Newham Council - in another world - one you don't want to be in.

 

Mr Goodson (not his real name) received a PCN and thought that it would be quickly cancelled so he made his own representations. He was wrong and so Mr Mustard took over at the Notice to Owner stage. Mr Mustard re-used his grounds as well as adding his own.

1    The PCN was for the wrong contravention. Newham Council did not create a restricted street, they suspended the use of a bay. Councils often get this wrong.

2    The Notice to Owner did not contain a postal address to which to write so was non-complaint 

3    The informal challenge made by Mr Goodson was as follows:

On Sunday 13 April 2025, at 3.25 pm, I had to urgently take my 77-year-old father to the hospital following a sudden episode of rectal bleeding. He suffers from a neurological condition resembling dementia, making it impossible for him to manage hospital interactions independently. I am his primary carer and was the only person available to accompany and remain with him.

Due to this emergency, I was not able to return home before the bay suspension came into effect. At the time of leaving, there was no plan to stay overnight and the decision to stay overnight was only taken due to medical necessity and hospital advice.

The car was parked lawfully in a permit holder space on 13 April. The suspension began on 14 April. When the emergency occurred, I had no reasonable opportunity to relocate the vehicle, and no one else was available at the household to move it.

Please exercise your discretion. A hospital document is attached.

Please cancel the PCN for any of the three reasons advanced above.

Now Mr Mustard rather thought that any reasonable human being would cancel the PCN due to the medical reason being an unavoidable emergency but he was wrong. 

The Notice of Rejection contained the following:

Mr Mustard was outraged by the response but getting mad doesn't help. He had already lined up his arguments to pick apart the obvious flaws in the council's logic (or failure to understand reality) but decided to keep his powder dry and obliterate Newham Council once they had produced the evidence pack and the full glory of their unreasonable position was there to shoot at, so the Grounds of Appeal were short, but carefully targeted:

The tribunal appeal had been made on 1 August 2025 and because of a temporary adjudicator shortage was listed for hearing on 12 November. On 7 November Newham Council suddenly decided they didn't want to fight Mr Mustard at the tribunal and filed a 'Do Not Contest' form and cancelled the PCN because:

Therefore there was no traffic management order when Newham Council rejected the informal challenge. 

There was also no traffic management order when they rejected the formal representations made by Mr Mustard. 

This probably does count as a PCN which Mr Mustard could have written up in the Newham Council are Cheats series but it is in a special category all of its own.

Councils don't think of PCNs as having been issued to a human being, they are just a number PN12345678 etc, just a job to be done and when this one is finished there will be another, another and another.

Mr Mustard has to spend some of his time dealing with the physchological fallout reassuring a motorist that everything will turn out all right (and Mr Mustard is fortunately right 85% of the time).

Mr Mustard was confident, provided he didn't get a green adjudicator who might not yet fully grasp the law, that he would win the day on his wrong contravention argument alone. However, Mr Mustard is the veteran of 2,000 PCN fight in the last 7 years so has all his ducks in a row but the motorist may only have had one or two in that time so doesn't know how strong his case is and motorists are inclined to think that councils must be honest, they may be in other areas but often not in PCNs.

Here is a short exchange of emails:

Motorists should not be put under this much strain by councils who reject what turn out to be perfect challenges. The trouble is there isn't a body charged with oversight of their day to day actions. It is assumed that a council will act fairly as Lord Mustill stated in a House of Lords decision:

Where an Act of Parliament confers an administrative power there is a presumption that it will be exercised in a manner which is fair in all the circumstances.

It is high time a supervisory body was formed to make sure this is the case.

The end.