Newham Council are helpful - #1

 

The above image is the exit from Gallions Roundabout onto Royal Albert Way. It is quite near to London Docklands Airport and is only restricted (there is a poor image of the 'no entry' sign at the top left) from 10pm to 3am and that was because boy races used to blast up and down the road. Mr Mustard doesn't think this was the optimal solution or if that problem has gone away, as it might have, Mr Mustard goes along the roads very sedately so doesn't inhabit the car meeting world, then the restriction could be removed. 

The main problem with this restriction is that if you normally work days you will see instead a 40 mph limit sign as the sign is digital and so changes. It is also hard to change your mind when you have half exited the roundabout.

Anyway, a 'black cab' driver who Mr Mustard will call Mr White, given his cab colour, make the mistake of driving that way on a Saturday night. He duly received a PCN and challenged it. On 2 July 2025 a Notice of Rejection was generated but did not reach Mr White. The PCN process rumbled on and a Charge Certificate was next followed by an Order for Recovery. Mr White duly filed a sworn Statutory Declaration and the PCN was rowed back to £160.

Newham did what they should then do which was to send a copy of the Notice of Rejection which was not served and invite Mr White to either pay £80 (the 50% amount) or start an Appeal at London Tribunals.

Mr White decided to start an Appeal. He used the verification code he was given of 98G542 but didn't know that contains a hidden date of 2 July. 2+98 = 100 and G is the 7th letter of the alphabet and equals July, the 7th month, the 5 is for 2025, the 4 is the type of alleged contravention and the 2 is a check digit.

That led London Tribunals to reject the Appeal, made within 28 days of the renewed invitation to be thought to be out of time. Mr Mustard suspects that Newham Council hadn't put the tribunal on notice of an possible Appeal, as they should have done or the proper officer at the tribunal could have missed it.

Mr White queried the rejection with London Tribunals and they can't have studied the papers properly as they again rejected the Appeal as out of time. technically having been refused a review the opportunity to Appeal was at an end. At this point Mr Mustard was contacted by a cab drivers' umbrella body and Mr Mustard took over.

He set out a short chronology for the tribunal and explained that a failure to allow an Appeal to be fought would be a miscarriage of justice. The alternative if the tribunal said no a third time would be to start a judicial review but that would cost thousands and would be unfair. The advantage for Mr White is that Mr Mustard is well known at the tribunal for his exacting work and knowledge of the rules so if he says something is going wrong it probably is. To help the proper officer correct their decision he pointed out that Newham Council should have provided a new code, probably 89K512 and thus the tribunal could blame Newham Council and change their mind.

When Mr Mustard hits something going wrong in a blanket way he often emails parking managers. On this case he emailed the man who he thought was the parking manager of Newham Council but he was a manager of only one area which wasn't this one. However, he was a good sort, pointed out it wasn't his job but helpfully passed the email on to the generic email of the team that could help.

All this was going on over the Christmas and New Year festivities when things slow down a bit so Mr Mustard was a bit worried that the PCN might get sent to bailiffs but instead it took a sudden turn to the better.

All that Mr Mustard had asked for was for Newham Council to tell the tribunal that the Appeal was in time. Instead, they looked at the papers and cancelled the PCN. They wrote that there was an error in the 2 July Notice of Rejection. They didn't say what exactly. However, there was something curious which was in the Notice of Rejection. Newham Council wrote that black cabs were exempt from this restriction but Mr Mustard found that odd for two reasons. The first one is that they are not exempted in the traffic order and the second was that the exemption, if it exists, is not on the sign. The same letter also said there were no exemptions.

Mr Mustard doesn't start stupid arguments when things are going his way, he stopped the rot and told the tribunal they didn't need to open an Appeal after all, thus saving Newham Council c.£32.

Well done Newham Council, did the decent thing and saved themselves a lot of time fighting an Appeal based upon their own letter and signage being inadequate.

The end.