The perils of AI

 

Mr Mustard prefers real intelligence to artificial. He recently had cause to complain to St Albans City & District Council as they sent a PCN which was in the representation stage to bailiffs (Civil Enforcement Officers) a blunder of the first water.

When he went online to try and find an email address to send his complaint to which is a problem with many councils not providing an email address for such a purpose he did find the above page. Mr Mustard found himself agreeing with much of what St Albans had to say. Most AI produced text is too verbose but it is quite good at sticking facts in order, a task that Mr Mustard can manage for himself. Many motorists come to him and send an AI generated challenge which 90% of the time is of no use to Mr Mustard and he has to waste a lot of time reading it just in case.

Complaining to St Albans was harder than it should have been. Mr Mustard likes to communicate by email which councils try to avoid. The profferred online system is useless as you are strait jacketed by most systems into answering questions instead of setting things out as you wish. In addition it isn't possible to attach a document so Mr Mustard couldn't attach his client authority so his complaint is likely to get rejected for that reason. Mr Mustard posted that in.

His advice if you need to write as a council doesn't give you an email address is to write an email to them as if they have, send the email to yourself and then print it out and post it, no need to make it look like a traditional letter.

Don't put up with wrong things, complain.

Mr Mustard will write about the bailiff problem once he has found out how widespread a problem it was. 

The end. 

Throwing a brick through your own window

Mr Mustard always looks closely at council v council PCN tribunal cases and doubly so if it is the same council taking itself to adjudication. One adjudicator takes the view that a council can't penalise itself and refuses to hear an Appeal.

In this case the council took itself to adjudication and then declined to continue.

Mr Mustard did a little digging and found this to be the location. A clear sign but which is little known, it means 'no vehicles' (as it helpfully says) so no cycles as well as no motor vehicles.

Brick Lane

Mr Mustard then took a cheeky look to see if there were any other live PCNs and found five for this vehicle which are all now settled.

The most shocking PCN is the first one, Tower Hamlets Council sent the debt for a Tower Hamlets Council PCN to a bailiff instructed by Tower Hamlets Council and then, given that the balance shows as negative £130 (it was probably £zero) the PCN was paid. Whether they paid the extra £75 for the first bailiff letter as well as £235 for a bailiff visit and whether or not a council vehicle was clamped isn't clear.

What a weird world we live in. Common sense is clearly out of stock in Tower Hamlets. 

The end.

DVLA - terrible at data management

Mr Mustard made a Freedom of Information request to DVLA. He did this because a lady, let us call her Jayne, purchased a used car, and posted in the V5C with her complete and accurate address. Mr Mustard has a copy of what was sent to DVLA. Somehow her car got registered to a non-existent address in Mansfield, a town she has no connection with and has never visited.

Let us suppose the motorist lived at 4 Shakespeare Court, 111 Woodville Road, Barnet EN5 4LX (Mr Mustard's former address by way of illustration as he can't use the actual one for Jayne).

Using the Royal Mail postcode checker we can see the following:

Mr Mustard surmises that because the flats had a block name which precedes the street number, blocks don't come up when you search using the DVLA's method. Staff also can't be expected to know every location. There are 1.3 million postcodes and goodness knows how many blocks of flats.

Searching by road name alone brings up the correct address as the fifth choice. An under strain or slapdash DVLA employee might select the wrong one.

It is only by inputting the complete postcode, a maximum of 8 digits, that you can be sure of getting the correct locale.

The system that the DVLA are employing is more likely to end up in error with their partial matching method, which looks to have a huge flaw within in.

Mr Mustard is going to ask a follow up question to test his hypothesis.

In Jayne's case, she correctly wrote on the form an address in London N2, which is a flat in a block which block has a street number. Somehow, perhaps because of the name of the block, her car was registered in Mansfield.

What is worse is that it was registered at an address which doesn't even exist. Using a different address as an example. If the physical address used was 12 Regina Court, West End Lane the postcode used was for 12 Regina Court Lane which did exist but still wasn't Jayne's address and gave the postman a delivery problem.

The first she knew of the PCNs was when the bailiff knocked on her actual front door and demanded £2,000 at the risk of having her car removed and so she paid up even though she had received nothing at all in the post. It has taken Mr Mustard 3 months to ascertain the cause of the problem, which is one he hadn't ever seen before. He much prefers to keep PCNs out of the hands of bailiffs. It isn't clear that the bailiff had a valid warrant as it may have still had the out of date (and obviously invalid) Mansfield address on it. That is a blog for another day.

Some of you might have noticed that you had purchased a car but not received the 'logbook' from DVLA a month later, others wouldn't. As you don't need it unless you travel abroad or decide to sell your vehicle Mr Mustard thinks the non arrival is an entirely understandable oversight. If you buy a used car, make a note for a month later to chase up the missing registration document ('logbook').

Having watched much of the Post Office Horizon Inquiry Mr Mustard is no longer shocked by the incompetence at high levels in large organisations but DVLA's data processing disaster method is of the same ilk. He has seen complaints on the internet in which a resident complains that an unknown person has registered a vehicle at their address. The suspected rogue clearly isn't always a scam artist but could be the DVLA.

The end, for now.

Worstminster / Bestminster

Mr Mustard decided to start at the end of the story, with the good news, and go backwards. Marston were not greatly at fault in this matter, they were given a warrant which was tainted by incompetence. Mr Mustard does not think that even had they even-handedly considered the DVLA letter that the vehicle had been sold prior to the contravention and referred it to the City of Westminster that there would have been any change of position. Coming back from your holiday in the early hours and then getting clamped at 7am wasn't the best start to the post holiday period. Unfortunately Mr Mustard's advice to garage the car was not heeded.

The bare facts of this matter are that a car was given away and there was a delay in registering the transfer at DVLA. For a few months after his lucky gift the new owner of the car ran amok all over London. Every PCN but one was cancelled for the prior owner. Mr Mustard cobbled the facts together and sent an epistle to the newly appointed Head of Parking at City of Westminster.

So we end up with a lady having her new car clamped because the bailiff had assets under control but the bailiff has ended up with nothing. It would be better if bailiffs, when offered a plausible reason why the warrant might be wrong, would take instructions from their client and put the matter on hold. The problem is that because bailiffs are remunerated solely on success they are likely to ignore the obvious error and extract their pound of flesh. They end up giving it back with interest which is a waste of their time and causes reputational damage.

The City of Westminster though are to be complimented on having seriously considered Mr Mustard's epistle, which was something of a missile, and accepted their failings and made a decent compensation payment. Mr Mustard wishes the new parking manager all the best. Many other managers could learn from her example.

Remember, we all make mistakes, how you deal with them is what really counts.

If you are selling, or disposing of, a vehicle, make sure you register the change of ownership with DVLA as if the new owner doesn't, you may pay the price.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard
 

TfL are a disgrace - in the nature of a guest blog

The facts:

I hope you're well. I'm afraid I have another query for you on behalf of my parents. I will try to keep the facts brief but can provide more detail if needed.

- parents have moved house, new owners called this week to say they have some post for them. Parents collected post to find 2 charge certificates from TfL for non payment of PCNs (congestion charge)
- new owners of house state that no previous correspondence has been received (i.e. The Pcns themselves or any reminders)
- charge certificates state payment required in 14 days (i.e. by 8 august) otherwise they will register it as a debt
- I believe a statutory declaration is required (or two) to say that parents did not receive PCNs?
- reason for not paying congestion charge is that vehicle is registered under blue badge discount for my grandmother however the email sent by TfL to ask whether that should be renewed was sent to my grandfather who sadly passed away last year. Therefore email account not checked and discount expired around march this year.
- parents did have a mail redirect initially but this had stopped by the time PCN issued. However new owners are in touch and would / should have told them if they had post
- my dad (registered keeper) did not update DVLA until recently, however he says (I am asking him to double check this) that when he called them (in July) to update his address they told him they already had new address. Not sure how this is possible but perhaps they obtained it via an alternative source..? 

Any chance of success with this do you think? Presume first would have to attempt statutory declaration then if successful, make representations? Out of interest, when log in to TfL site it still seems to allow us to make reps even though supposedly you cannot do this once charge certificate issued.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give us!

Although Mr Mustard wasn't managing the PCNs he keeps an eye on things. One PCN was settled and the other marched forward through the process to the bailiff. He enquired what had happened.

Thanks for your email. Yes - it was a complete nightmare for my parents as you can imagine. TfL are a disgrace - despite my parents sending in the relevant stat dec signed by a solicitor etc, TfL managed to lose it. My parents then got another statutory declaration signed and witnessed etc and followed up with the TEC who confirmed all received and sent to TfL, and that bailiffs would definitely be put on hold. Next thing they know, very unpleasant bailiff at door a few days later. My parents were already in the middle of a major family crisis so had no option but to pay full amount (it was a weekend and nobody from TfL or TEC available of course).  (2 swearing fees of c. £10 would have had to be paid)

My mum called tfl on the Monday and TfL actually admitted they had failed to correctly notify bailiffs and agreed to cancel ticket. Now my parents are waiting for refund - who knows if it will ever materialise.

Thank you for keeping track of this - I have to say that I despair at organisations like TfL and others whose disorganisation and ruthlessness causes innocent people an extraordinary amount of stress and upset.

Please keep up your good work in helping people to fight back!

The problem is that parking departments automate as much of the process as they can simply because of the volume they deal with. TfL issue around 500,000 PCNs each year. Thus the personal input which would stop most stupid process errors just isn't built into the system and that is wrong.

The parents are out of pocket, they are due an apology for the error in instructing the bailiffs and should be compensated for the worry but that simply doesn't happen.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet Council - sensible exercise of discretion

Mr Mustard was working on site on Thursday 1 February. It was only late in the afternoon, just as he was about to leave site in Northants to drive back to Barnet for the charity pub quiz, that he checked his MrMustard emails and found this cry for help:

I implore you to please call me urgently .The bailiff has clamped my car. I have just lost my husband. This ticket he has clamped me for is very old .I do not believe i am liable for it .I have drs letters to say I am really ill and they advise due to my mental state that the ticket should be recinded. I can explain all.

I live alone and have no friends or family. Please contact me .My number is (redacted)

Mr Mustard's heart sank as he likes to avoid bailiffs if at all possible by fixing the PCN earlier. He duly phoned the number he had been given. The lady was on the verge of tears and Mr Mustard said he would be there in 2 hours as he was concerned that the bailiff might remove the car. He knew he was going to be late to the pub but at least the pub would still be there later whereas the car might not.

When he met the lady he found the situation was worse than he thought. She had no paperwork prior to the bailiff's visit which was odd as at least four official notices would have been sent to her & she had not moved in years. Mr Mustard organised a witness statement and an application to file it out of time. Barnet Council were at liberty to oppose the late application and if they did the Traffic & Enforcement Centre at Northampton County Court were likely to reject the application. 

There were two other live PCNs (a third one had been cancelled by the council) for having the blue badge of her late husband on display; in her grief she had not thought about handing it in and obtaining one for herself or a resident's permit. Due to her lack of mobility she probably qualified for a blue badge in her own right but had not applied for one.

Mr Mustard decided that he would explain the situation to Barnet Council outside of the formal process so that they would hopefully deal with it as affecting a human being rather than the PCN reference being the extent of their concern. He wrote this:

Dear Sirs

I represent Mrs Redacted as attached authority.

I am writing to make representations out of time which the council are at liberty to consider. The London Councils Code of Practice says this about them:

I am also asking you to not contest the out of time witness statement, thus giving the lady at least an opportunity to challenge the PCN, or in the alternative, to cancel the PCN. The effect of not opposing the witness statement would allow you to issue a fresh Notice to Owner if you were so minded.

I ask you to consider the proportionality of the penalty once bailiff fees are added. £373 for a badge that was placed the wrong way up, which was probably caused by the late Mr Redacted interfering with it & not appreciating what he was doing due to his Alzheimer's, which was quite advanced at that time & he died just 2 months later. I believe this lady when she tells me that she has no paperwork about this PCN as she produced it for other more recent PCNs (if there has been any reaction to statutory documents at the time I am sure you will tell me but this lady has quite bad depression and as her memory is defective that can be understood). The late Mr Redacted did use to take things, such as the mail, and hide or destroy them, so that is probably why the Notice to Owner is not to hand. This is the most trivial of contraventions as the council could check the validity of the badge from the number on the back of it.

I ask you also to take into account the vulnerable position of this lady. As her recent doctor's letter states, the lady is housebound, with severe back pain, depression and anxiety and the latter two conditions are not helped by this PCN. You will note that the doctor describes her as extraordinarily vulnerable and special consideration should be given to bailiff use in such circumstances. She is also in pretty dire financial straits, being a tenant of and living on a mere £220 a fortnight and with no savings.

I look forward to hearing from you, hopefully with positive news, that you have exercised your discretion to not enforce the PCN.

Yours faithfully

Mr Mustard

p.s. One small point about the bailiff's Notice which over-states the sum due 'at the date of this notice' as being £483 when it was only £373. That is an illegal demand for payment despite the note to the side. Perhaps you could remind your bailiffs generally not to demand sums which are not due at that moment.

Here is the reply that he received:

Thank you for your email of the 9th February 2018 to our Head of Parking and Infrastructure.

I have investigated the PCN and the evidence you supplied regarding the registered keeper’s current medical condition and based on my findings I am willing on this occasion to cancel the PCN and all associated PCNs currently active in relation to the vehicle AB02CDE. The PCNs outstanding that have been cancelled are AG11111111 issued on 29/11/2017 and AG22222222 issued on 01/12/2017. No further enforcement action will take place regarding the above PCNs and the matter is considered closed.

The Council has exercised its discretion on this occasion and cancelled the PCNs on the basis the appellant’s ill health as supported in the letter you supplied from Dr NW. It must be noted that the vehicle was parked displaying another individual’s (Mr Redacted) disabled blue badge who as you state had passed away in February 2017. The CEO issued the PCNs due to the blue badge being expired therefore no exemption from the conditions of the bay would apply. I am also aware the vehicle AB02CDE has valid road tax and MOT until May and June 2018 which would indicate the vehicle is still in use. I would advise that the vehicle be removed from the bay and parked in an alternative location or a parking Permit purchased.

The Council is satisfied an exemption can be applied in this instance. However please advise your client that this cancellation does not set a precedent and that similar PCNs incurred by the vehicle AB02CDE may be pursued in future.

In respect of the issue raised regarding the Bailiff sum due I will raise this with Marston to get their comments however this is immaterial now as the case has been closed.I hope that this information is helpful given the positive resolution to the issue raised. If I can be of assistance to you with regards to any other parking-related issue, then please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Yours sincerely

Parking Customer Service Team Leader
Parking Client Team

This is the correct and proper exercise of discretion which other councils would do well to copy (and has led to this blog instead of the one he expected to write about what utter heartless b'stards populate the parking department - Mr Mustard is pleased to be proven wrong on this occasion). Mr Mustard thinks that the existence of the recent doctor's letter was probably a key point in favour of cancelling.

The two more recent PCNs would almost certainly have been beaten by Mr Mustard had they reached the tribunal as the car had not moved during the time that they were issued so only one contravention had occurred. He is also slightly worried that the resident's permit does not show on the council computer as Mr Mustard himself applied for it on line and received a receipt for it (although the receipt does not give you the vehicle registration which isn't helpful). The bailiff's letters aren't academic if they are routinely wrong and hopefully they will be correct in the future.

How lovely to get a far better response than Mr Mustard was dreading.

So, three cheers for Barnet Council actually using their discretion in a sensible manner.  Mr Mustard has responded to Barnet Council thanking them for their letter and suggesting the following:

Thank you for this which will be a great relief to this lady who is very distressed. I note what you say about a residents permit, I went on line and did the transaction a few days ago so I do hope that I have done that properly? I'll be blogging the positive aspects of your decision as soon as I can, no names no pack drill as per usual.

Due to a multi-million debt recovery job I am engaged upon I have been forced to cut down who I am helping to those in greatest need which includes the physically & mentally ill as well as the elderly & impecunious. I readily accept that bailiffs have a job to do, I am a credit consultant / debt collector after all, but the effect of their visits weighs disproportionately upon the very people I help. I have long worried that the costs are disproportionate and sometimes make payment impossible for the elderly and of course the less physically able (not necessarily eligible for a blue badge) are the people who need their car the most and I don't think that the ethos of the due adjustment provisions of the Equality Act get taken into account by bailiffs who don't after all get paid unless they collect. The bailiff reward system is at the heart of the problem.

I would be pleased to sit down with the parking manager one day to discuss this and see if there is a better way of obtaining the council's money without causing so much anxiety.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

This problem having gone away Mr Mustard has another since this morning, a lady of a certain age with a Motability car & 3 Barnet PCNs. TfL have cancelled a PCN because she was so distressed she called the police as she was suicidal, he now has to ask the same of Barnet Council.

He also has a clamping of a car where it was used to transport a disabled person other than the vehicle owner & the police threatened to arrest the Owner if he didn't let the bailiff lock the clamp on, the Owner having intervened & having let his brother pay the fine as he had to take his partner to hospital for an operation that very day. The bailiff was not clamping lawfully so here we go, another complaint is imminent, in fact two, one to the council and one to the police.

Nasty Newham Council

Mr Mustard has a client who doesn't like bothering him so tries to sort out parking tickets themselves and this sometimes goes wrong and the odd PCN ends up with a bailiff. That isn't too bad a problem as the car belongs to Motability and is used to transport a disabled person so cannot, in law, be removed by a bailiff (although they will threaten to remove it to bully you into paying). The physical needs of the disabled person are clearly quite severe as they qualify for a Motability car and their mental needs are such that they have a litigation friend under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Newham Council have ended up with a PCN at the bailiff stage against the Litigation Friend as that is the name recorded on the V5 registration document rather than the disabled person. That record will be amended.

Newham have their own bailiffs who work under the umbrella name of OneSource which is a shared service company (OneSource Partnership Ltd has filed dormant accounts) owned by the boroughs of Havering, Newham & Bexley.

To ensure the life of the disabled person was not disrupted by the wrongful removal of the car Mr Mustard emailed OneSource as follows:

As you know, a Motability car cannot be clamped or removed by you for two reasons. The first is that it is not the property of A (the litigation friend) or B (the disabled person). The second is that a car used for the transport of a disabled person is exempt, and a Motability car is patently such a vehicle & is so used.

What came back, after a bit of email ping pong, was this:

We are aware that Motability vehicles cannot be removed. Please be aware that under the standard terms and conditions of the Motability scheme the registered keeper of the vehicle is liable to pay all outstanding penalties and fines and failure to do so is likely to be regarded as “breach of contract” and may lead to the cancellation of the agreement and/or to you being refused Motability finance in future. oneSource Enforcement Services will notify Motability of all cases where we believe the scheme is subject to misuse and a refusal to pay has been identified.

As Mr Mustard was writing as a representative the use of 'you being refused' clearly points to this being a standard wording. Mr Mustard had heard of such threats before but not seen them in writing. The 'paramount' privacy statement and the threat of disclosure seem somewhat at odds with one another?

He was unhappy with the proposed actions so he emailed OneSource again.

You are hereby cautioned not to intervene in a private contractual arrangement to which you are not a party and in which your proposed actions would amount to a Data Protection Breach. I would suggest you consult the borough's in house legal team / information experts before you take such a step.

This email has been copied to my solicitor.

That was 2 months ago and no further email has been received by Mr Mustard which is the usual modus operandi of an authority caught in a compromising situation - go quiet and hope the problem goes away.

One bailiff letter has been sent since threatening that they will take control of goods but they have no right of forced entry to premises and as both the disabled person and the litigation friend are in receipt of state benefits they are unlikely to have anything worth the costs of seizure and sale.

The whole way in which councils go about chasing debts due (& there is one here although there is an 84% chance Mr Mustard would have beaten the PCN if given it at the beginning) from the disabled and/or mentally ill is just wrong, it is based on the blunt use of force. There needs to be nuance and finesse and a tailored approach. Offering time to pay to people who don't have the money now would be a much better solution for both parties but councils rarely offer instalments and the bailiff approach of pay it all or else leads to resistance to paying anything. 

What it probably needs is one council to analyse current results for all PCNs involving the physically or mentally disabled (this will show up by the nature of the contravention i.e. blue badge slipped off dashboard cases) and then try a new approach of inviting instalments, arranging a meeting with the vehicle owner if there are multiple outstanding PCNs to both try and stop further PCNs being issued and to see what arrangement can be made about current ones or to establish if the financial situation of the person is so hopeless that writing off the debt is the only logical step. What the council are meant to do is to make 'due adjustment' for the disabled. It isn't greatly in evidence.

Councils automatically increase unpaid PCN values by 50% as soon as they possibly can. They do not have to do so. The regulations say 'may' increase not 'must'.

Sadly, Mr Mustard thinks that in a year's time, nothing will have changed.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Hackney Council approve of a bailiff attendance fee for not attending

the sort of village the bailiff visited

A friend of Mr Mustard's contacted him with a problem. He had received a note from a bailiff but didn't know exactly what the debt was for. His employer, a Limited company, let us call them P J Ltd, had employed a lady on a short term contract and a car was necessary to do the job. It was therefore fiscally prudent to rent a car. The supplier had a special deal on renting brand new cars provided they got them back before 9000 miles was reached. Therefore, each quarter they changed to a fresh car. He recalled the lady saying she had received a PCN and would sort it out but her contract was up and she had also moved so there was no paperwork to hand. Mr Mustard's friend's address was used for the paperwork but he isn't a director of the firm in question. Somewhere along the line the house name fell off Hackney Council's records.

Mr Mustard pieced together what he could. There was a signed rental agreement from July 2014 but the PCN debt was for parking in a suspended bay in January 16. The recollection was that inadequate notice had been given of the suspension.

One of the problems inherent within the parking regulations is that no matter how innocent you may be you can end up with a debt registered against you in the county court if you fail to follow a procedural step on time or are not served with any statutory documents.

In this case Mr Mustard thought that Hackney Council had wrongly transferred liability from the Hire Company to the Limited Company client as he was told that no further paper agreements had been signed after the first one (but they had been although by the driver who probably did not have authority to bind PJ Ltd). The car was simply changed each quarter and the rental amounts paid as the months rolled by. Mr Mustard's problem was in stopping the council before the bailiff found the correct house out of the 30+ with the same postcode. Technically he was out of time but he expected that he could convince Hackney Council that they were acting beyond their powers. He knew it wouldn't be easy and so it proved.

He emailed the legal department at Hackney.

I represent P... J... Ltd ('PJL') as attached authority.

PJL have recently become aware of the existence of a warrant in the hands of Newlyn Plc bailiffs acting on behalf of Hackney Council for the above referenced PCN.

The warrant is invalid for want of a proper address, for the failure to properly serve preceding statutory documents (due to the lack of a full address) and because the requirements for a transfer of liability from a vehicle hire firm were not met there being, to PJL's knowledge, no written & signed hire agreement for vehicle ******* under which liability could legitimately be transferred to PJL.

I write to you in your capacity as Chief Legal Officer who is responsible for ensuring that the council operate within the law.

Please place the bailiff on hold whilst one of your team investigates the matter and confirm that you have done so.

Please provide me with a copy of the PCN, Notice to Owner, Charge Certificate and Order for Recovery.

Please tell me in each case if any of those statutory documents was returned undelivered.

Please tell me the date on which the suspended bay sign was erected and provide evidence of same.

Please tell me the full address which the bailiff visited and the time and date as he is now demanding payment of £512 as if a visit to premises has taken place and given that he does not have the full address a visit cannot have taken place. If the bailiff wears body worn video please provide a copy of the recording showing him making the visit to premises.

Legal tried to duck their responsibility:

Thank you for your e-mail passed to me by my Director, I have contacted the Parking Section requesting they provide details in respect of your enquiry. I must stress that decisions to issue instructions to bailiffs rests with the parking department and legal are not in a position to place any action on hold, however they now have your request and will be considering whether this would be appropriate in this case.

Any investigation will be conducted by the parking department and once they provide details as to the action taken in respect of this matter we can consider them at that time.

You will be contacted once the team have had an opportunity to consider the points you have raised.

But of course Mr Mustard wasn't having any of that:

I approached the monitoring officer as I think the law is not being followed by the parking section.

By all means let parking provide the facts to you but it is the monitoring officer's duty to ensure the council follows the law which I wish to see upheld.

The monitoring officer is not without power in this matter as you suggest.
This led to a quick change of stance:

Thank you for your response, I have noted your comments and am aware of the monitoring officer’s duties and appliance of the law, nothing has been established in respect of this matter and will ask you to bear with me until I am privy to all the facts. Unfortunately, due to staffing issues the information we require from parking will not be obtained immediately, however on speaking to them they have advised they will place the matter on hold for 14 days with the enforcement action to give them time to look into the points you have raised.

As stated you will be contacted once they have had a chance to investigate this matter.
Mr Mustard responded, he had achieved his first aim, stopping money being paid.

Thank you. The 14 day hold is sensible.
Then his second aim was fulfilled, cancellation.

I am pleased to confirm that I have now received a response from the Appeals Team who have considered the points made by you, and have decided to cancel the PCN and recall it from Newlyn bailiffs. I will be asking them for confirmation of when this has been done to ensure no further action is taken in respect of this matter and will contact you once I hear from them.

Mr Mustard likes to go to the end of the journey.

Thank you for letting me know.

I still wish to see all my original questions answered please.

Things went a bit quiet.

A month has passed without me hearing anything.

Could you please prompt your colleagues.

Following the prompt a reply arrived pretty quickly. Mr Mustard has interspersed his further comments in red, the correspondence with Hackney being at an end.

Apologies for the delay in providing you with a response to your questions. It appears that there was a miscommunication between involved parties. (Neither party was Mr Mustard!)

Please find attached documents as per your request and response to each point not already addresses in Council’s previous response.

Please provide me with a copy of the PCN, Notice to Owner, Charge Certificate and Order for Recovery.

Please find attached. All supplied as requested.

Please tell me in each case if any of those statutory documents was returned undelivered.

We have no records of these statutory documents being returned as undelivered. The Royal Mail have a huge operation in dealing with returned mail but if there wasn't an address on the outside of the envelopes it would have gone in the bin.

Please tell me the date on which the suspended bay sign was erected and provide evidence of same.

Please find attached. An adequate 12 days notice was given.

Please tell me the full address which the bailiff visited and the time and date as he is now demanding payment of £512 as if a visit to premises has taken place and given that he does not have the full address a visit cannot have taken place. If the bailiff wears body worn video please provide a copy of the recording showing him making the visit to premises.

The Enforcement Agent has visited the village and has made enquiries at number of properties to find out the full address of the company. This has however been unsuccessful as nobody was able to tell the Enforcement Agent which property is for the company in question. The bailiff spent 'a good 15 minutes' making enquiries of locals is what an email from the bailiff firm to Hackney Councils says. The bailiff was given a hopeless task. The address should have been verified somewhere along the line before then, the council always had the full address & the bailiff must be given a full address from which to start his enforcement.

The Council often finds cases where the registered keeper does not provide a full address to the DVLA, on some occasions intentionally to avoid paying for Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) the onus is on the registered keeper to ensure that the address is correct. The Enforcement Agent can legally apply the enforcement fee where an attempt* to visit the address was carried out, which means that in this case the enforcement fee has been applied correctly, however the address was not provided by the DVLA but inputted by the Council officer who has on this occasion made an administrative error by missing crucial part of the address. Mr Mustard doesn't get why councils pad their responses out with irrelevant generalisations. This was nothing to do with DVLA which the council do admit in the end. However, what do the regulations about bailiff fees say?:

*Clearly, the enforcement fee, which is fixed at £235 is for attendance at the premises, and popping to the village in which the premises are to be found, if you are smart enough, is not attendance at the premises but in the vicinity of the premises. There is no question but that the attendance fee had not been earned and it is very worrying that Hackney Council do not know this as they are responsible for the actions of their bailiff.

Had the bailiff found the house, knocked on the door, found no-one home & left a note of the visit in the letterbox then the attendance fee would, in other cases of good service, have been properly added to the debt. As it was they charged £75 for the first stage, the compliance stage, which consists of sending a letter to the debtor but they hadn't properly managed that either because they needed the full address so no bailiff fees were properly due.

Looking now through the 74 pages of documents Mr Mustard can see that the driver did challenge the PCN but was rejected so she cannot be faulted as the first Notice to Owner went, quite properly, to the hire company as registered keeper and her involvement was at an end.

The hire company provided the details of the company & driver who hired the car, including the house name. They did provide a copy of the hire agreement which the Notice to Owner asks them to do and which Hackney Council should have checked properly before agreeing to transfer liability as there are strict rules to follow. There were no driver's licence details so transfer was invalid. That was Hackney's first error.

Their second error was to omit the house name when sending the Notice to Owner to PJ Ltd and thus it did not arrive and nor did the Charge Certificate or Order for Recovery.

Mr Mustard asked if there was any body worn video. Hackney asked the bailiff if there were any photographs of the visit which is entirely a different question but he had his answer anyway, the bailiff popped to the village to confirm what anyone could tell without going anywhere, the address was inadequate.

Mr Mustard has just google searched for the company name and location. That brought up a senior executive in the village. He then searched for the executive and the village and got the full address. Total time about 90 seconds. No need to go for a drive, no matter how pleasant it must have been. Hackney Council could have found the address more quickly by looking within their own files.

Neither Hackney Council nor the bailiff come out of this one looking efficient or displaying any common sense. Mr Mustard doesn't like the amount of automated processing that goes on within parking departments. If he were in charge no case would be sent to a bailiff where no response was received subsequent to the Notice to Owner as more likely than not, something has gone wrong. If the registered keeper were to be deliberately ignoring the situation then a 'signed for' letter confirming that their current residence has been verified and that bailiffs are to be instructed would be more effective than sending bailiffs on wild goose chases.

You will note that there has been an apology for the delay in replying to the straightforward questions but there has not been an apology for the fundamental error that Hackney Council made in a simple situation.

There really does need to be an outbreak of good manners in the world of council parking. It isn't enough to cancel your wrongdoings; worry has been caused, illegal demands for money have been made, fees not due are being claimed and people's time has been wasted.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Ignorance of the law excuses no-one

Mustafa from Morris Mustard on Vimeo.

Hello everyone, Mr Mustard, or in actual fact Mustafa, needs your help in the form of a donation to legal costs.

Mustafa is a polite and calm man in his twenties. He is studying and was doing some part time taxi driving work when he hit a problem, the bailiff illegally removed his car aided and abetted, in effect, by the police.

On 15 July 2016 Mustafa purchased a car for £2,700. He paid cash but received a comprehensive Car Sales Agreement, an A4 piece of paper containing the details of the vehicle, the buyer & the seller and the price paid which is receipted.

On 22 July 2016 it was clamped. Mustafa sat inside and phoned the bailiff, probably expecting rather naively that he would show the bailiff his paperwork and the clamp would be removed. Not so fast Mustafa.

Needless to say the bailiff wasn't being reasonable and called the police to attend. The police should have been innocent independent bystanders as the collection of a PCN is a civil matter not a criminal one. The bailiff has no power to smash his way into premises (and premises by definition includes a car) but the police stood by and watched as he did this very thing, the committal of a criminal act.

Once the window was smashed in Mustafa was arrested and taken to Colindale police station. The outcome of his time there was that the police decided that they had no right to detain Mustafa and hence they can't have had any right to arrest him either. A complaint has just been filed with the Met Police.

Why the police let the bailiff smash a window in when they had already said to Mustafa "Yes you own the car" is a question that the investigation will have to answer. Mr Mustard can tell them the answer. It is that the police considered the warrant as being against the car but warrants are always against a person or company and it is their assets which can then be distrained upon (grabbed), the warrant is not attached to the car per se.

This is what the Citizens Advice Bureau has to say on this subject.

It isn't the case either that the previous owner sold the car to Mustafa in the full knowledge he had a warrant outstanding because the previous owner only bought on 21 June 2016. There are 5 former keepers going back to 2009.

The warrants, it turns out, are from January and April 2016 but they haven't been seen and Mustafa isn't entitled to see them as his name is not on them. Strange but true. Here is part of the police custody record

Mr Mustard sent the bailiff firm, Collect Services Ltd, a claim to the car on behalf of Mustafa along with the V5 and the Car Sales Agreement. He then also sent them proof of insurance. It took 14 days and a nudge from Mr Mustard for Collect Services Ltd to refuse Mustafa's claim to have his own car back (possession really is nine points of the law). The informal approach having failed, and it is always sensible to try to agree matters without court action, a Third Party Claim will have to be made in accordance with Schedule 12 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. The problem is that even if you win the day, and recover your car, you will not recover the costs of legal representation as these are not allowed for Small Claims (those under £10,000). It isn't sensible for a person to represent themselves in person if they want the best outcome and Mr Mustard isn't qualified to appear. A barrister is a wise investment. You can be sure that the bailiff will be supported by his firm who will have experienced legal representatives and they have deep pockets.

This is where you come in. Mr Mustard's solicitor is going to help out but there will be court fees to pay and a barrister to present the argument in Court.

£1,500 needs to be found and this is where you come in. Please send what you can afford to Mr Mustard's separate charitable purposes bank account:

Sort code: 16-00-38

Account number: 11395624

Account name: Mr Derek R Dishman

and use the reference 'Mustafa'.

Justice is hard to fund for the less well off especially when you have a student loan and your principal business asset has been forcibly removed from you. Please be generous.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bailiffs don't like it up em

Not the car in question

Mr Mustard has often wondered if bailiff's vans get ticketed as he suspects that bailiffs think they are above parking law when it comes to themselves. Well in Lambeth they aren't above the law (Mr Mustard doesn't know if they were enforcing a Lambeth warrant or not). What is so helpful is to find a jobsworth CEO (traffic warden) who needs to meet his non-existent quota of PCN who issues a ticket despite whatever the bailiff might say. The traffic warden is correct, a bailiff going around enforcing a penalty for not complying with traffic/parking regulations should him/herself comply with them all.

Lambeth Parking back office held firm and rejected the representations which were made and the PCN ended up at London Tribunals (formerly PATAS) and below is the result:

So there we have it, the bailiff's van was not, in fact, on the footway. What a pity that the traffic warden did not take a better photograph as the result could have been different.

The part of the story above which is wrong is that the bailiff used his van to block the garage of the debtor, a bailiff cannot deprive you of your right to go about your daily business. There aren't many garages in Virgil St, it may have been one of these which have dropped kerbs. 

If only the PCN had been issued for being adjacent to a dropped kerb, the outcome would again probably have been different.

If a bailiff blocks you in, phone the police and report the obstruction or phone the council to come out and issue a PCN.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard