Barnet Council - automation or automaton error ?

 

Closed signs at Hilton Avenue N12

Mr Mustard has some semi-regular 'clients' who do their best but because they drive all day for a living inevitably run into a PCN from time to time. Mr P, in this case, doesn't trust councils so when he entered Hilton Avenue from Woodhouse Avenue on 2 September 26 thinking that the schools had gone back so enforcement was likely, he stopped and photographed the greyed out signs to prove they were closed when he was there.

The PCN which he should not have got was dated 8 September. 

Mr Mustard visited the location on 10 September, when he was passing, and by then they were open.

 

What the signs show the camera footage reviewer is a coloured tab at the top of the sign, red when they are open and blue when they are closed. This should be checked before a PCN is issued. The tabs exist because the camera is located behind the signs.

On 11 September Mr Mustard challenged the PCN on the obvious grounds that the signs were not visible. When he checked the balance on line on 30 September it was zero.

Mr Mustard thought he would find out how many people were affected so he made an information request.

There are an awful lot of signs for Apcoa to get round. The benefiting schools could do it far more efficiently.

As you probably know the cctv camera footage is selected by a camera which can identify a movement within a certain area and then save about 15 seconds of footage for review by a human being later. It is possible for the whole process of requesting keeper details from DVLA, authorising and issuing a PCN and popping it in the post could all be done without human hand. What is meant to happen is that a human being looks at each clip and decides if a contravention has occurred or not and thus whether or not to authorise a PCN. In the council year to March 2025 Barnet Council issued just over 100,000 moving traffic PCNs so 2,000 or so a week to be watched.

Now Mr Mustard suspects that either automation has crept in and the human stage is sometimes skipped or that the person or persons who do this have turned into automatons and not checked the simple facts i.e. are the signs open or not.

Whichever is true, 20 unlawful PCNs were issued when there were no signs facing the drivers. Amazingly 10 of them were paid so that is either 10 inattentive people or 10 lease companies (or a mix) who just pay things and charge an admin fee without bothering to see what they are administering. Mr Mustard doesn't know when or why refunds got made but it might have been because of his request for information.

Drivers need to keep their eyes open so they don't get a PCN and once they do as errors do get made. 

The end.