TfL bully boys ?

 

This PCN is the first that Mr Mustard has seen with this new layout. If TfL find it improves the rate of payment you can be sure that other enforcement authorities in London will follow suit. To Mr Mustard's mind the red section is all wrong.

Certain information on a PCN is statutory and anything else can be added by TfL. The enforcement process items it must contain are the full price of the penalty and the 50% discounted price. It must also tell you that if you do not pay or make representations within 28 days of service (=receipt) that TfL may increase the balance by 50% and send you a charge certificate to that effect.

Given the parlous state of the payment system the PCN may not arrive very quickly and it could easily be 4,5 or 6 days before you receive it especially as first class post is no longer mandatory for this type of PCN (which is a backward step given the state of the Royal Mail). Therefore, TfL should not put a fixed date (2 October) within the PCN which could make you think you are out of time when you are still within it. Mr Mustard posted a Power of Attorney to his Solicitor recently that took 8 days to reach Godalming, by first class post. He could have cycled there and back in 2. Keep the envelope in which your PCN was sent if you want to ask Mr Mustard about the PCN.

What bothers Mr Mustard even more are the next two red sections for Debt Registration and Enforcement Agent (bailiff). No-one sensible ignores a PCN but the assumption should be that the recipient will choose to deal with it. This just looks like bullying to Mr Mustard. He needs to obtain the other 3 pages of the PCN and the 2 pages of notes before he can decide how unfair the whole thing is but his first reaction is that this is bang out of order.

If you disagree with the PCN make sure you fight it and do it now, don't be a last minute merchant.

More soon.

Just been sent the rest, look at this page. 

From the very start you are being threatened, this is completely unacceptable, you are allowed 28 days in which to act and take advice. Mr Mustard will be fighting this PCN (it has already been at the county court stage once and TfL have cheated so this should end up going away and nowhere near a bailiff) which the recipient of is happy about and will take his chances (Mr Mustard wins 90% of the time) which might cost him an extra £90 but he knows and accepts the low risk.

Yet more soon. 

Added 9 September: Enforcement authorities, such as TfL, are given powers that are discretionary. They have the power to progress your PCN through various stages but the legislation does not say they have to use those powers, each PCn should be considered on an individual basis. To so otherwise and automate progression is an abuse of power and fetters their discretion but all systems are automated to the maximum.

Many enforcement authorities take stock just before the Order for Recovery stage as they have to pay an £11 fee to the Court to proceed. If the motorist then signs a statutory declaration that, for example, the original postal PCN was not received, as in this case, TfL suffer a loss of £11 as the charge reverts to the 100% PCN value. 

If the proposed bailiff screens the PCNs proposed for registration at the TEC and decides they are unlikely to succeed then the authority may not bother to invest the £11 and the PCN will stay stuck where it is. Mr Mustard watches PCNs for a long time, as they sometimes come back to life, including one for Kensington & Chelsea on which the stage hasn't changed since he checked it on 31 December 2024, probably due to their cyber attack.

Barking & Dagenham Council - setting the dogs on the innocent

 

Demonstration by a military guard dog

Mr G, not his real name, was sent a PCN (for £130 on 30 November for an alleged moving traffic contravention) which was not received.

He knew this as he was sent a £195 charge certificate on 4 January 2025.

Mr Mustard told him that the next document would be an Order for Recovery which would offer him 21 days in which to file a Statutory Declaration that the PCN was not received and then be sent a fresh one.

This is a process which is enshrined in law. Rather than follow the law Barking & Dagenham Council (henceforth 'BaD council') sent the below letter which is enough to shake your fillings loose (and Mr G is prone to panic pay at the best of times):

By not following procedure BaD council make Mr Mustard look like he doesn't know the rules. He was straight onto this having had a chat with Mr G to calm his nerves. He emailed the complaints department at BaD council and copied in the parking department.

Mr Mustard looks forward to receiving a reply and apology but somehow doubts there will be much in the way of contrition.

There are three possibilities when it comes to an Order for Recovery which enable you to rewind the process to an earlier stage or be granted a tribunal hearing. There are tick boxes on the Statutory Declaration.

It isn't often the case that option 3 would apply as the tribunal are very efficient and most Appeals are started on line these days.

Option 1 is what applies to Mr G.

Option 2 happens frequently. You make representations to the council and their response either doesn't happen or get's lost in the post.

These are your democratic rights in this situation. A council cannot take these legal rights away from you.

If you get one of these illegal letters from BaD council please do not pay if you have a justificable ground to swear a Statutory Declaration. Use Mr Mustard's complaint letter as a base for your own complaint. Send it to complaints@lbbd.gov.uk and copy it to parking@lbbd.gov.uk

The end, for now.

(Mr Mustard will make enquiries of the council as to how many times they have sent this letter out in a sample month).

 

 

Do bailiffs bully the disabled?

Without access being offered, entry would not be legal

Mr Mustard's client has got herself in a bit of a pickle. A proud person, she didn't want to bother him with her Ealing PCNs as she thought she could sort them out herself. Thanks though to being ill such that she has to be checked up on every 2 months and suffering from depression due to her illness, lack of money and general quality of life, she has not beaten the PCNs and they have ended up with bailiffs.

Last June she asked Mr Mustard for help with the bailiff at a time when he was so overrun that he couldn't deal with bailiff matters (he also prefers to stop tickets reaching that stage) & passed her the details of a bailiff advice helpline. He told her not to worry as the bailiff could not remove or clamp her car. Guess what happened next? Yes, in September 16 a bailiff acting for Ealing Council clamped the car. Mr Mustard was on his way to the parking tribunal when it happened. He only had time to text the bailiff to tell him he could not clamp the car as the blue badge is permanently on display. Mr Mustard found out later that within 30 minutes the clamp was removed. That bailiff at least realised the game was up having chanced his arm with the wrong person. Mr Mustard's client may be ill but she will not be bullied.

Just before Christmas with perfect timing a second PCN reached the bailiff stage. Now Mr Mustard, as a debt collector in real life, accepts that bailiffs have a job to do and they have draconian powers of removal of goods. There are though also some limited checks on their power. In a civilised society parliament has decided that disabled people will not have their mode of transport removed. In addition, your home is your castle and forced entry cannot take place without specific court consent (for a traffic PCN, it can be for a magistrates court debt) which Mr Mustard suspects would not be granted against a disabled person claiming PIP as they won't have any assets worth the cost of seizure & sale.

The first Notice was delivered on 23 December 16. It was for 2 PCNs.

The next one came on 6 January (perhaps even bailiffs have some time off)

Just another 6 days and here is the third letter, just for one of the PCNs, not for both for some reason.

Another visit on 20 January, for both PCN this time. By now, the bailiff, or at least a bailiff, must have seen the car as it is parked off street outside the property in a disabled bay and with the blue badge clearly visible. It was also the case that the blue badge formed part of the representations which were made & the badge was issued by Ealing Council so they know they are sending a file to bailiffs for goods, nearly always the car, to be seized when the car is exempt by law from seizure. This is information which in Mr Mustard's view should be communicated to the bailiff by their client, Ealing Council (or any other one) at the start so that the disabled do not have their car clamped in error. The previous clamping by a bailiff in the employ of Collect Services may be a factor in them not having clamped or removed despite their many letters and in fact means that in their records they knew from the start of this correspondence that they could not remove the car.

The question is why are they hand delivering letters which state that they will remove 'your Vehicle' when they know it is exempt?

Only 4 days to wait and a third PCN has reached the bailiff stage.

Ooh, a different letter was issued on 3 February. The bailiff didn't need ANPR as the vehicle is usually parked outside the address on the warrant. Another threat to remove which the law will not allow. The balance cannot have increased if a bailiff (enforcement agent) has called recently as the debt already included 3 separate visit fees, one for each PCN, of £235 a pop.

Nearly a month went by, one of the warrants had expired and was not renewed so the debt dropped.

 Another 10 days, another letter.

On 13 March the ANPR letter was again sent containing another threat of illegal action.

Another 11 days and another visit and another illegal threat to remove the car

Another 10 days again, another letter threatening to break the law.

A month until the next letter, sorry if you are already bored, try imagining receiving all these letters especially if sick and living on benefits.

On 8 May Collect had got themselves a new template and sent a different letter about an appointment that never was and again illegally threatening to remove the car.

Just 3 days later back to one of the other letters

Mr Mustard can't quite read the date on the next letter but thinks it may be 10 June. It might be the final roll of the dice by Collect or else they saw that the Newlyn bailiff had only gone and clamped the same car on behalf of Brent Council, a matter about which a solicitor is still waiting a response from Brent Council, the clamp having only been removed after it was in place for 6 days.

Mr Mustard wonders if Ealing Council keep a close enough eye on what their bailiffs get up to, whether sending the debts of Motability car drivers and blue badge holders to bailiffs is even reasonable given that the power of the bailiff is to seize goods and they can't seize the car (and secondhand household effects are pretty worthless) and whether sending 15 letters threatening the removal of an exempt item is harassment (a question which Mr Mustard will ask his lawyer tomorrow but feel free to comment if you are one).

It really isn't very attractive to threaten to break the law in order to enforce it.

How has it made the lady herself feel? Like this:

There are right and wrong ways of doing your job. If the above message is the result of how it is currently done, it is undoubtedly the wrong way.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Kicking you when you are down

Bailiffs are like the school bully, however, they can be stood up to.

Mr Mustard has so far seen the effects of four bailiffs in action. Their behaviour has not been pretty. They have a difficult job to do and don't do it very well at all. The bailiff who was in the wrong in clamping a Motability car was rude when unclamping when he should have been polite and apologetic.

Here is an example of a badly written bailiff's letter, bullying and a conflict of interest all in one A4 sheet.

click to enlarge

A badly written letter

Now in this case there were three warrants so the "s" of warrant(s) shouldn't be in parentheses. On the second line there is reference to "warrants" in the plural which would be wrong if there was only one warrant and this letter is evidently used in all circumstances. 

There is reference to client(s). Generally there will only be one client being collected for but it should be clear.

It isn't clear why the date of seizure of the vehicle is put in a larger font size or why a continental date format is used when a short form date format is used at the top of the letter.

The amount outstanding "as of today" cannot include an extra £30 a day. What NSL mean is please add £30 on for each extra day after the date of the letter up to the date of payment.

To prevent further enforcement action you could, in this case, file a form N244 for a personal hearing in front of a District Judge in your local County Court. The exhortation that "you must make a full payment" is to try and bully you into paying without considering your other options.

"Please call in to the call centre" must mean by telephone but Mr Mustard expects that when one of his friends says they will "call in" that he can expect a knock on the door not a phone call. A pity that the number of the call centre is not given. We are expected to guess that the telephone number at the top of the page is the one for the call centre? It is impossible to telephone the call centre at least 24 hours before payment unless you delay paying for 24 hours. The normal process would be that you decide, after a lot of thought, to pay and then you do so almost instantly. Thus you couldn't go back 24 hours to warn NSL / TASK that you are going to pay. In addition, the moment that you have paid you are entitled to the return of your vehicle. Councils that clamp and remove cars to a pound are expected to provide a round the clock service for their release.

Bullying

The reason this letter is a bullying one is that an out-of-time witness statement was filed with the Traffic Enforcement Centre ("TEC" - attached to Northampton County Court) and their decision on 7 November 13 was that the PCN would not be put back to the start of the process so that representations could be made. The Order of the TEC (essentially a Court) gave the applicant the option to file a form N244 for a local Court hearing within 14 days of service of the Order. Therefore nothing should have been done before 22 November 13. This bullying letter is 10 days premature, looks like an abuse of process and is the responsibility of Barnet Council who have a duty of care with regards to the behaviour of their bailiffs as it is the Council who are the creditor. The letter is designed to harass the recipient into paying up. 

If Mr Mustard sees another letter like this one, sent before time, he will start a complaint with the view to it reaching the Local Government Ombudsman.

Conflict of Interest

Barnet Council outsource its parking enforcement to NSL. It isn't clear from this letter who gave the instruction to proceed with enforcement but Mr Mustard has all of his money on NSL. So this means that NSL decided if their own bailiff Task Enforcement should proceed down a route which would lead to the car being auctioned off (it was worth something approaching £3,000 although seized cars somehow don't sell for their true value) and at that point Task (part of NSL) would bank their considerable fees. It simply cannot be right that the company that makes the decision profits from it. We are always being told that NSL don't make more money if they issue more PCN, well they do if the PCN end up for enforcement with the bailiff that they own. The Contract with NSL needs to be changed so that either Barnet Council make decisions affecting the bailiff (if they don't already and Mr Mustard hasn't seen that in the NSL contract) or NSL should be barred from giving warrants to Task.

Conclusion

The more closely Mr Mustard looks at parking enforcement the murkier it seems. Over the festive break he will decide what his plan is for 2014. It will probably include, amongst other things, the introduction of a voluntary charitable contribution for his personal assistance with a PCN appeal (but only for the 97% of cases that he wins) and talks for motorists, such as:

• How to park and not get a parking ticket
• The appeal process in outline and some standard arguments
• Dissecting the evidence pack prior to a PATAS hearing

If you have a group which would like Mr Mustard to educate them (for 20 to 30 minutes) do please get in touch at mrmustard@zoho.com

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard