The elastic band has snapped

Borough commander talking about a fire call "and then we got a parking ticket" (maybe)

Mr Mustard doesn't know when the first cctv vehicle was introduced but supposes it is 5 or 10 years ago. He did tweet (no response yet) the British Parking Association wondering what debate there was before the cars were introduced (his guess is none at all nationally) and being in a charitable mood today he supposes that a car parking manager thought that they really would make the world a safer place and that issuing loads of PCN and raising money was not in his/her mind. Then the elastic band started to be stretched. 

More cars were purchased.

More councils got on the bandwagon.

Word spread at meetings of council parking managers.

Smart saw an opportunity to sell more cars (Mr Mustard used to have one, they are great, his motorbike has an engine twice the size so found the car a little slow but it was nippy enough)

Static cctv also became cheaper and more widespread (not in Barnet for PCN so well done again; Mr Mustard will take a little lie down for a minute, all this praising of Barnet he keeps doing)

Before we knew it the ruddy cctv cars were everywhere and NotoMob was out there fighting on our behalf.

Then the elastic band went twang because Uncle Eric, or the Rt Hon. Eric Pickles MP as others know of him, became the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on 12 May 2010. Uncle Eric is truly a man of the people, he knows what is right and proper - sneaky PCN issued by cctv simply isn't. Uncle Eric is going to rid our streets of cctv for parking purposes (presumably it will still be allowed for moving traffic offences but even there he might say that the road layout should be altered to make banned turns more difficult and to stop PCN being issued for being only 25mm into a yellow box junction) and now follows the text of an email that Mr Mustard has received (twice, once to himself in reply to an email he had forgotten about and once through another interested party, possibly in Wandsworth; they know who they are)

Thank you for your email to the Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP regarding recent announcements concerning car parking. I have been asked to reply and apologise for the delay in doing so.

Good and affordable parking provision can play an important role in rejuvenating high streets and town centres. Making it easier to park helps support local shops, local jobs and tourism by increasing footfall, giving them a chance to compete against internet retailers and out of town superstores.

Trying to find somewhere to park has become an obstacle course in too many of our towns, cities and seaside resorts. Confusing and difficult car parking practices are undermining the economic vitality of the high street, local parades of shops and tourist destinations. Over-zealous parking wardens have inflicted real damage on local economies, and given many towns and councils a bad name.

We’ve taken action to increase the number of parking spaces. We removed restrictions on the number of parking spaces for new developments, and we've just published new draft planning practice guidance which states councils should reflect the important role appropriate parking facilities can play in rejuvenating shops, high streets and town centres; pushes for more town centre parking spaces; and tackles the blight of ugly street clutter and aggressive 'anti-car' traffic calming measures like road humps.

We’re also taking steps to tackle draconian parking charges and enforcement. 

We’ve withdrawn guidance that encouraged councils to set parking fees to discourage the use of cars. And we’ve set out clearly in the new draft planning practice guidance that planning rules should not be used as an excuse for unfairly penalising drivers.

But there is more to do. Councils have a key role in promoting local economic growth and local jobs. Approximately half of all parking is run by local authorities. But the fact that local authority revenue from parking in 2010 was £1.3 billion shows why we need to review and rein in unfair town hall parking rules. The law is clear that parking is not a tax or cash cow for town hall officers. We want to see councils taking a clear and proportionate approach to parking enforcement.

So Cabinet Ministers, Eric Pickles and Patrick McLoughlin, have announced that the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Transport will in due course publish details of further reforms, which include stopping CCTV being used for on-street parking enforcement and providing new open data on parking to allow the public to ‘go compare’. The Government has also proposed to consult on updating parking enforcement guidance to support local shops, and on issues such as tackling wrongly-issued fines, reviewing unnecessary double yellow lines and increasing the grace period for parking offences.

Yours sincerely,

DCLG Contact Us Team

Keep up the good work Uncle Eric. CCTV to be used to keep communities safe. What a good idea.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Cash is King (not bling)

Thank you to the British parking Association (not something Mr Mustard types very often) for bringing to his attention a press release from the Payments Council trailing their lovely £750 report. Mr Mustard wonders if bloggers count as journalists so that he can have a free copy (how about it Bugle Dan?). Actually he doesn't need it as what he needs to know is in the press release.

Oh dear Cllr Brian Coleman, your adventurous (another word for foolhardy) decision in mid 2011 to remove cash parking meters was pants (moist gusset variety)(Mr Mustard apologises to anyone who now has an image of BC in his pants)

and Cllr Dean Cohen you need to get Officers to take another look at their/your stubborn refusal to countenance cash parking meters. We need them, there is demand. Bring them back and businesses across Barnet will sing your praises (and remember you in May 14). It is a mark of a great leader that they recognise duff decisions and correct them. We now have meters which will take cash, they have had the slots covered!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Nutsville explain about parking tickets on private land

As you know Mr Mustard helps people with their Barnet Council parking woes and the appeal process. When friends get a private parking ticket he simply tells them to throw it in the bin. Here in this guest blog by Nutsville, visit their website for this particular post here (on Mr Mustard's visit to the home page all of the youtube clips played at once which is an assault on ones ears and he will mention it to the anonymous author of Nutsville) and then why not look back through their other very interesting and accurate blog posts.

Solicitor (S): Good morning Mr Weasel. What can I do for you today?

Parking Weasel Ltd’s Chairman (PWC): I would like to get my hands on the money Nutsville owes me for overstaying in a private car park where me and my company run the parking enforcement.

S: Ok. Just a couple of questions. Are you or your company the land owner?

PWC: No.

S: Do you have permission from the land owner to enforce on their land?

PWC: Yes

S: Do you have a contract with the land owner that establishes their loss?

PWC: It’s not their loss I’m worried about, it’s mine. That Nutsville bloke took me through the whole of that poxy Popla procedure, which incidentally cost me £27 + VAT that I will never see again, and even though his appeal was disallowed by Popla and he was ordered to pay me, he is now ignoring me and telling me that I should sue him in the courts to recover my money.

I’ve sent him loads of letters with BIG, RED SCARY WRITING on, and he still insists that I need to sue him. What I want to know is, now I’ve got my Popla judgment, why can’t I just register it with the court like the local authorities do with their Patas and TPT judgments, and then send my bailiff mates round to threaten him with menaces and make him cough up?

S: Unfortunately for you, Mr Nutsville is right. I will explain. You see, the ADJUDICATORS at Patas and the TPT draw their powers to make judgments on parking issues fom the Traffic Management Act 2004. Under that Act they can effectively make the equivalent of a judgment that a county court judge might make in civil proceedings. It is these equivalent county court judgments that are then registered with the county court (the TEC in Northampton) and which makes them enforceable, normally by way of sending the bailiffs round.

However, no such powers devolve from any Act of Parliament when it comes to Popla. Therefore the Popla ASSESSORS, (who incidentally the No To Mob have found out are actually 4 law students doing a bit of moonlighting) cannot order you to do anything. If someone like Mr Nutsville loses an appeal to Popla there will be a decision that says something like “In order to avoid any further action by the operator, payment of the £80 parking charge SHOULD be made within 14 days.

PWC: That’s right! That’s exactly the decision we got from Popla in the Nuts case, but he won’t pay up and insists I take him to court. So what exactly did I pay all that money to Popla for then?

S: Well nothing really. You see any Popla decision in the operator’s favour isn’t worth the paper it’s written on because it cannot be enforced in a court of law, either against Mr Nutsville, or anyone else come to that. However, if Popla had allowed Mr Nutsville’s appeal then you, like every other BPA Ltd operator in the Approved Operator Scheme, have no other right of appeal and you are bound by the decision of the law student that gave it.

PWC: So basically, what you’re saying is that Popla is just a smoke screen put up by the BPA Ltd in the hope that we can bully people into paying up, and that it has no real power?

S: That about sums it up.

PWC: So what did I pay £27 + VAT for then?

S: Perhaps you should ask the BPA Ltd about that. But anyway, all is not lost. You can still sue Mr Nutsville in the county court provided you can prove you have incurred a loss.

PWC: Now you’re talking! How do I do that then?

S: Well since you are not the land owner, you have to have a contract in place that proves that the land owner has lost money as a result of breaching the contract Mr Nutsville entered into with the land owner when he agreed to pay a Parking Charge for overstaying in the land owner’s car park.

PWC: And for those of us who speak English?

S: (Sigh). Right. Let’s break this down. Who is the landowner?

PWC: Morritesclidainsbury

S: Do you have a contract with them to enforce parking on their land?

PWC: Yes

S: In short, what are the terms of that contract?

PWC: They let my company dish out as many tickets as we want, then we get to keep most of the profits, and give them the rest.

S: In that case you can’t sue Mr Nutsville.

PWC: Why not?

S: Because you have no loss.

PWC: There you go with that bloody “loss” thing again! I’ve told you, I’VE LOST EIGHTY BLOODY QUID!!!

S: Who did you lose it to?

PWC: I keep telling you. Nutsville!

S: And how did you lose it to him?

PWC: Right! Well he came to the car park and arrived at 11.00am. He admits he read our signs which say that there is free parking for one hour and that if he stays longer he will contract with my company to pay an £80 Parking Charge. Nutsville stayed until 12.30pm and we are now enforcing that contract.

S: So far, so good. Now, if you want to sue Mr Nutsville for recovery in the county court you have to prove in your claim that you have actually lost something. You can’t have lost anything because you are not the landowner. Only the land owner can say they have lost something. You have lost nothing so you can’t sue Mr Nutsville. QED.

PWC: What about if I take him to court anyway, cos I still reckon Nutsville owes me under the contract terms?

S: (Sigh). Ok. Where’s your “genuine pre estimate of loss”.

PWC: There you go with all that legal mumbo jumbo again. What are you on about now?

S: Have you read the BPA Ltd’s code of practice?

PWC: Course I have! I had to sign up to it before I could get access to the DVLA database, which is where I get all those lovely vehicle keeper’s details which allow me to send my scary debt collection agency and solicitor’s letters with BIG, RED SCARY WRITING on.

S: Then because you have read it, you will know that at rule 19.5 of the code of practice it says “If the parking charge that the driver is being asked to pay is for a breach of contract or act of trespass, this charge must be based on the genuine pre-estimate of loss that you suffer.” Obviously the BPA Ltd are aware of this issue or they wouldn’t have put it in their code of practice and then make you sign up to it. So I repeat, where’s your “genuine pre estimate of loss”?

PWC: I dunno. Maybe we ain’t got one.

S: Oh dear! It would seem that YOU are the one in trouble then. I have just proved to you that you cannot prove that you have suffered a loss, and yet the BPA Ltd have made you sign up to the BPA Ltd code that says you have genuinely estimated a figure of £80 as your provable loss. If the DVLA find out about this you will be struck off immediately.

PWC: What! Do the BPA Ltd know about this!?!?

S: Well obviously they do, otherwise they wouldn’t have covered their backs by putting it in their code of conduct. Wait a minute though! There is something the BPA Ltd and you could do to remedy this.

PWC: Please, please tell me what it is. I can’t lose my livelihood.

S: Well I can’t say that it will save your livelihood, but it might help save other BPA Ltd members from making the same mistakes as you.

PWC: Well I do have a load of mates in the industry, so if there is anything I can do to help them, I’m sure it would be much appreciated.

S: In that case, this is what you do. You fess up to the BPA Ltd that you have made a mistake, and tell them that you are trying to rectify it. I hear the No To Mob have a few good ideas about this and that they are already advising some other BPA Ltd members about setting up an alternative to the BPA Ltd. You will have to take your medicine, and hope that because you have owned up, the DVLA will allow you to access the database again once you have cleaned up your act.

PWC: Ok. What then?

S: Then you lobby the BPA Ltd and ask them to invoke their powers to audit each of its members in order to establish whether they have a proper and genuine pre estimate of loss. They could do this by invoking rule 19.8 of their code of practice which states: “If you are asked, you must be able to justify the level of parking charges to the AOS Board, a member of our compliance team or to their specified agent.”

PWC: But what if the auditors find out that none of the BPA Ltd’s members can prove a loss? What happens then?

S: Well then the BPA Ltd would have to report this to the DVLA, and they would have no choice but to suspend any offenders from using their database.

PWC: But why didn’t the BPA Ltd warn me about this? What am I paying them for?

S: Those are questions for the BPA Ltd Mr Weasel, not for me.

PWC: Well how about I let Nutsville off, but continue to send out tickets to others in the full knowledge that some of them won’t be as smart as Nutsville and will pay up under threat of issuing court proceedings, even though I know that I can’t ever bring a successful prosecution in a court of law?

S: My professional opinion is that if someone were to find out, then such behaviour could very possibly be classified as committing a fraud and that you and others could end up going to prison, or at the very least paying a hefty fine.

PWC: Yeh, but you can’t tell them what advice you’ve given to me because of solicitor client privilege, so I can have plausible deniability for a while at least.

S: That’s true, but you have forgotten one thing. What if the BPA Ltd do a proper audit of your books and discover that you don’t have a genuine pre estimate of loss?

PWC: Are you ‘avin a laugh pal!?!? Why would they ever do that when they know that what they might find could result in the vast majority of its members being suspended, possibly permanently, both from the BPA Ltd and from using the DVLA database. Nah mate. Just send me your bill and keep your mouth shut. We just have to hope that Nutsville doesn’t get wind of this, or we’re all up a shit creek without a paddle.

————————————————————————————————-

If you have a story you think we would be interested in please email:

news@nutsville.com

Three cheers for Nutsville and their fab work.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Is the One Barnet Parking Contract robust?

Giving stuff away for nothing

Dear Cllr Cornelius

The One Barnet Parking Contract with NSL.

As you know I promised to write to you on the subject of Contract negotiations, savings and foreseeable consequences.

I discovered last year that May Gurney receive 50% of the income from the sale of recyclables above £702,894 which strikes me as ridiculously over-generous. Now I find a similar deal with Parking Enforcement.

I have now received a well redacted copy of the Parking Enforcement contract which removes the figures that I would need in order to properly armchair audit the invoices. I do know the following from the contract, from other FOI requests or from the published Accounts of NSL Ltd.

There was a transition period from 1 January to 30 April 2012

During the transition period, the Service Provider (NSL) shall liaise with the Council to ensure an effective and timely handover of the Services...

The contract started on 1 May 2012 ( it was only signed on 30 April which rather implies a bit of a last minute rush)

The cost schedule totals £2,553,067 p.a. and includes the following categories of cost:

·                     Staff;  from on-street wardens up to the Contract manager.

·                     Premises.

·                     Equipment; e.g. handheld devices, radios, office equipment etc

·                     Uniforms.

·                     Vehicles.

·                     IT system.

The NSL Ltd Accounts to December 11 disclose staff costs of £90,353,000 (excluding pension cost) out of turnover of £140,668,000 (to the nearest £1,000) which is 64.23%

Thus we can estimate that on the Barnet contract staff cost will be in the area of £1,640,000

If all Key Performance Indicators are met NSL can get additional payment in a year of £290,853

The items which qualify for a 50% share of savings are all costs in the cost schedule i.e. any & everything.

In the local Times newspaper on 9 August you said "The key is that the contract needs to be written robustly".

In your column in the Press at about the same time you said "am now convinced that One Barnet is the only way to go" and "It is interesting that those who complain about One Barnet and set up websites have no suggestions as to what they would cut..."

One of the first actions that NSL did after taking over the contract was to get rid of the entire back office team. Their work was then moved out of Barnet, to Worthing I believe.

This will have boosted the economy of Worthing at the expense of Barnet's. This was an entirely foreseeable event. The supplier will move the work to wherever they can carry it out most cheaply. The only reason that the traffic wardens didn't get moved somewhere else is because they are street based.

I have seen adverts for traffic wardens (Civil Enforcement Officers in modern parlance)  to work in Barnet at the princely sum of £8.20 per hour (see NSL jobs) which for a 36 hour week is an annual rate of £15,350. When traffic wardens were employed by Barnet Council they were paid from £20,205 to £21,951 p.a. (a not excessive rate of pay for being out in all weathers at risk of being the subject of aggressive behaviour) and the mid-point is £21,078

NSL are therefore paying 72.8% of what, at the mid-point, the council paid to traffic wardens. Office staff were generally paid more and it is conceivable that even higher percentage savings can be made on their salaries. The post of traffic warden is unsurprisingly one in which there is a high turnover of staff and so at some point all of the original wardens will doubtless be gone. Thus, at least a 27.2% saving will be made on staff cost and of that NSL will be paid half giving them an annual bonus profit on the assumed annual staff cost of £1,640,000 * 13.6% = £223,040 which taken with the profit to be made from hitting every KPI gives them a theoretical annual profit of £500,000 on a turnover of about £2.5m.

Now what was it you were saying about robustly written contracts? The wording may be robust but the content is ridiculously rotten.

Another problem with the Contract is that it is based upon the model of the British Parking Association (honorary treasurer John McArdle - you do know don't you that our ex Parking Manager, formerly an employee of NCP which spun NSL out of its business is now a Strategic Development Consultant at NSL - another one of those conflict of interest questions that Mrs Angry is always quite correctly banging on about) on whose Executive Council sit two NSL executives. Using the contract of the supplier is the wrong way to go about contract negotiations because it will have been written with the interests of BPA members as a foundation and not those of potential clients.

Might I just hazard a guess that your own successful business, Cornelius & Davies Ltd, established in 1943, does not have any generous contracts with suppliers in which they get a 50% share of a saving which you yourself could quite easily make? If you don't sign that sort of deal with your own money what makes it acceptable with mine and that of other Barnet residents?

So if you think that a traffic warden is only worth £8.20 per hour then that is what you should have decided to change the wages to in Barnet Council. Result: 100% of the savings to Barnet Council. Why didn't you do that instead of offering over a £1m on a plate to NSL over the next 5 years? That is my suggestion for making savings, do it yourself.

Mind you, the KPI are not being hit probably due to the wholesale removal of the back office team at the start of the contract. Take KPI9, Processing Services, which includes the requirement to process correspondence within the required timescales. This must include providing information packs to PATAS, the Parking & Traffic Appeals Service. I attach a pdf file showing that only yesterday 6 appeals by motorists were allowed, not because they were in the right but because the Adjudicator ordered it in all 6 cases. Why was this? Almost certainly because the necessary documentation had not been provided so that a reasoned decision could be made. A fee has to be paid to PATAS of £46 for every appeal. We aren't getting any value for that if paperwork to support the council's case is not being put forward.

You might say that these are teething troubles because it is a new contract. Well it is now the end of August and the contract has been in place for nearly 4 months and before that there was a 4 month transition period provided to prevent this sort of muddle. I am not convinced it will all be NSL's fault but whoever is to blame, as partnerships go, this one is in rocky seas.

Now, think about all the elements of the DRS contract, which have never before been packaged up by any council in the way that Barnet are rather ambitiously and unwisely trying to do. If the sausage machine type process which is issuing parking tickets and collecting the money can go so hideously wrong (I haven't seen many signs and lines being fixed either by the way and did I hear the ticket numbers are not measuring up to the levels the In-House team were delivering?) what are reasonable expectations of performance on DRS?

Parking is a shambles, DRS or NSCSO going wrong would be a disaster.

So, in summary:

50% of savings to the supplier is a gift, not a commercial arrangement.

Whoever negotiated this deal is not fit to negotiate any others.

Savings are made not by having bright ideas but simply by cutting wages.

Jobs are exported out of the borough, staff are just a commodity.

Contract performance is poor.

The council is wasteful with the money of residents.

One Barnet is just a simple wage slashing policy in a fancy wrapper.

Best regards

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Footnote: John McArdle was helpful to Mr Mustard who would occasionally send him details of parking tickets that were obviously issued completely in error (none for Mr Mustard who hasn't had one in Barnet for years) and if John agreed he would immediately squash them without further formality.