Newham Council are Cheats - #49

 

In order to issue a PCN a Civil Enforcement Officer (CEO or traffic warden in old money) must have a belief that a contravention has occurred. If bay lines are worn below the point of substantial compliance then it is not possible to have that belief. Traffic wardens are meant to look at the lines and report them if they are unclear, they often don't, they just issue a PCN.

It is a fundamental principle of English law that you are innocent until proven guilty. Issuing a PCN reverses that situation as if you are innocent, as Mr James was, but you don't defend yourself by fighting the PCN, you become guilty by default. Administrative convenience has been allowed to trample over your human rights. 

Many visitors to Newham will know Broadway as it is bang in the middle of Stratford. Here is the location in question, as at September 25 a few months after the date of the alleged contravention.

Looking back on google street view there doesn't seem to be time when the lines were pristine.

There is a second problem for the council in that double yellow lines are usually held by adjudicators to apply from the centre of the carriageway across the pavement up to the building line so the council have created an inbuilt ambiguity by the double yellow lines which should not be alongside a pavement bay. 

The traffic warden cheated by issuing the PCN in the first place and all other staff followed him/her like unthinking sheep, we issued a PCN so it must be correct.

The end. 

Belief - the supposed foundation for a PCN.

 

The motorist in this case wrote his own representation with help from experts on FTLA 

In order to issue a PCN an enforcement authority, such as Redbridge Council, must have a belief that a contravention has occurred. The way it works these days is that a computer watches the traffic and when it thinks it has spotted a contravention it extracts a short clip and saves it for a human being to check and then authorise a PCN. Much of the time Mr Mustard thinks that either the operative doesn't pay attention or blindly presses yes or assumes the computer is correct (a dangerous assumption as the Post Office Horizon Inquiry has shown us).

Mr Mustard thinks there is an inbuilt belief amongst back office PCN processing staff that because a PCN has been issued it must be correct and defended at all cost.

Here is the position at the moment which the car entered the box:

There is room to exit.

Here is the position on stopping:

Needless to say Redbridge Council rejected a perfectly good representation as 90% of the time, especially when the discount is offered again, the motorist caves in and pays because of a combination of ignorance, worry about having to pay the full penalty and an assumption that councils tell the truth (they are serial liars).

This is the relevant part of the Notice of Rejection.

Mr Mustard's comments. Careful consideration would have led to a cancellation. This is a standard line in the template. Careless consideration would be more accurate.

The exit was clear on entering so this was another standard paragraph.

Mitigation cannot have been considered as none was pleaded. 'Comments' waters down the value of the words of the motorist who made a representation not mere remarks.

The writer may well be satisfied but who knows how easily they are satisfied in their own cause?

They were also confident that the PCN was valid.

Mr Mustard took over at this point and he was confident he could get the PCN cancelled. Who was over-confident? (yes, you know the answer).

This is what he wrote in the Grounds of Appeal (you have the images above).

Grounds of Appeal - no contravention

This is the position as the car enters the box. There is clearly room for the car to exit (as can be judged by the white car in the other lane). Thus the first part of the contravention, on entering, is not made out.

The position on stopping is as follows:

The blue car had moved further away so there was even more room to exit. The driver simply chose not to, it was not due to a stationary vehicle in front.

All of a sudden Redbridge Council were less confident of their case. They left it late but 5 days before the hearing they told the tribunal that they would not contest the Appeal and they had cancelled the PCN. 

Why would they do that if they were correct in issuing the PCN and rejecting the formal representations? It is because it is a big and generally profitable game of Bluff. It is a game which Mr Mustard is happy to play all day long. Mr Mustard decides at the outset if there is a good case or not and 90% of the time he is correct.

Don't be bluffed into paying out. Work out your defence and stand your ground. Don't be diverted by talk of a discount. Why would you want to pay a 50% penalty for being innocent?

Remember you can get a free second opinion about your chances from numerous experts here, which sometimes includes Mr Mustard.

The end.

Bromley -where they see clearly in retrospect

In order to send a PCN for a bus lane contravention it is a legal precondition that a council believes that a contravention has occurred. This belief has to be stated on the face of the PCN, like this

Mr Mustard was pretty sure there wasn't a contravention in this cctv clip.

Due to a previous problem, resolved by management in the motorists's favour, as no contravention had occurred, the traffic warden not having realised that a sign was back to front, a manager at the jointly managed Bromley & Bexley parking department had invited contact in the future if there was occasion to be unhappy. Mr Mustard was unhappy, as a PCN had been issued that was not merited. He sent a few questions in, now numbered, and the answers are in blue.

Mr Mustard's comments:

1. Good.

2. Good again except that it should have been the conclusion that a contravention did not occur.

3. Two independent viewings would be an improvement.

4. The cctv clip should not have been progressed to a PCN, that ought to be a contractual default.

5. It isn't essential that the person who decides if a contravention has occurred holds a driving licence but it would probably give them more insight and they could do their job better.

Mr Mustard wondered what would happen to the challenge, he didn't have long to wait.

Once Mr Mustard was rubbing the council's nose into the cctv and the obvious danger if the car had not moved left, Bromley Council could 'clearly' see why the car entered the bus lane and duly cancelled the PCN thus saving everyone a lot of wasted time fighting as far as the independent tribunal, which would likely have come to the same conclusion as Mr Mustard.

Mr Mustard thinks that more care will be taken for a while in Bromley and Bexley.

The end.

The council believes....

Here is a still photo taken from the cctv cameras which point at Rodborough Road in Golders Green into which you are not allowed to turn right from Finchley Road (you also can't turn right now out of Rodborough Road into Finchley Road, in fact, more emphatically, you must turn left so don't do the dog leg straight on to go to Sainsburys, that will be £130 on your grocery bill).

Here is what it looks like from a vehicle on the approach.

For a 'no right turn' the statutory placement of the sign is on the left opposite the junction (as near as practicable to that point) which Mr Mustard thinks should be opposite the 'no entry' bollard on that convenient lamp post. Barnet Council have put it a little further up the road which means the motorist is less likely to see it. Also, as it is past the junction it is intended for it might be advance warning of the next road being a no right turn, how would a driver know?

You can just make out, in the lower image, a reinforcing sign just after the junction, on the right hand side. This has been twisted, as it often has, and has featured in tribunal decisions as being turned away and as being after the junction so not adequate as indicating the location of the banned turn.

Now if you go back to the top picture what do you see, a white van with a cage which appears to be full of green sacks. Who uses green sacks Mr Mustard hears you ask? why Barnet Council of course. So what we have here is a Barnet street scene van (most probably) illegally parked on pedestrian crossing zig zags, a contravention so bad it is one of the few that the Met Police can still take action for, and that means that the 'no right turn' sign on the left will be much harder to see and only for a very short time. The test of signage is whether or not it is adequate. Mr Mustard doesn't think this is.

If you then cast your eyes to the right to find the non-statutory backup sign, between the bin and the black van, you can see that the sign can't be seen, no red and white circles in shot.

The way that these banned turns are monitored is by computer controlled cameras. They have been programmed to watch the traffic 24 hours a day and select from the footage some small sections which show when the computer thinks a contravention has been committed. An employee, probably of NSL, probably sat in an office in Dingwall, is then meant to review the footage and decide if the computer has correctly chosen an event which equals a contravention. Mr Mustard suspects that the process of watching one short clip after another for hours on end completely erodes whatever concentration or thinking ability the probably lowly paid employee has and they end up blindly ticking yes to every piece of footage.

In this case no thought was given to the fact that the right hand side sign was twisted (it isn't a legal requirement so that can be put to one side although if it is there it should be the correct way round) but even less thought, always assuming the illegally parked van was even noticed, was given to the visibility and adequacy of the sign on the left hand side of the road.

The law states that the PCN must state what contravention 'The grounds on which the council....believe that the penalty charge is payable with respect to the vehicle'. That belief cannot in all conscience be in the mind of the council on this particular occasion.

Should you receive a PCN at this location during the hours of darkness then you have a rock solid defence. The maximum speed on this road is 30mph which means that this particular sign must be illuminated during the hours of darkness. oddly, the sign on the right which is a sign that doesn't need to be there, is illuminated. The sign on the left which does need to be there, but a bit further forward, isn't illuminated. 

Mr Mustard thinks the council don't think hard enough about adequate and fair sign placements but just bang them up on the easiest poles which come to hand.

The PCN itself will be fought through the usual channels.

Mr Mustard