There may be trouble ahead

Mr Mustard receives a pension from the London Stock Exchange. It is only a modest sum, not even enough to keep him in red wine, but he still likes to receive it in the correct sum and on time. Today in his post he received a long letter which offered him no comfort whatsoever. Here are some snippets:

Oh dear. Mercer never put a foot wrong so why change them to a notorious supplier?

Mr Mustard doubts that there will be faster response times from a company who had to negotiate a KPI of 20 seconds to answer the phone up to 60 seconds which they still couldn't manage on behalf of Barnet Council. 

So why did you choose Capita? Were they cheaper and did they promise the earth?

 Someone will regret writing this puff piece later on.

We have immediately taken a retrograde service step. Why wasn't this in the contract to be in place from day 1 if Capita are so wonderful?

Translation: We are easily impressed and don't read newspapers or Private Eye.

Mr Mustard confidently expects the change of tax office to be less than smooth.

He will be checking his payslips very carefully.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Rubbish collection of direct debit

Have any other Barnet businesses had such a letter because the council/Crapita cancelled the existing direct debit (perhaps related to the bank account change) and then put the onus on the customer to sort it out, necessitating dozens of calls to a number you could not get through on?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Capita - 7 months to do something

Images for 7 months were all about babies, which is fine by Mr Mustard, but he preferred the 7 Monks image. Perhaps the Capita staff were all in the pub (or taproom) all that time instead of doing what they were, at a guess, contracted to do.

Mr Mustard's contact renewed his Resident Permit in February 2016. As a model citizen he uploaded the necessary documents to prove ownership and residence. In September 16 he received the following email:

RE: PARKING PERMIT VERIFICATION DOCUMENTS

After review of the documentation supplied to support your current Emissions based resident permit, we have identified that the documents you have provided are incorrect.

To validate your permit, I require one of the following documents:-

1.   V5 Log Book – Please note that we do not accept the New Keeper Supplement
2.   Insurance Schedule – Please note we do not accept the Insurance Certificate
3.   Vehicle Hire Agreement showing the vehicle is hired for a period of 6 months or more.
 

Whilst I am sure this is an oversight*, can you please submit your documents electronically to parking.verification@barnet.gov.uk within 7 days quoting your permit number in the subject heading.

Failure to comply could result in your Parking Permit being cancelled leaving your vehicle liable to a Penalty Charge Notice/s being issued by our Parking Enforcement Officers.

* They can't be sure of anything, not even their own names probably.

Of course the resident can't remember which document they uploaded SEVEN MONTHS AGO so they will simply do it again.

Mr Mustard can't help but think that the contract, or service agreement, had much tighter timescales for checking documents. If it didn't then the council are incompetent, if it did then Capita are incompetent as are the council for not properly auditing what they are not doing.

Doubly incompetent.

What this means is that anyone can apply for a permit for any vehicle for any zone and park for free for over half of the year before being found out, or maybe they won't be? Mr Mustard did not suggest that dishonest course of action to you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Aren't Parking Eye wonderful, again?

Are Parking Eye the fish or the predator?

Mr Mustard is blogging for the second time about the 'kindness' of Parking Eye (part of Capita) but things aren't necessarily what they seem. The problem Mr Mustard was faced with was that out of nowhere PE had written to his client in January 2016 threatening her with various fates including court proceedings for a Parking Charge at Barnet Hospital from the 4th quarter of 2014. It appears that PE are raking through their old cases to see if they can squeeze a few more quid out of them. You can easily imagine how frightened old folks get who don't have the help of Mr Mustard or some other expert (and private tickets aren't really his bag but he feels obliged to help frightened people).

Here is what he wrote to PE.

Dear Sirs

I represent Mrs Blue Badge (why do you address her as "Dear Sir / Madam" when you know which she is?).

She is a lady in her 80s who has reduced mobility and uses a wheeled frame. She also suffers from various ailments (not unusual in an 80+ year old) and has to attend hospital from time to time. She does display her blue badge when she visits Barnet Hospital and got a parking charge notice once (as she didn't realise the system had changed) but asked the hospital to cancel it on her next visit which they did do (presumably by agreement with yourselves). I don't know if that was this charge notice or another one but not many people keep paperwork for completed matters until 2016.

I don't know where you sent earlier letter / notices (and would like copies of them all) but you have written to an address at which my client does not and never has lived. She lived at Barracks Rd for 50 years prior to moving into Old Folks Court. She has the benefit of my free assistance and so does not ignore paperwork about alleged parking contraventions. As it happens she is known at xxx Great North Road and the occupier opened your letter in error but this has still led to embarrassment for my client.

You may, in all the circumstances, wish to consider cancelling the claim.

Yours faithfully

This is what PE wrote in reply.

Dear Mr. Mustard

Thank you for your recent correspondence in regards to this matter.
 

On this occasion as a gesture of goodwill we will be cancelling this charge.
 

Kind regards

ParkingEye Enforcement Team

ParkingEye
Part of Capita Parking Services

What they didn't do was send Mr Mustard copies of the correspondence which he had asked to see (no surprise there as it might have been embarrassing with the incorrect addresses on it) and there isn't any explanation or apology for the data breach and PE are probably hoping that given the cancellation Mr Mustard won't take the matter any further. Mr Mustard's client isn't one to cause a fuss, or deliberately break parking rules, so this time PE will get away with their doubtful behaviour.

If anything similar happens to you, complain.

In Mr Mustard's experience PE are making a packet out of blue badge holders at hospitals who don't realise they have to register their blue badge and car(s) at reception because this is compeltely different to the guide issued by the government about how to use your blue badge (which only applies to the public highway).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Permit scheme lottery

Mr Mustard has been informed that he is hopelessly wrong so he has edited this blog post. Apparently Barnet Council themselves are responsible for the permit address database fiasco & not Capita (sorry Capita).

Mr Mustard isn't talking about the Camelot run lottery (he's a bit over excited this morning having won the EuroMillions lottery yesterday evening - the £9.70 will get him a nice bottle of Rioja to share with his paramour) but about the permit reminder lottery. Not only have Barnet Council got the permit eligibility database in a right old mess with:

- some homes having the wrong postcode

- some homes not existing

- some homes listed twice

- a property with 3 flats having only 2 on the database

- some streets being in the database twice, think 'St' & 'St.'

- Barnet addresses containing the word London

and there may well be other problems and the unresolved problem is 4 months old, they've also got no idea who has a permit and it is Mr Mustard's guess that they have bolted the information together from various sources as some people don't get a permit reminder (despite 20+ years of relying on one) the first they realise the problem is when they are hit with a PCN, others got 4 reminders. A local resident passed 3 of his reminders on to Mr Mustard and kept the fourth one to actually process. A lady who lives not 20m away didn't get a reminder at all. They are both long term (decades) residents.

Here they are (two were posted on the very same day):

Errors on page 1? 

There wasn't an initial between 'Mr' and 'Smith' (not his real name) so if the household contained a father and his two sons, all of whom drove, they would not know which of them the letter was intended for and there wasn't a car registration number on it either.

Electronic renewal and permits does not make the process 'easier and more convenient'. If you don't have a computer you still have to phone up and obtain a form to complete. Once received by the council the permit team then find that your address doesn't exist and you run into time trouble. If only you could visit your local library with your paperwork and have staff do the renewal on line for you?

'Parking officers' is too vague a term, they mean Civil Enforcement Officers, commonly known as traffic wardens.

Emissions based charges only apply to the first car, this is not made clear, so try to renew the car with the least CO2 first.

Four additional cars was voted through, not 4 cars in total at one address.

Air pollution will hardly change in Barnet as only about 10% of cars are inside CPZs and if you are spending £40,000 on a car, will an extra £30 for your permit make you change your mind and buy a lower CO2 model? (no of course not).

Mr Mustard has just checked his October 2015 credit card bill. The permit charge was £40 not £40.72 so an extra 1.8% isn't being charged (unless of course you know different).

Mr Mustard thinks that the only reminders which will be sent from now on are emails so if you renew manually you'll have to put a note somewhere that you will see it regularly (now that there isn't a permit on your car which you might happen to notice the date of). This would be a failure, in his view, to make due adjustment for the elderly and the disabled.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

ParkingHeart (formerly ParkingEye)

Mr Mustard has seen plenty of adverse publicity for ParkingEye (now owned by Capita) when they have penalised someone who stayed a minute too long in a car park and are now being hounded to death for £100, so when he sent the following email, on behalf of a rather ill client, he anticipated that he would soon be in court as a lay representative fighting a rearguard action. He was wrong.

---

I represent Jane Doe as per the attached authority.

My client is mentally ill as she suffers from illness1 & illness2 as per the attached report from a consultant clinical psychologist.

My client is also physically unwell. She has a blue badge as she suffers from illnesses 3,4,5 & 6.

I think there is more than one branch of Morrisons in Harrow but I do know that my client is a regular shopper with that firm (although she does not keep her receipts) and whilst I doubt she will be able to remember anything meaningful about what she did on dd/mm/yyyy due to her mental state (and I doubt that any of us could without reference to some sort of diary, if kept) I am going to accept your record of the visit for the sake of this without prejudice offer only.

My client is unfit to work and exists entirely on state benefits. If she had to pay a penalty to you she would be unable to afford the essentials of life. I know she is financially embarrassed as she has been summonsed for non-payment of council tax and should you obtain a judgment an application would be made for payment by instalments in the nominal sum of £1 per month.

I would rather see the file off my desk and so in order to see an end to the matter I am personally prepared to pay the sum of £20, and no more, which I estimate will more than cover your costs to date.

I look forward to hearing from you.

---

Back came the response fairly quickly.

---

Thank you for your recent correspondence in regards to this matter.

Please take this as confirmation that the above referenced Parking Charge has been cancelled as a Gesture of Goodwill.

Kind regards,

ParkingEye Enforcement Team

Well, strike Mr Mustard down with a feather. He thought he would be shelling out £20 of his own hard-earned but no, Parking Eye employ at least one person with a heart. Everything Mr Mustard said in his email was true and could be supported with evidence so don't try a similar approach unless it is the truth.

Please also bear in mind that it is only exceptionally that Mr Mustard will step into the murky world of private parking enforcement as he prefers the devils he knows, the ones in council employ.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet Highways fork the signs up

Hot on the heels of Mr Mustard spotting an impossible combination of signs in Harrow, he noticed quite a few closer to home that are wrong. There are two at the junction of St Albans Rd and the High St, one outside Barnet College near Barnet Church and one in Station Rd near the Everyman Cinema (was the Odeon). There will be others at other points where a car can quite correctly pass either side of a traffic island, like this one

The left fork takes you towards St Albans and the right towards Potters Bar and although you can pass either side of the double arrowed sign it is not the correct sign as this sign indicates two choices which allow you to reach the same destination (they are usually used to indicate that in a multi lane carriageway with pedestrian refuges, that you truly can pass either side.

Mr Mustard presumes that these shiny new signs (you have seen them appearing like mushrooms all over the borough? - Mr Mustard quite likes them and they have the advantage of not needing an electricity supply so are replaced more quickly and easily after an accident) have been installed by the stupidly named Re (Regional Enterprise) Ltd, the joint venture between the council and Capita in which the council have gifted Capita a 51% majority shareholding despite its opening business all being sourced from Barnet Council to start with. Maybe they could appoint a Highways Engineer who knows their traffic signs and replace all of the misleadingly incorrect ones free of charge.

By the way Re:, the correct sign would be one which is plain.

If only Barnet Council didn't keep outsourcing services to companies that don't know what they are doing.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

 

e-permits now available but only if your property still exists

Today, coincidentally, two local people saw Mr Mustard to tell him they couldn't buy an e-permit because their properties did not exist. One had, after a 30 minute wait, spoken to Crapita who said they would quickly fix the problem but that was 5 days ago and the permit had somehow expired 3 weeks ago so this was urgent.

Mr Mustard was engaged on paid work today, as he has a client meeting tomorrow, and so it was only late in the day that he realised what had happened. He put EN5 4LX into the permit application form (both the street name and the postcode are mandatory information which is poor as the latter usually dictates the former) and this is the top part of the selection offered to him:

The problem was instantly apparent; numbers 4, 6 & 8 are on the other side of the road and have a different postcode, being EN4 4LU, so Mr Mustard's neighbour can now sort his problem out as it doesn't matter what the postcode is as nothing is being posted to you (except maybe a reminder if you are lucky in a year's time) and it would probably still arrive as Carnarvon Rd has diligent postmen.

If you can't find your property, use other local postcodes which you can find here.

This database is not as simple as you think as only 1 in 10 properties qualifies for a residents permit and not necessarily every property in any one road. Someone is going to have to check many thousands of addresses. It will probably be possible to compare the postcode of qualifying permit address against the PAF (postcode address file) and amend the errors that way.

Mr Mustard wonders if Crapita have worked out what the problem is, what with them being in Coventry, and not having true local knowledge of Barnet.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Finchley (No) Park, N12

Capita unilaterally decide to shrink the North Finchley CPZ.

Mr Mustard's client, let us call her Mystery, has lived at the same address inside the North Finchley CPZ for over 20 years.

You can clearly see that the whole of the road is inside the CPZ (indicated by thin blue & brown lines and yellow signs). The map above is the council's own system that residents can use to look up restrictions before they leave home (but you must obey the actual signs on the ground if different).

Mystery rang the parking number to buy some Visitor Parking Vouchers. Capita told her that she no longer lived inside the CPZ which covered numbers 1-55 and 2-86 only. Mystery lives in a number higher than 86 even or 55 odd. Mystery looked out of the window and saw bays parked on the road all the way to the end. She would no longer be entitled to a parking permit and have nowhere to park except for her own drive.

A Capita employee is saying he is the parking manager. He isn't as Mr Mustard knows who is. He might be Capita's manager for parking matters but that doesn't make him hold an office with the council and residents should not be mislead that they are dealing with the engine driver rather than the oily rag.

Why can't Capita get things rights after all these years? (rhetorical question. Answer, because Barnet means nothing to them except an income stream and as Barnet is a long long way from Coventry so any address is unknown to them).

Why can't Capita look at the client's publicly available on-line mapping system of the entire borough's parking restrictions. Answer: laziness, ignorance, stupidity; please add own suggestion in the comments box.

Capita parking are asking Capita highways why the change has occurred (that was a week ago and no-one has been in contact with Mystery). Surely a query that Mr Mustard can answer in 2 minutes could be answered by Capita within 24 hours?. Mr Mustard will notify the real parking manager and then something will happen pretty quickly.

It seems that the stories about Crapita's spectacular incompetence will never abate.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update: There are two schedules in a Traffic Management Order.

One sets out the restrictions in the road.
The second sets out which properties can buy permits (as some blocks of flats are not able to).
Mystery's property had been left off the second schedule along with some of her neighbours. This will now be put right.

Dapita (you'll see) (best check your CPZ permit)

The motorist doesn't know that when it comes to wrongly issued permits that the fault lies with Dapita (Capita - who have managed to renew a C zone permit as a D zone, taking business process management to a whole new level of spectacular incompetence) and this is not a one-off although the usual mistake is to send you a permit with no zone marked on it which in theory you could use in any zone (although you might struggle to explain to an Adjudicator why you thought you qualified for an all zones permit).

It is now just 2 months short of 2 years since the customer service (or lack of) contract started with Capita (well renamed Crapita by Private Eye) and you would think by now that they might just know one CPZ zone from another but no, this is what you get for employing cheap call centre staff in Coventry (Mr Mustard has nothing against Coventry & in fact has plans to visit there soon) who possess zero local knowledge because they don't travel about the borough seeing things. The councillors who didn't read much or any of this long contract which they foolishly signed up to won't have carefully road tested the service before going ahead either. Mr Mustard hazards they would all road test a new car before they bought one (a new car worth £30,000 is a mere 0.04% of the value of the Crapita customer service contract) and that they would spend longer test driving a new car than test driving the Crapita service before agreeing to buy.

Now, given the above error, please all pop outside now to check if you have the correct CPZ zone for your road, you can always search for your address here then click on a restriction and the hours and zone will pop up.

Whilst you are looking at your permit you might as well check the expiry date as there is at least a 1 in 100 chance that it has expired as you haven't received a reminder either because your email address has changed or because Crapita seem unable to post reminders out consistently.

If Crapita can't even renew a resident permit correctly, what hope is there for any difficult task they may be contracted to perform?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Resident is Brauned* off about permits

One of the other Barnet bloggers told me that Cllr Braun's surname is pronounced Brown. If it isn't, the title doesn't work. The resident is still entitled to be browned off given that reply came there none. If Braun is pronounced Brawn then it isn't pronounced Brain, or Polite.

Brown not Braun

Taking money for a permit and issuing it should be a walk in the park. Why I keep getting examples of complete ineptitude 2 years after Crapita took the process over is a question you can answer for yourselves.

---

Dear Ms Braun,

I am a Hendon resident. For the last 4 years I have had a resident’s permit for my car, parking in Sunningfields Road. Prior to that, parking was free in my road. (Due to the giveaway of the Coptall stadium)

Today I came out of my house to discover I had a parking ticket. Apparently my resident parking permit had expired at the end of March.

I had not noticed this as I have always received a reminder notice from Barnet Council, asking for payment for the upcoming year. (Reasonable expectation is an argument that should find favour at PATAS)

This year I received no reminder and so did not notice that the permit had expired.

I phoned Barnet council, only to be put through an extremely long-winded automated system, several times, in my attempts to speak to a human being.

When I finally did speak to a member of Barnet Council staff I was told that they had changed systems, and, as an experiment, they were not sending out reminders in order to ‘see if people remembered to renew’

I cannot express how annoyed/upset I was to receive this response.

They also said that it was not part of the ‘Terms and Conditions’ to send out reminders and that I should have read these terms to see that. I pointed out that in all probability very few residents had read these.

Also, it surely sets a precedent when you send out a reminder for 3 years in a row; obviously people then expect a further reminder.

In fact the Barnet website permit renewal screen actually still requests that you fill in the ‘pin code’ received with your renewal letter, in order to renew it. (Ooh, a forensic resident. Spot on)

As I did not have such a code it took a member of staff about 30 minutes to try and set up an account and get my payment.

Total chaos. (and total ineptitude).

To add insult to injury, once I had paid I received an email confirming payment, as my email address was already in their system. It would have been just as easy to send out a reminder in this form. (Which is exactly how Mr Mustard is reminded by the council)

If I had parked illegally then I would accept it, but I feel Barnet Council are totally unjustified in changing their policy on reminders without actually telling the public. (They do this every time they change a system. It displays an institutionalised disdain for the public).

I was told that this had just come into force, so I am fully expecting hundreds of residents to get similar parking tickets, as I am sure most people will not realise the date of expiry had passed. (There was a surge in these types of parking ticket a few months ago but it had died down)

I would be most grateful if you would take this up with the council, who I believe are acting in an extremely high-handed way, against the interests of the public. (High handed? Barnet Council? indeed)

A Hendon Resident

---

The next email was to Mr Mustard

Dear Mr Mustard

I recently had a parking ticket from Barnet Council. My residents permit for my car parked outside my home had expired and I had not received a reminder from Barnet Council, so did not notice. See my below correspondence with Councillor Braun, for details.

It was a bit of a strange situation. I could perhaps have thought that I had been unlucky and that the reminder letter had got lost in the post, but when I phoned Barnet Council to query this, they confirmed that they had not sent a reminder ‘as an experiment to see if people paid without being sent a reminder’. However, 2 weeks later, my immediate neighbour did receive a reminder. In fact she received 2 reminders!

As I have paid online on each occasion I do not understand why they could not have sent me an automated email reminder in fact, but that is a separate issue.

I appealed the ticket and the appeal has just been refused. What a surprise. They just said that is was my responsibility to check. I argued that I had always received a reminder in all previous years and so relied on receiving a notice, and therefore Barnet should have warned residents if they intended to stop this practice.

I wrote to Councillor Braun and received an acknowledgement but have heard nothing further.

I will now have to pay the ticket I realise. However, I am writing to you to see if you are aware of this happening to other residents? It seems most strange that the council admitted to me that it had stopped sending out reminders, but then immediately started sending them out again. Was this due to the response from people getting tickets I wonder, or some other factor? One of the several Barnet staff I spoke to admitted (when I asked him directly) that the system had recently been started and that they had received other complaints similar to mine.

Kind Regards

A Hendon resident

---

Mr Mustard's fingers flew to the keyboard. Firstly, he told the Hendon resident not to pay & not to worry and then he emailed a parking manager to ask for a cancellation as all PCN issued in this circumstance are to be cancelled by order of the leader of the Council as this published answer from the full Council meeting of 23 September 2014

.

It took a few days but after a gentle reminder (as Mr Mustard's emails to parking management do usually get pretty quick responses as he stops the rot from spreading for them) NSL were instructed to cancel the PCN.

Now the question that comes to Mr Mustard's mind is why NSL don't know what Mr Mustard knows about the policy that the Leader has set? Is it incompetence? (NSL & incompetence in the same sentence, that isn't a first) or is it a deliberate policy to raise revenue? We should be told. (The usual excuse of a one-off error is not available as Mr Mustard knows of several instances).

Mr Mustard's PCN workload is heading towards the 100 PCN mark and he could do without any really difficult ones at the minute but these ones are easy so if you have one the same, do send it to Mr Mustard and he will get it fixed for you, sometimes within 24 hours.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Friday Joke - Capita

Customer - the model of efficiency

The adjudicators at PATAS vary greatly in their approach but one is, despite decades of parking ticket minutiae, always ready for some dry humour, indeed on finding Mr Mustard in the reception area recently he said "Good morning, I see you are here to amuse us again, Mr Mustard*" and now here he is returning the compliment (Mr Mustard is actually deadly serious with his appeals but also tries to keep it light, although there is always that tingle of nervous anticipation as he can't tell which way an adjudicator will think on a particular case, they often come at him from left field, although they nearly always end up in the same goal)

*Mr Mustard's real name was used by the adjudicator. Mr Mustard always calls them Sir or Madam, as the case may be, as those are the rules of the tribunal. Nor does one try to shake hands on meeting.

---

The Appellant's vehicle was parked in a restricted street displaying a badge that had expired and a fairly detailed note explaining that the badge was in the process of being renewed. Despite that note I would not criticise the CEO for issuing the PCN (as motorists cannot write themselves exemptions from parking restrictions).

However it transpires that the reason there was no valid badge on display is that the Council's agents Capita, had failed to issue him with one at the proper time. Having heard the Appellant in person in detail there is no doubt at all that the sorry history of his attempt to renew the badge in very good time is correct; and that his request to Capita for the required renewal forms was, as he was informed by Capita when chasing the matter, "lost in the system". When the forms were eventually received on a Saturday morning, he completed them and put them in the post that same morning.

It appears that Capita could learn something from the Appellant's efficiency.

The Council states that the Appellant should have applied for a temporary dispensation. He was never informed of this by the Council when he made his initial renewal enquiry or at any subsequent stage by the Council's agents Capita. All he was told to do was to display a note, which he did.

In my judgement in these circumstances the law follows common sense and does not allow a Council to enforce a penalty for a contravention which occurred entirely as a result of its own failings (Capita being the agent of the Council for these purposes). Allowing it to do so would be the equivalent of an abuse of process and in these circumstances no contravention can be said to have occurred (see the dicta in Camden v The Parking Adjudicator and BHS t/a First for Food Service Ltd [2011] EWHC 295 Admin [2011]EWCA Civ 905)

  

The Appeal is therefore allowed. (i.e. the PCN is cancelled)

The Appellant has shown to me today a charge certificate issued in respect of a very similar case, and where he never received a Notice to Owner. He has of course the right to follow the statutory procedures to set this aside. I am not seized of that matter today. However if it is the case that the situation in that case is indeed identical, the Council might be well advised to cancel that PCN without further ado, since if the matter ever came to appeal it might well find itself at risk of an order for costs on the Appeal being allowed.

---

The adjudicator is a solicitor or a barrister. They tend to talk in code but make no mistake about that last sentence, the adjudicator is steaming mad and will make the council pay for their stupidity if they continue to exhibit same. The barrier for costs is set very high "shall not normally allow" which speaks volumes in the context of this adjudication finding.

Anyway, the report amused Mr Mustard. If it brought a smile to your lips, then all well and good.

Do have a nice weekend and make sure you attend on time to any PCN paperwork.

Please also park properly as Mr Mustard currently has 75 PCN to handle and if he gets sent many more will have to give up his day job.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

and "we" trust Capita with Barnet Council's accounts?

they can't even get their own in on time.

It is a truism that late accounts are often bad accounts.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Crapita - Dispensing with dispensations

How many Crapita employees does the system require

An email received by Mr Mustard this week is below. He has redacted the staff names as they are only implementing the stupid call centre system that they are forced to follow or be sacked, so the junior staff are not to blame.

Dear Mr Mustard

I hope that you are very well.

I just want to let you know that today I called the Crapita Call Centre permit section to renew my Housing Permit which expires 14/03/2015 as I could not renew it online as it required a PIN which I do not possess. (PINs are new but no-one seems to have been told what they are. We all have to find out the hard way)

I spoke to the officer by the name Ms Redacted #1, who took my details. I told her that I wanted to renew my permit as it was expiring this week. She informed that she will start my permit on the 15/03/2015. I informed her that she needs to start the permit on the 16/03/2015 as the operational hours of the CPZ is Monday to Friday 10-11. I did not see the point of her starting the permit on Sunday.

She has agreed to start the permit on a Monday 16/03/2015. She then advised me that the permit will be sent today 1st class. (Odd that as Mr Mustard's was sent second class).

From reading your blog I have noted the difficulties other residents have endured. So I asked the officer for temporary dispensation to start on the 16/03/2015, so that if the permit does not arrive I would not be penalised by getting PCN from NSL. The officer refused and Informed me because my permit is still valid, they would not issue the dispensation. She also informed me that I had to call on Monday the 16/03/2015 to get dispensation. I told her that this was not the way when Barnet Council was dealing with the permit and I ask if this is a new policy implemented by Capita. She just kept repeating that they would not issue a dispensation.

I asked to speak to a manager which I was transferred to by the name Mr Redacted #2, and I explained my situation that they have to give dispensation as they cannot guarantee the permit will be received before Monday. In addition it creates hassle to call back the call centre just to get the dispensation on the day of enforcement as Monday is always busy day. (and a dispensation issued on Monday would only apply from Tuesday)

The manager agreed with me and transferred the call to another officer by the name Mr Redacted #3 to issue dispensation from 16/03/2015 to 02/04/2015.

All this could have been avoided if the first officer issued dispensation from when the permit was due to commence. I wonder how many people have been told the same story but later receive a PCN. I never experienced this situation before.

Best Wishes,

If you are unhappy with what the call centre tells you, do as this person did and persist. If Crapita prove to be unresponsive then complain to the council, the only slight snag being that Crapita handle phone calls and you can't know without asking if the person you are speaking to is a Crapita or council employee. If you are unhappy with the level of service received you should complain as that is sometimes the only way to get organisations to improve.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Visitor Vouchers do not expire

Yesterday Mr Mustard and his co-director were puzzled by the ridiculously difficult processes which exist at Barking & Dagenham and Barnet councils when it comes to the simple task of buying visitor vouchers.

In the Barking case the prospective purchaser is 88 years old and has never touched a computer keyboard and although pretty with it she is happy with her life as it is and doesn't need a new challenge. Of course, she needs vouchers if she isn't going to be isolated by having no visitors. Barking have CPZs which are nowhere near the town centre but whose hours extend late into the evening for no obvious reason (@publicnaylor the Chief Executive has been contacted about it but did not respond although he is probably busy having just started in Barking).

This is what the website says

so having clicked on the link for Visitor Vouchers you would expect to be taken to a form to complete with your address and credit card details. Not so. You get a pdf form which opens, which you have to print out (which rather assumes everyone has a printer at home) complete and then post to the council with a cheque. Many people no longer have cheque books. You can go to the one-stop shop in the library to do this but they won't process the form and give you the Vouchers, they will merely print out the form for you to complete and pass it on. Councils are restricting choice to one method which they find the most convenient rather than providing a number of methods to suit their many residents, young and old. The tail should not wag the dog.

Might Mr Mustard mention at this stage that Barking & Dagenham Council has many services which are run by a joint venture with old friends Agilisys who are neither agile or systematic if this process (one presumes it is provided by them as it is IT) is the yardstick. Mr Mustard thought that one of the justifications for such a venture was the supposedly cutting edge technology they provide. 

Transformation can leave you worse off than before

About as sharp as a beachball.

Then on to Barnet, where permit renewals are done by Crapita.

Visitor vouchers can be purchased on line (and by phone). The bit that caught Mr Mustard's eye was the requirement to set an expiry date 3 year's hence. Being Mr Mustard he tried to bend the system and get future dated vouchers, that failed with a maximum 7 days forward dating being allowed. He then tried to short date his vouchers and was allowed to steal a year of validity from himself, viz:

Mr Mustard knew this was not council policy, as he and others had been over this particular matter with councillors and parking management, so he tweeted the Chief Executive but the tweet seems to have gone into a black hole. He also contacted parking management who responded that Crapita's system has to have an expiry date. The expiry date of their contract can't come soon enough.

So the council sign up for 10 years with Crapita because ruling councillors think they are the answer to all their prayers and we get clunky software foisted upon us, probably because they have already written it for another council which does use expiry dates, and is not tailored to our specific needs. Mr Mustard will henceforth refer to software from capita as Crapware. Doubtless Crapita will argue that you can just ignore the expiry date, it isn't printed on the front of the vouchers and no harm is done but it sows doubt in the mind of the person, probably causes people to order fewer vouchers more often so they don't get stuck with ones which have "expired" (except they haven't) causes phone calls to the call centre and makes think people think that Barnet Council are an incompetent bunch of t*ssers which doubtless ruling councillors would prefer not to be the case (add own joke here).

Councillors need to actually experience what residents do in order to find out for themselves how Crapita things are. They won't because they won't want to know the answer. Crapita could probably press the nuclear button and councillors would say that lessons have been learned and it won't happen again going forward. They would lose too much face to admit what a disaster the outsourcing is.

Buy how ever many visitor vouchers you need and don't worry residents, they do not expire, whatever the council website tells you to the contrary.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard