worried about the damning conclusion that an Adjudicator was likely to reach the council responded to the skeleton by throwing in their hand and cancelling the PCN, thus their wrongdoing did not see the light of day, until now.
The public only ever get 28 days at most to respond to PCN paperwork, councils get 56 in this instance, you would think that even the most incompetent council could manage to meet such a generous deadline.
What should happen, of course, is that the same software should be programmed so that a PCN on which a formal representation has been made and not answered for 56 days is automatically set to zero. Most of the public will miss this rule and adjudicators won't apply it unless the affected motorist raises the argument or the adjudicator happens to notice the long delay and is inclined to make a decision of his/her own volition in the interests of justice.
PCNs are a lifelong learning process.
The end.
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