Redridge Council - not as smart as they think they are

 

Mr Mustard has met Redridge Council a few times. They are not the smartest operators in PCN enforcement. They lose to the public 63% of the time at the tribunal and 86% of the time to Mr Mustard.

Mr M knows Mr X. He is the smartest and hardest working of PCN fighters. Redbridge must have heard of him. They should have seen the writing on he wall earlier.

The problem is this case is one of assumption, that a PCN will arrive in the post in two days. It is a rebuttable presumptuion, it might take a week and only the recipient can say the date on which it was served thus rebutting the assumed date of service. Smart councils build in a few days of leeway into their software before going to the next stage. Redbridge are not such a council.

The LGO don't know the law. A PCN is not a fine, they are only issued by Courts.

The LGO was also overly generous in allowing the council to let My Y make out of time representations he having previously been prevented from doing so and a year having passed which causes prejudice and the council having been out of order in the first place. They should have invited Redbridge Council to close the PCN.

Mr M knows that representations were made and the one sensible thing Redbridge did was to accept them. They would have a faced a tribunal hearing otherwise, wasted £32 in fees and been put to the sword by Mr X.

In the last 7 years Mr Mustard has won 19 of his 22 tribunal cases against Redbridge. Here is one which is germane.

That is the same problem as with Mr Y but 2 years earlier.

Clearly Redridge Council are a bit slow to learn................................ 

It can't be the money can it?

The end, until next time. 

Emailing into nowhere

For at least a couple of years, the email address of Barnet Council's parking permits section has been parking.permits@barnet.gov.uk and it is, in fact, still being put on letters which have your new permit attached, viz:

from a May 15 letter

Now, a reasonable resident might just conclude they could therefore contact the parking permit section by email and many of you have done just that. You have been whistling in the wind as those emails do not get a response because the address is configured for outgoing email only. Mr Mustard has been told that an undeliverable message will automatically be generated.

Now you know Mr Mustard, he likes to test things himself, so he sent an email. He also put delivery and read receipt requests on it. It was delivered, doh!

No-one is looking at them though, delivered or not.

The permit system has been the subject of more than one change since Capita took over. No positive communications explaining this have been pro-actively sent out with residents left to find out the hard way when they don't get a permit nor a response and extra PCN are being issued some of which will end up being paid (not if you go via Mr Mustard they won't) as some people with busy lives just want quiet lives. Coupling a defective email address with a lack of permit renewal reminders is a double whammy and extra income for the council.

So halfway through this blog post and Mr Mustard does get a message

which does seem perfectly reasonable except for all those words at the bottom "blocked:" which makes him think he won't get a cheery little hello back from Crapita in Coventry.

What you do need to do if you have sent documents to that email address is to phone 020 8359 7446 or go to this link and upload your documents rather than email them. You will need your PIN number which you might have to phone up for as no previously allocated reference number for you seems to last 12 months.

If you haven't got your permit also ask for a dispensation and then put a reminder in your phone as you need a new one every 14 days.

It would be much better if the council opened contact points in libraries where this sort of thing could be applied for in person, your documents could be checked and loaded by a council employee and your permit could be printed out on the spot. But that would be to put the needs of residents first which is only an empty mantra, not actuality.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Are you being served?

Strangely enough; this isn't over the entrance of Hendon Town Hall

Mr Mustard was pondering about service of a PCN for a man up north who, as he drove away from his parking space, saw the traffic warden throw the PCN through the open window and so he threw it back out again (in some boroughs he could have had a littering fine as well?). Mr Mustard remembered two PATAS cases he had read on the subject and so here are the relevant extracts for your enjoyment (cases are 2130205720 and 2140141941 for parking experts who want to read the complete originals). One PCN was cancelled and the other was upheld.

The snatcher

The Appellant denied that he was served with a PCN at the road side. The Authority said that the PCN was handed to the driver.

The enforcement officer's notes indicated "HTD" i.e. handed to driver but also stated that the Appellant snatched the PCN from the printer and threw it to the floor before threatening to run her over. While the Appellant taking the PCN from the printer amounts to good service, I do not see this as likely nor can I see how this can be described as handed to driver.
I am not satisfied that the PCN had been properly served. I am allowing the appeal.

The thrower

Miss N's second point is that the Penalty Charge Notice was thrown at her when she was inside her car. For a Penalty Charge Notice to be enforceable, it has to be affixed to the vehicle or handed to the driver. "Handed" can extend to it being given to the driver in any other way. The Civil Enforcement Officer may have acted impolitely and in an unfriendly manner but I am satisfied that the PCN was issued to the driver to the driver, as indeed is acknowledged by Miss N.
I dismiss the appeal.

Advice

Don't have your car window open anywhere near a traffic warden who might be about to give you a ticket. 

Don't get into a dialogue or a heated dispute.

Just drive calmly away and make a note when you get home of what happened. If you think the traffic warden has behaved badly get in first and make a complaint about their behaviour. Send it to first.contact@barnet.gov.uk and a copy to one of your local councillors who you can look up here using your postcode. You will need to put your car registration in the email.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

(Worst) regards

Mr Mustard will spare the blushes of the unsympathetic manager at Barnet Council who wrote the above miserable email in response to a heartfelt plea for the return of her car from a lady who was, at the time, 6 months pregnant and who is now 8 months pregnant and only got her car back last week after 2 months without it. She also has to take her disabled grandmother to weekly medical appointments whilst looking after a little child who is not yet two years old. The manager's name deserves to be in the open but Mr Mustard has agreed not to blog about named junior employees, ones who earn less than £56,000 (not so junior then!).

Mr Mustard will now comment line by line on this email of 7 October.

The three PCNs currently at bailiff status are now the subject of court proceedings, as a result of the action taken by yourself. Yes, the lady knew this as she filed the out of time Witness Statements at Court. They were only out of time as she didn't get any of the correspondence which she had told the council and which they blithely ignored.

You should now wait to receive a decision from the Court in due course. The Traffic Enforcement Centre, is likely to uphold any objection made by the council and the council duly filed dubious Statements of Truth on 24 November. Given the removal of the car it is a pity that the council don't deal with these applications within 24 hours and instead take up pretty much all of the 28 calendar days that are allowed (actually allowed 19 working days). Mr Mustard has seen a handout from the TEC that says the council can accept or reject an out of time application so telling the lady that she had to wait for the Court wasn't providing a full explanation of the process and the council's role in it.

I note your dissatisfaction with our response in this matter. Mr Mustard is also not content. Before he saw the papers they had been seen by at least three council or NSL employees none of whom spotted the handling errors (probably because they didn't look for them) that Mr Mustard picked up in minutes.

In response, I would explain that we are constrained in regards to the concessions that we can make when cases have lawfully progressed onto bailiff status. Sadly the progression had been unlawful. Also, the council are not constrained, they can cancel a PCN at any stage (see paragraph 177 of the London Councils Code of Practice), and the contract with the bailiff will have the right within it to cancel any instruction without cost to the council.

It is worth mentioning that the decision to engage a bailiff company in the PCN recovery process is not one which is taken lightly. Oh yes it is. 16,723 PCN cases were sent to bailiffs in the year 2010-11. It is implausible that each file will be closely scrutinised. Instead, a list is churned out by computer and then split between 2 firm of bailiffs.

We have to be satisfied that the registered keeper was appropriately notified of the contravention and also the potential consequences of non-payment. All this line does it express in vague terms the steps that have to be taken in the processing of a PCN. The council will consider that the posting of a letter is a notification without any thought as to whether it actually reached the registered keeper or not.

In your case, PCNs were placed on the windscreen of the vehicle or handed to the driver, in the first instance. The driver wasn't the registered keeper but her sister who kept quiet and then emigrated.

Three subsequent statutory notices were issued in respect of each PCNs (sic) to the address registered with the DVLA.  Yes, they were issued but one came back which you haven't mentioned and none of the others were actually put through the letterbox of the flat.

Whilst I note your comments pertaining to your housing situation, I regret to inform you that we cannot recall the cases from the bailiff company based upon such statements, given the facts of this case. Which facts is the first question? A week prior the lady had written "I have not received any letters from the Council or the bailiff" seems not to have been a sufficient statement for the council to make further enquiry into.

Furthermore, the bailiff company have incurred certain material costs associated with pursuing the outstanding penalty charge on behalf of the Local Authority. True, a bailiff is paid on a results basis and is not on a heads we win, tails you lose deal. A bailiff makes enough money out of the cases they win to more than cover the 75% that they don't collect on.

Current legislation provides that these costs are to be met by the owner / registered keeper of the vehicle. Mr Mustard concurs.

If the Local Authority were to intervene by recalling the cases at this stage, we would have to be prepared to meet any costs that are due to the bailiff company. Hogwash. There will be nothing in the contract which allows for this. Certainly there is nothing in the contract between Barnet Council and NSL which makes the council liable.

I hope you can appreciate that we would not willingly place ourselves in such a position at this time. The council shouldn't do so, the bailiff simply has to take it on the chin.

I trust that this response has clarified your concerns. The only thing clarified is that the council don't give a fig.

Regards What? "Regards", not "Yours sincerely". Is this any way that a council should write to a motorist whose car has been wrongly, as it happens, taken away by bailiffs, or is Mr Mustard being an old fuddy duddy?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Don't call us.........

Back on 29 November 2010 the Cabinet met to discuss "The future of the Parking Service". The entire report can be found here

http://tinyurl.com/48nwf28

My eye was caught by one particular paragraph :-

9.3.4  The Parking Service still retains control over the contact centre, which has historically suffered from poor performance.  This is in part due to the fact that when  the  contact  centre  was  created,  the  number  of  calls  was  severely underestimated  and  the  team  has  never  grown  to  accommodate  the  call levels.  The table below shows the quarterly figures and that the performance issue is still very real.

Table 3

	2009/10			2010/11
	Q2	Q3	Q4	Q1
Calls Received	70225	58547	54822	55817
Calls Answered	34928	33212	33549	32516
Calls Abandoned	35297	25335	21273	23301
% Abandoned	50%	43%	39%	42%

So the hard to contact centre has historically suffered from poor performance due to being under-staffed. 

What would be the proper response of a good manager ?

Assess what the proper staffing level would be and increase the staff accordingly ?

Barnet's response. Leave the contact centre under-staffed and then use it as a reason to justify privatisation.

Of course the "performance issue" ( why not write in plain English "poor performance " would be better understood) is still very real. Management has not taken any management actions. Doh.

"The team has never grown to ..." The team wouldn't grow would it without management action ? and in fact the size of the parking department has recently been reduced from 69 to 47 ( see Delegated Powers Report 1277).

http://tinyurl.com/6agqfpq

So management think it is OK that 105,206 calls can be abandoned by callers and nothing is done. 

"Putting the Community First" Complete codswallop.

One of the overarching aims of the One Barnet Programme is " a relentless drive for efficiency". You've driven off the road on this one Barnet Council.

New slogan

Barnet Council - Happy to waste the time and money of 105,206 people.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard