Barnet Council - just miserable to the sick

 

The above is an extract from the traffic order. Two minutes is quite a short time in which to get out of the car, walk to a nearby property, knock and take your friend's bag and help them to the car. If the passenger being collected is also sick it will take longer and such an exemption should not be interpreted too strictly.

In the case Mr Mustard has just handled Barnet Council were as miserable as sin. The driver, Mrs D, was collecting her friend to take her to hospital for an ENT appointment. Miss P had a frozen shoulder and reduced mobility of the other shoulder, she could walk as well as anyone with limited arm movement, so slightly impaired walking. It was February and so Miss P needing help putting on a coat. The car was in a residents bay, one that only operates for an hour a day. The observation period by the traffic warden was zero minutes. 

Miss P wrote the informal challenge and doubtless she thought in the circumstances the council would use their discretion. Not a chance. She slightly queered the pitch by stating they were only a few minutes which Mr Mustard would not have written, he would have pointed out the lack of observation.

The rejection letter included the following:

It is blatantly untrue that you cannot leave the vehicle. The traffic order does not say that and the High Court decided that in the case of Makda.

Mr Mustard took over at the Notice to Owner stage and made the formal representations.

 

Mr Mustard by concluding that the stop was within the spirit if not the letter of the traffic order.

The representation was rejected.

In the first two paragraphs the council try to say black is white. They they go on to say you need a visitor voucher for a brief stop, that is not why they exist, they are there for your visitors who are stopping for a while, not to pass through for a very short time.

Mr Mustard started an Appeal at London Tribunals. He relied on the boarding exemption. Barnet Council decided to fight it. Some of their summary argument follows:

Mr Mustard had an ace up his sleeve but having briefly addressed the adjudicator on the subject of assisted boarding the adjudicator said he didn't need to hear it as the evidence of the passenger and the hospital reports were adequate. PCN cancelled.

Resident parking is there to make life easier for residents, not to be used as a cash cow, which is how things appear to be.

The end. 

Objection - Briardale Gardens

This experimental order has not worked. Almost every day Mr Mustard receives an email asking him to help with a (or in one case nine) PCNs for turning here during the banned times. Camden Council (these roads are on the border) wanted to deal with these locations by having no entry signs at one end, which would by law have applied 24 hours a day and 99.9% of the public would have spotted those signs and adhered to them, but that would not have made any money for Barnet Council.

If you don't like this experiment you can object to it being made permanent by writing to:

The Design Team
11th floor
Barnet House
1255 High Rd
London
N20 0EJ

or emailing briardale.pattison@barnet.gov.uk

by 8th October 2018.

Mr Mustard will be objecting.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Special Parking Account 2016-17 (Barnet Council)

Here you have it, the SPA, given to Mr Mustard as part of his annual Audit inspection of the Accounts and to be published to councillors and the public quite soon.

Interesting points:

Parking PCN income has gone up by £1.4m. This is what the Secretary of State says about parking enforcement:

The three main reasons why the number of PCN is not zero is, probably, the payment system not accepting cash leaves too many people who want to pay to park unable to easily do so, too many people take a chance and stop for their fags & newspapers on double yellows for a minute & that the council spend very little time or money in educating motorists to change their ways (as they are dependent upon the income).

MTC stands for 'moving traffic contraventions' things like the no left turn at Tilling Road which thousands of folk like to ignore at least once (until they find it was a £130 short cut) and yellow box junctions. Those first came under a cctv computerised ticketing system in May 2016 and the number of cameras is being steadily increased. Expect more millions to be harvested next year. Have there been fewer accidents as a result of cctv which you can't easily see at a junction? Mr Mustard doubts it. Has congestion been reduced? Mr Mustard would like to see some facts on the matter, not conjecture.

Permit pricing changed during the year. The amount that Saracens have to pay has reduced since the scheme started in February 2013 and may account for part of the drop in income. Many people stocked up on £1 visitor vouchers before they were price hiked to £4 and then the High Court decided that was an illegal revenue raising move rather than for traffic management purposes.

Pay & Display has increased by 2% which partly shows that our High Streets really aren't recovering. Mr Mustard would like to see cash payments accepted in meters in the High Street which is most used by the elderly as an experiment to see if that increased foot fall. If Mr Mustard could only use cash as his payment method he would shop in Enfield where they sensibly offer a choice of cash, phone or card.

Bus Lane income dropped because a camera went faulty and it wasn't corrected very quickly. Mr Mustard is also surprised that anyone gets caught in the bus lane as it is long established.

Costs increased because NSL have to paid to deal with moving traffic contraventions which were not in the original contract.

£5million of the surplus (it isn't a profit as this isn't a business we are talking about although it is big business & very profitable) has not yet actually reached the bank as the council accrue it as anticipated income for the year which has not yet been paid. Mr Mustard thinks that is wrong as no future costs are accrued. Looks like he will have to object to the Accounts again just as he did last year, an objection which the external auditor has not yet cleared away.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

PATAS 2013/14 - Huge increase in parking appeals

News from Labour

London Borough of Barnet Labour Group

We’re on your side

For immediate release 

1 November 2014

Huge increase in parking appeals

Figures just released by the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service (PATAS) show that the number of appeals against parking tickets issued by Barnet Council has risen by 45% and is now the second highest out of all London boroughs.

In 2013-14, there were 3,470 formal appeals against penalty charge notices (PCNs) issued by Barnet Council, up from 2,393 in 2012-13.  This is even higher than the 3,235 appeals against PCNs issued by Westminster Council tickets, a borough covering central London and which issues far more tickets.

The figures also show that Barnet lost almost 60% of its cases at PATAS, one of the worst records in London. In answer to a question submitted by Labour’s environment spokesperson, Councillor Alan Schneiderman, the Council has revealed that in hundreds of cases it doesn't defend its case and the resident’s parking fines are simply written off.  And in some cases, the Council contests the appeal but then fails to submit any evidence leading to parking adjudicators making an automatic judgement in favour of the resident.

Cllr Schneiderman said: “Barnet has been treating motorists as a cash cow for too long and these figures prove it.  A huge rise in the number of appeals is bad enough but the fact that the Council loses almost 60% of appeals - and fails to defend hundreds of them is proof that too many tickets are unfairly issued.”

“It’s time for the Tories to admit that the outsourced parking service has failed and we should look at bringing it back under Council control.”

Ends.

---

Notes:

1.    The Parking and Traffic Appeal Service (PATAS) considers appeals against Penalty Charge Notices issued by all London local authorities.

2.    The appeal statistics for 2012-13 and 2013-14 can be found on the PATAS website: PATAS Annual Report

3.    Council Questions to the Leader can be found on Barnet’s website at: Full council meeting 4 November 14

Councillor Schneiderman’s questions are Nos 8, 38 and 54.

PayByPhone locations

Mr Mustard asked for these uncontroversial numbers last year but they were asked for during the period when he was annoying the council too much by asking too many questions so they were deemed to be a vexatious question. Now the council have themselves published them and an email from the Barnet Bugle pointing Mr Mustard at them gave him the idea of converting the pdf (a completely useless way of publishing a table) to a spreadsheet, so here it is so that you can play with it (you can download it yourself and use a filter to sort the entries with)

former Parking Meter and relative Cashless Location numbers by MisterMustard

What you can gain from this is the ability to sort the list into different orders and count up payable locations by town centre. Mr Mustard can only find 2 locations where you have to pay in the Leader's ward of Totteridge and the greatest number (about 70) are of course in North Finchley which is treated as a parking piggy bank; one day it will be empty and then the council will be sorry.

What you can also find in this list is loads of secondary locations where payment should not be the order of the day but 4 hour free bays would be better (residents couldn't hog them and they would provide sufficient time for visitors to do most things and for the rest they could perhaps get a visitor voucher). Mr Mustard also wonders about allowing 1 hour free parking in any Residents Bay as for most of the day they are half empty.

Mr Mustard also wonders why we weren't allocated a discrete block of numbers so that when you transpose two digits, or get one of them wrong, you don't find yourself paying for parking in another borough or another country and the money at least ends up at the correct tariff in the correct bank account?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

rather than have Mr Mustard spend hours working out why you can only download as a pdf and not as the original xls document I uploaded, if you want an .xls version, simply email me at mrmustard@zoho.com and you will be sent one.

Worked it out. Go to scribd

scribd link for paybyphone locations xls download

select download and then choose .xls, simples

The parking cash cow

Cuts down on parasites; not seen one of these in Barnet

A cash cow is the name that is given to a business that just generates cash which then tends to get invested in other businesses.

In the case of Barnet residents we were being milked (bilked even) for all we were worth last year and of course the judicial review is still rumbling along. There is no recent news but it is still a good idea to keep an eye on the CPZ Appeal blog. Now that the previous holder of the parking portfolio, one Brian Coleman, has been replaced by Dean Cohen who appears to be more moderate and prepared to listen, there will doubtless have to be discussions about how the legal proceedings will be settled and they will be going on quietly in the background.

What has happened to parking over the last 2 years?

Here are the figures taken straight out of a report presented to Cabinet Resources Committee on 20 June 2012 (Item 9)

Year	2010/11	2011/12	Increase	Note
Item	£	£	%
Parking tickets	3,970,934	6,492,115	63%	1
Permits	1,179,924	2,068,269	75%	2
Pay & Display	2,109,547	2,980,090	41%	3
Bus Lane CCTV fines	1,099,820	735,537	-33%	4
Income	8,360,225	12,276,011	47%	5
Costs	6,271,885	6,567,971	5%	6
Net profit	2,088,340	5,708,040	173%	7

Let us look at each line in turn.

1. The number of parking tickets issued went up by 63% or about 50,000. Did residents and visitors suddenly get worse at parking? No. This is attributable to a deliberate push to issue more tickets and the removal of meters which made compliance harder and partly by a £10 increase in bus lane and higher level penalties. Is this an example of putting the community first? No.

2. The first resident permit increased in price from £40 to £100 which is an increase of 150% and yet the income increased by only 75%. This is a demonstration of price elasticity.  The point was found at which demand is dampened even for something that you think you have to have. Many people living near the edge of CPZ zones simply gave up or started parking in their front gardens if they could.

3. Pay & display charges vary greatly but this 41% increase will be due to increased charges not to increased visitors. Car parks were noticeably more empty after the price increases and the removal of parking meters.

4. There was a problem with being able to monitor the cameras for sufficient hours (Mr Mustard thinks) and/or with the software not being able to follow up on people who simply failed to pay.

5. An increased income of 47% in one year is a scandal. It truly is highway robbery. Making up budget pressures by taxing the motorist in this way is frowned on by central government and by voters (not all that long until the next local elections, just 23 months).

6. Costs went up by 5%. Salary levels were not increased but lots of overtime was probably on offer so that more tickets could be issued and there were quite a few agency staff who come with added costs.

7. Overall net profit a whopping 173% increase. Disgusting.

Mr Mustard had to pay the CPZ increase (he only has one 4 wheeled vehicle, the "blogger bus") which was one of the main reasons why he started the blog. He managed not to get any valid parking tickets and he didn't pay to park anywhere in Barnet either on-road or in car parks. He does not drive up the bus lane on the A5 and he recommends that you don't either. It simply is not worth the risk. Stay out of it and let's see if we can make the CCTV income of £735,537 go down yet further. Those cameras would be better used on real crime.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard