Mr Mustard first encountered Phillip Morgan over a decade ago when Mr Mustard was new to 'parking tickets' (Penalty charge notices) having been given one for the wrong reason. Mr Mustard's thoughts, as a former civil servant and local government temp himself, was that councils wouldn't be doing much wrong. That naivety is long gone. Councils make lots of errors and have not stopped doing so for a decade. Sometimes they correct one error only to introduce a different one.
Parking, bus lane and moving traffic PCNs are all based on different laws and the minutia of the additional Regulations, Orders and Acts set traps for the unwary. For years there were only a couple of individuals who helped the public to fight back and the famous/infamous Barrie Segal has now retired from the fray.
There are now a dozen or more self taught experts who have little time for socialising being as they are, under the burden of hundreds of PCNs at any one time. Lots of them give their time for free on this website.
Until this year there was the choice at London Tribunals, the home of the independent adjudicators of having a postal hearing based on the papers alone (a bad a choice as the single justice procedure in the Magistrates Courts) or, if you really wanted to win, an in person hearing in Furnival St in the Chancery Lane area (the legal district of London) where you basically sat across the desk from the adjudicator and argued your case (techncially you assist the adjudicator to make his/her decision).
After the hearings were concluded & if another expert happened to be there on the same day and you both had finished you might repair to a local hostelry and toast your successess and drown your failures. Thus it was that Mr Mustard would sit and chat with Phillip and talk about PCNs and anything else in the world. Nowadays with all hearings by video there is less opportunity.
Sometimes experts don't agree and you try to dissuade them from their chosen course but all the experts are headstrong and likely to stick to their guns.
Phillip Morgan though was spot on when he noticed that Southwark Council's bus lane PCNs were issued under the wrong legislation.
Bus Lane enforcement in London came about with The London Local Authorities Act 1996 (as amended since then). The 2003 Act relied upon by Southwark is the primary legislation for alleged moving traffic contraventions (turning left where you shouldn't, stopping in yellow box junctions etc) and the 1991 Act whilst relating to traffic matters and driving penalties wasn't do do with bus lanes and was 5 years too early.
Phillip obtained the penalty income data using the Freedom of Information legislation:
The council was under the threat of a Judicial Review their hand and rather than spend tens of thousands on defending a legal action they wisely decided to refund everyone, a decision doubless helped by their contractor picking up the bill.
Mr Mustard thinks the contractor is APCOA, who are about to take over in Barnet as it happens. Mr Mustard will be looking out for their errors.
There is lots of profit in parking. The last published results for Apcoa Parking (UK) Ltd* showed turnover of £124,947,119 a gross profit of £33,982,300 and a profit before tax of £7,438,686 (*not sure if this is the correct APCOA identity but the underlying message is they aren't small and can afford to pay out half a million for a cockup). Mr Mustard wonders if councils generally are driving a hard enough bargain?
Well done Phillip.
The end.
