Newham Council - misleading 'Help' offered

 

So here we have Mr M's car in a bay without a sign on 1 August 25. That makes it a free parking bay. As it happens Mr M lives in a different road within Newham which is subject to frequent vandalism of its sign and this road, Holbrook Rd, is one where Mr Mustard has fought a dozen PCN none of which have had to be paid.

Mr M thought he would point out by himself the absence of a sign and not trouble Mr Mustard and so he did this on 4 August 25.

On 3 September Newham Council rejected the informal challenge of which the gist is below:

It is specious.

They accept ('noted') that 'one of the nearest time plates was missing'. They didn't notice that this bay in their traffic order is meant to be 25m long (a resident has illegally repainted the bay in order to get access to their yard) nor that the bay only ever had one sign so once that sign is missing there is no sign.

The car was within a cpz but the zone entry signs only set the times for single yellow lines which don't have their own timeplate and they do not set the time for bays, each of which must have its own sign and may have its own type and times.

There is a legal obligation that every bay must have a sign.

Councils have an obligation to erect and maintain signage so that motorists can find out what the rules are.

Looking at the next sign, or the one on the other side of the road is very bad advice. Image 3 consecutive bays from which the signs have been stolen. Bay #1 is a motorcycle bay, bay #2 is a residents only bay, bay #3 is a bay for blue badge holders. Bay 4 is for people paying to park, the sign is of no use in informing motorists in the other 3 bays what the rules are.

At this point Mr Mustard was instructed.

On 30 September 25 a Notice to Owner was sent but didn't arrive.

On 5 November 25 a Charge Certificate was issued and the balance claimed increased from £160 to £240.

This certificate is misleading nonsense. It does not need to contain reasons 1-3 and Newham Council knew that options 2 & 3 did not apply so why include them? All a charge certificate needs to say is that the penalty has been increased by 50%

The council tell you in bold that you are stuffed.

They then go on in the next paragraph about the County Court in an attempt to frighten the recipient still further. They give you no details about the options which will be available at the Order for Recovery stage which include the ability to roll the process back, get a fresh Notice to Owner and then once more have the right to make representations. Newham Council have been selective in only presenting the bad news.

Laughably they rendered the £10 court fee as zero.

The 'strong advice' which the council give is highly selective and largely biased in their favour and it is no part of Newham Council's role to give out advice on a matter in which they have a financial interest.

Mr Mustard gave advice to Mr M that he should await the Order for Recovery but might get another document first as he was aware of the stunts that Newham pull.

Thus it was on 24 November 25 that Newham Council sent a letter purporting to offer help. Here it is: 

What utter tosh. Newham Council not thinking they could help with the cost of living crisis by cancelling the PCN that they should never have issued.

Mr Mustard decided to have a bit of sport and complete the online enquiry form knowing he would write things that Newham Council didn't want to read.

Mr Mustard only had to wait a few days for a response although it was utterly useless.

Mr Mustard was not amused at the refusal to provide any help so given that Newham Council didn't like his first effort he crafted a much longer and harder hitting enquiry:

Did this result in a reasoned and complete response, no of course not, it received the same standard letter saying Mr Mustard couldn't use the enquiry service in this way.

Mr Mustard waited patiently.  He had put the PCN into the too difficult pile and Newham Council decided to burn £10 and register the PCN as a debt at Northampton County Court which is really just a big filing cabinet for PCNs.

It was on 8 January 26 that Mr Mustard checked online and saw that the balance had increased to £250 so the Order for Recovery had been issued. Without waiting to see it Mr Mustard filed a 'witness statement' which declared that the Notice to Owner had not been received. As the statement was in time the 50% surcharge and the £10 fee were both taken off the online balance.

On 9 February 2026 a fresh Notice to Owner was issued.

On 10 February 2026 the formal representations were made online in the following words: 

The council are under a legal duty to sign a bay.

There is no sign alongside the bay.

The motorist was therefore not on notice of the terms of any traffic order. 

The PCN is too vague. It does not state which of the types of bay is concerned, is it a residents bay or a shared use bay. A motorist is entitled to know exactly what they are accused of, not to have to undertake research. 

The council sent a letter on 24 November which not authorised by the 2022 Appeals or General Regulations and is a procedural impropriety. 

The council's behaviour has been wholly unreasonable and vexatious throughout.

The final line was a clear warning that costs would be applied for if the council rejected the representations and an appeal was necessary to the independent adjudicator.

This time some-one with at least half a brain thought about them as they were accepted and the PCN was cancelled. Their thought process was still flawed and the majority of the acceptance letter was utter tosh and churlish.

Mr Mustard wonders if the council will learn anything from this. Once Mr Mustard decides a PCN is wrong he will fight it all the way to the tribunal and if he does that the council will incur the tribunal fee of c.£32. Newham wasted the £10 in this case for the TEC registration, Mr Mustard did warn them.

The problem, and the reason councils do this, is that many unlawful PCNs get paid, often by lease companies (try not to lease, just buy yourself a smaller older car with a straightforward loan if you can) and so there is no stick to balance out the carrot. If councils issue an unlawful PCN they should have to give the amount of the penalty to the recipient. That would make councils think before they shoot.

The end. 

The tide goes out again in Newham

 

The same Newham employee writes to the same motorist on the next day about parking in the same bay with the same car and does a complete volte face on the previous day's letter, as produced in yesterday's blog.

It seems that cheating is still the order of the day.

What the motorist said about bays having to be signed is true.

A warning notice has no legal underpinnings.

A controlled parking zone sign has no meaning within a bay, it applies only to single yellow lines (ones without their own sign). 

CPZ = Controlled parking zone: how do they work?

 

The above map shows the extent of one of the CPZs which blanket the whole of the London Borough of Camden. Therefore, if you are parked on a single yellow line in Camden which does not have a time plate, and you think it is a good place to park, that may not be so as you have missed the zone entry sign which applies.

Here for example, is the sign which you drive past at Chalk Farm Road just before you turn left into Castlehaven Road. It is a busy spot but you are still expected to spot the sign and memorise the times (hopefully you know what day of the week it is today so can limit your attention to that day's entry).

Ironically Camden Council themselves had forgotten they had recently increased the daily end time to 11pm. They therefore put into evidence with the tribunal a rather muddled collection of evidence about when the CPZ times applied and once Mr Mustard queried the consistency of their evidence, coupled with his own photographic evidence, Camden realised they had right royally messed up and cancelled the PCN the day before the tribunal hearing.

As a complete aside Mr Mustard doesn't know why anyone from Barnet, who doesn't have reduced mobility or a big load to shift or some other compelling reason, would drive to Camden from Barnet given the Northern Line goes straight through it and the amount you have to pay to park nowadays.

The biggest reason why people get PCNs on single yellow lines is optimism.

They think that as it is Sunday or it is 10 at night that the yellow line will not be operational. Stop thinking like that, you are setting yourselves up for a fall, at £130.

You need to think differently and become an observant driver. One police driver training exercise used to be that the driver has to memorise every sign he passes (or speak it out loud) and then the instructor will randomly ask him/her what the last sign of a particular type was and if the driver can't remember they have to stop the car, walk back and check. Drivers quickly learn to be observant.

As you drive along you need to be observant for:

- speed limit signs 

- red route signs (no stopping) 

- banned turns: left, right, straight on

- compulsory direction signs: must go left etc

- traffic and pedestrian lights

- yellow box junctions

- other traffic, horses & pedestrians

- no motor vehicles signs (the flying motorbike) which are often at the entrance to part time 'school streets'

to which you should now add

- cpz zone signs.

It is clearly the case that to drive in London without picking up penalties by the bucketload you need to drive with your full attention on the road so switch off everything you don't need (do you really need your satnav or route app as that can lead you into trouble when a historically ok route has recently changed) and start to drive. Consider joining the Institute of Advanced Motoring or ROSPA, stop driving by rote, look through the windscreen and start really looking for signs, you will be amazed at how much you have missed in the past and you will save money.

An alternative way  to find out the hours of a single yellow line in London is just the appyparking+ app (other apps may be available) which although chargeable would pay for itself as soon as you avoid a single PCN.

In summary. if you find a single yellow line without a sign you have missed a zone entry sign on your route somewhere. It might be half a mile back. Parking bays, on the other hand, are always signed locally so you can trust what you see.

If you don't take a risk you won't lose the gamble and £130.

The end.

Cheating or incompetence by a NSL / Barnet Council traffic warden

Within 24 hours, this PCN was cancelled due to 'an issuing error', - rather!

Mrs Careful (well mostly) parked her car in Hendon Lane N3, more or less opposite no 74.

She checked from one end of the single yellow line to the other, there wasn't a time plate on a pole adjacent to the line. She didn't make the wrong assumption that other drivers make that parking must therefore be free at all times. She knew she was inside a controlled parking zone, the CE zone (Finchley Church End) and that therefore there was a circle of zone entry signs sited on all possible arrival routes, which you have to take notice of when driving along. The signs behind the car, if you were driving there from High Barnet, as Mr Mustard was when doing his reconstruction, are outside the Finchley Methodist Church and you are meant to read and memorise the days and times as you drive by and remember them until you stop and park, some 1.2 miles later.

As it happens, if you were to drive on another 100m you would exit the zone in Hendon Lane but you wouldn't know how far ahead the end of the zone would be.

Having parked perfectly before 1pm when she came back to her car Mrs Careful found it, to her astonishment, adorned with a PCN. This was how Mr Mustard started, being issued with a PCN which was wrong and 2,000 PCN fights later how all councils in London regret the mistake that Barnet traffic warden made in November 2010.

Mr Mustard was consulted. He sent Mrs Careful a copy of the council's photographic evidence, naively assuming she had missed the sign.

Ignore the top sign for buses & HGVs

It was explained to Mr Mustard, who had only looked cursorily at the evidence and didn't know the location all that well, that the sign was 100m away and besides, the sign photo was taken 2 minutes after the photo of the PCN on the windscreen, now that was odd. Mr Mustard decided that Mrs Careful was correct. He decided to go and see the situation with his own eyes and recreate the parking with his own car to see if lightning might strike twice (he didn't plan to be there any longer than it took to check the facts so it probably wouldn't).

He made a little video and added a commentary

 

From this short video it is obvious that the traffic warden, number BT717, is either incompetent (and they have been around too long to know know the basics of single yellow line signing which is simple) or they are a cheat. Mr Mustard decided they are a cheat and as well as making a challenge against the PCN he has filed a complaint as this level of service or dishonesty simply isn't acceptable. If a traffic warden is unsure of the position he should check with the office or simply walk on as if nothing is wrong, which, as it happens, it wasn't.

The end.

The right Royal Borough of Greenwich

 

Last November Mr Mustard was asked to help contest a PCN issued for being on a single yellow line in Burnley St in Greenwich. You will note the absence of a time plate adjacent to the yellow line after which you should take the hint that you are probably in a CPZ (controlled parking zone). You will have driven past a zone entry sign somewhere, which sets the rules.

Mr Mustard sometimes writes very short challenges, this one, sent in November 21 said:

'The restriction was not communicated by adequate signage'.

It was in April 22 that the response came. Mr Mustard now knows that there was a backlog in responding to informal challenges at that time in Greenwich. Formal representations, made in response to the Notice to Owner, have to be responded to within 56 days otherwise the council has to cancel.

By contrast, the informal rejection was long.

Note that twice the recipient is told that if they don't pay now the discount will be gone. Well, Mr Mustard doesn't care about that as he doesn't intend that the motorist should pay anything in this case. Not taking the 'issue' (why not say PCN?) through the Appeals process loses the opportunity to pay zero. It was, naturally, a templated response, written using the help of 'LetterSmarti' per Greenwich's records. Mr Mustard read it very carefully and then asked some questions. Here they are, with answers and some further comment by Mr Mustard.

This response is patent nonsense. Saying the signage is inadequate is a fundamental challenge to the validity of the PCN, it isn't a request to be let off.

As the challenge made was about signage one would have thought the council would be checking what notes were made about signage. Mr Mustard has those notes which include 'Greenwich Town Centre CPZ' but the FOI response didn't tell him that. It is actually CPZ 'G' in any event.

Mr Mustard sees councils who falsely regret they haven't cancelled a PCN  or who empathise when they are doing the exact opposite. They should be banned from such annoying false utterances.

 

A precise and correct response, so rare.

This response was, to put it politely, patent nonsese. The PCN was for being 'Parked in a restricted street during prescribed hours' which means you were alleged to be on a single or double yellow line without a loading restriction (as otherwise the PCN would refer to loading/unloading). At this point a smart council would realise they are facing a worthy opponent who is going to identify all their errors and use them. Greenwich Council aren't smart.

As for the attempt to semantically explain away the difference between a restriction and a prohibition on loading, there is only one sort of traffic order which ever applies to loading/unloading which is to ban it and that is covered by both supposedly distinct words. This part of the FOI response was written by a weasel.

Now this was thoroughly unhelpful. 'Kerbside' which kerb? there are lots of them in Greenwich. Here is one example which Mr Mustard found without wasting any shoe leather:

The sign, which is at the edge of the Greenwich Town Centre CPZ does not have any loading restriction marked upon it and that is probably why the 'as above' non answer was given.

Finally, Greenwich have to admit they made an error. If you make an error that will be a penalty of £130, if Greenwich council make one it makes no material difference. Oh yes it does as the response, which has a financial impact, was materially wrong. One can only conclude that either LetterSmarti or the writer isn't very smart. At this point a sensible parking officer would have cancelled the PCN but no, they can't do that, they will spend the rest of the day crying into their tea if they cancel something, they are never wrong, except they are!

By the way, is is 900m from the single yellow line to the applicable sign. CPZs need to go, every line should have a clear adjacent sign.

Oh dear, another embarrassing response because the real answer, which is clear for us all to see, is zero repeater plates.

Hard to answer other than in the affirmative that there are no signs at the location as there aren't any.

After giving Greenwich Council plenty of reasons to cancel, Mr Mustard opened the door for them to do so. They did not walk through it which of course meant they were in for a longer fight as Mr Mustard was confident that he would prevail at the independent tribunal as he had other aces in his hand. 

Greenwich Council had just dealt Mr Mustard an extra card. The PCN was issued on street on 21 November 2021. The legislation says that a Notice to Owner must be issued within 6 months which would be 21 May 2022. Greenwich Council were offering to break the law. Mr Mustard smiled and put the file away and waited for time to pass. The PCN has now been cancelled which will be a story for another day, it does concern the 6 months but he doesn't think Greenwich have realised their error yet.

The end.

Mr Mustard made a mistake - so did others!

Mr Mustard's client parked in The Grove near Finchley Central tube station, on a Saturday. She told him she had parked this way for years. Mr Mustard looked at the council's evidence on line and the sign which the traffic warden photographed, thus:

Mr Mustard thought the reason that this sign had been missed was because it was around the corner in Nether Street and therefore not driven past by the motorist who had driven up from Mill Hill. There are Regulations which a council must follow about installing and maintaining signage

Is the sign which was photographed 'on or near the road'? Mr Mustard would say not as it is on a different road around the corner but an adjudicator might find it to be adequate. However, for 'persons' using the road probably kills it in favour of the motorist as you must have been able to see the sign when driving in the road in question and you cannot. 

Mr Mustard looked back through google street view history and there hasn't been a sign since street view started on that section of yellow line in Nether Street.

Here from google is a photograph of the sign in Nether Street, the cable tie in the traffic warden's photo still being in place after the removal of the sign it was previously securing and there is a strap across the 'H'.

Mr Mustard made the informal challenge (against the PCN). He kept it simple as ever and the 'y' is next to the 't' on the keyboard which turned his 'not' into 'noy' a word he quite likes

Needless to say, the informal challenge was rejected 10 days later

They rarely consider any informal challenge carefully, as will be proved.

Was the sign located on The Grove? If you look for yourselves on google street map, turning in from Nether Street at the tube station end, you will see the sign the traffic warden photographed on the right and then no sign at all on the single yellow line within The Grove. The council have lied, again, in order to try and persuade the motorist to cough up £55.

Here is the council's map of traffic restrictions and signs in The Grove. There is no icon to show a sign within The Grove on the black and orange line. You can see a sign icon in Nether Street but none on the black & orange line, where the car was parked, only on the differently restricted green line in Nether Street. The council, or their sub-contractors NSL, are terrible at lying.

There is guidance on signs and lines, known as Chapter 3 of the Traffic Signs Manual. It isn't law but the council must have due regard to its contents. It says this

 

No-one can argue with the fairness of para 13.1.12 - the driver could not readily establish the precise restriction.

 

There was not a sign within 15m of the northern end of the single yellow line in The Grove as there wasn't a sign within The Grove at all.

Ignore the kerb marks about loading as that was not prohibited. These are stock images. What you can see is a little transverse mark which shows where the restrictions change, as they do between The Grove and Nether St, the change is not marked by a line on the ground nor signs at the changeover point.

When Mr Mustard received the council's letter rejecting the challenge, he went back over the facts to check them. He decided to start with the council's own map based traffic order. At that moment he realised his error when he clicked on the point where the car was parked and the rules popped up on the page.

This shows that the times when you cannot park where the black and orange line is located at 2-3pm on Mondays to Fridays inclusive. Mr Mustard smiled as immediately he knew he would beat the PCN (previously he just expected to beat it). He was annoyed though as the council had told him something which he knew not to be true with the sole purpose of trying to extract revenue from his client (who turned out to know the situation better than he did!).

What are the rules if a yellow line is not signed on the spot? (and let's take it that a sign around the corner in the next street does not, in all fairness, apply) It is the cpz entry sign that sets the times.

Down at the lower part of Dollis Road, towards Mill Hill, the place the driver came from, is this sign

which sign confirms the Monday-Friday 2-3pm times when you cannot park on an otherwise unsigned single yellow line (bays may have different times).

Who got what wrong?

The traffic warden got wrong that the sign around the corner applies. 

They should have thought that the absence of a sign meant CPZ hours apply.

Mr Mustard got wrong not checking the TMO map for the rules.

He was wrong to rely on the traffic warden's photo of the sign.

He should have wondered why his client had parked there on so many previous Saturdays without being ticketed.

The Barnet Council back office (probably NSL in Dingwall) got wrong the fact of the existence of a sign in The Grove. They refer to 'the sign' which must be a reference to the one photographed within Nether Street.

They got wrong not looking at The Grove on google street view, if they had looked back through 10 year's worth of google street view images they would not have found a sign in The Grove.

They got wrong not checking the rules for the location in question in the council's own map of the parking rules.

They got wrong that if there was a sign in the Grove it would say: Mon-Fri, 2-3pm.

Next steps

Mr Mustard's assistance was not disclosed in the informal challenge. It will be now as he will make a second informal challenge. Councils always tell you that you cannot do that but Mr Mustard disagrees as the PCN says

'If we receive representations before a Notice to Owner is served, from any recipient of a Penalty Charge Notice, those representations will be considered'.

The motorist does not yet have a Notice to Owner so is entitled to expect the council to do what they promise.

Besides, a factual error has occurred and it is in everyone's interest to correct this error as soon as possible. The motorist should not have the PCN hanging over them for a moment longer than necessary.

Mr Mustard is sure the second informal representations will be considered more carefully, as they will be accompanied by a complaint to parking management, who are all far to wise as to tell an untruth to Mr Mustard.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update 17 December: Mr Mustard complained on 10 December to parking management and provided his analysis of what was wrong. Clearly management agreed as the PCN has now been cancelled today. There was not a word of apology in the cancellation letter but there was a warning that the outcome didn't set a precedent at that location, it is panto season, oh yes it does.