Ealing Council - believing anything to save time and/or money

Here is a car committing a contravention whilst bearing cloned numberplates

 For the displayed numberplate DVLA provided the following data 

Mr Mustard make some enquiries of Ealing Council in order to see the extent to which they make sure they are sending a PCN to the keeper of the vehicle seen in their cctv.

 

What we can see from this is that between receiving the DVLA data and issuing the PCN there is no sanity check to make sure that the car in view is at least a grey Mini (It could still be a clone as a dodgy Mini owner will try to use the numberplate of another Mini but that would be reasonable behaviour by the council).

There are two reasons why Ealing Council should be checking the reasonableness of DVLA provided data. The first one is the legal basis. The legislation says this about the contents of a PCN

To meet this requirement the council must believe that the vehicle captured by their camera is the one for which they have obtained DVLA data and clearly that is not the case here.

Secondly, as pointed out by one of Mr Mustard's careful readers, the KADOE (Keeper at date of event contact with DVLA) requires that a check be carried out. The standard wording from an old contract follows

Ealing Council have inadequate audit processes in place and need to up their game. From now on Mr Mustard is going to report every obviously cloned car to DVLA when a council has not noticed the bleeding obvious and therefore breached their contract.

The end.

 

Barnet - generous but wrong

 

Mr Mustard dines out on council blunders. He should always be hungry but never is as there seem to be unlimited ways in which councils, not just Barnet, go wrong. This may be a function of outsourcing or the never ending search for more automation with correspondingly lower human input. Mr Mustard doesn't do automation as he isn't dealing with 150,000 PCNs a year (luckily) and the 350 he does do all get his personal attention.

 

The above was a new error from Barnet, from a letter dated 28 December 2024, in that they offer 56 days in which to pay £130 but then go on to say if you don't pay £130 within 28 days they will increase it to £195. Patently unfair.

 

All public bodies have to be procedurally fair and Mr Mustard doesn't think Barnet Council will bother fighting the Appeal he has started at London Tribunals. If he is wrong about that he has two other arrows in his quiver and he may find more once he sees the complete evidence pack.

The end.

Harrow Council - lawbreakers

 

No extra charge for the spelling error, send should be sent

Harrow Council have the dubious honour of being the subject of the first blog of 2025.

They aren't the only council who haven't bothered to programme their software to stop them from sending an unlawful Notice of Rejection for a parking PCN. Barnet and Westminster both featured in the blog in 2024 for this unlawfulness and doubtless other enforcement authorities will lash up in the same way in 2025.

The image above repeats the Grounds of Appeal which Mr Mustard sent to London Tribunals, the home of the independent adjudicators.

Harrow could see the writing on the wall and decided to save themselves further administrative time in compiling the evidence pack when the outcome was inevitable (and Mr Mustard had two spare arrows in his quiver) and file a DNC notice (Do not Contest).

It was pleasing to see some honesty from Harrow in that they said exactly why they were throwing in the towel. Hopefully they have learnt from this and set their computer up accordingly.

The end