Cyber attack problems - Kensington & Chelsea

 

The cyber attack on Kensington & Chelsea Council has been widely reported. The above is an extract from the Frequently Asked Questions section on the council website.  There have been real knock on effects, even though parking software is usually an externally provided service, as the below letter shows which relates to an on street PCN issued on 13 August and challenged on 26 August which was day 14 so preserved the 50% discount:

Some small observations.

Why was there a 'significant backlog' prior to 24 November 2025 ?

The identification of the 6 month limit is correct but the guidance of the Secretary of State contains this:

Mr Mustard suspects that a Ground of Appeal of delay if raised at London Tribunals will tend towards the council being given a fair bit of leeway. If Mr Mustard were instructed as representative he would be looking for a comprehensive explanation and timeline as to what steps have been taken and suggesting that the passage of time prejudices the motorist and that should take priority over the council's technical problems.

Mr Mustard's suggestion to help the council get back up to date is simply to cancel historic PCNs, clean the slate and start again, bang on time with everything. One suspects that the thirst for revenue won't allow for this solution to be applied.

The council has taken a reasonable approach though and Mr Mustard will be sending in both sides of the blue badge. It is a common error for people who live in the suburbs to think that the badge applies everywhere when in fact they are of limited application in central London. If you don't go there often it is easy to forget.

How kind of the council to still be willing to accept the motorist's money. However, as the challenge to the PCN was made within the 14 day limit they are obliged to honour the discount offer stated on the PCN.

The end. 

 

Decorum in Dacorum

 

The above is the standard acknowledgment to formal representations made in response to a parking Notice to Owner. A representation in which Mr Mustard picked a lot of holes in the Notice. That was on 17 February 2024.

Mr Mustard checked the balance on line most weeks and could see the PCN was stuck at £50, being a lower value PCN outside London. Suddenly, on 16 November, he heard from his client.

Above we have a page about how wrong the driver was.

The first two paragraphs are padding about a process which has been and gone. In paragraph three we get to the meat of the matter, Dacorum had, by doing nothing, cancelled the Notice to Owner and given their oversight they also cancelled the PCN (they couldn't really do anything else almost a year after the PCN was issued).

Having signally failed to do their own job the council then give the registered keeper a warning about their future conduct which is a bit rich in the circumstances. If Dacorum always take this long they are deemed to have cancelled. Mr Mustard was confident of winning on this technical grounds in any event.

One day humility may come to parking. A short letter saying the council failed to stick to the deadline and they are sorry for the delay would be much better received and enhance their reputation.

The end.

Waltham Forest make the same error as Westminster

Readers with better memories than Mr Mustard will recall he recently wrote about a timing error made by the City of Westminster in their own favour, here.

It is a common error, Mr Mustard expects to write about it at least once again in the future, and today it is Waltham Forest Council in his sights. Let's go back to early May when Bobby (not his real name) received his Notice to Owner which was dated 1 May. Always prompt Bobby sent a copy to Mr Mustard who at that time was up to date so he made the formal representations on 4 May. Representations made by Mr Mustard follow a common layout with the signed authority to act embedded as an image, so it doesn't get forgotten.

Time passed, as it does, and Mr Mustard kept an eye on the balance on line and it was £80 on 10, 17, 23 and 31 May.

An email landed in Mr Mustard's inbox on 31 May with an attached letter. Here is the relevant part.

Mr Mustard decided to play for time, predicting a cock-up. He sent a whatsapp message to Bobby.

Not long later, another emailed letter landed in his inbox.

 Mr Mustard again updated his client.

Following that letter Mr Mustard expected that the Notice of Rejection would shortly arrive. It didn't. The balance did change to £40 on 11 June rather suggesting that the representations had been rejected and the 50% discount offered again, even though it doesn't need to be and many authorities are now playing hardball and not offering it, and it stayed at £40 on 16, 20 and 29 June and on 9 July. 

On 11 July Bobby sent a copy of the Notice of Rejection dated 8 July. Mr Mustard smiled, he knew the Notice was a procedural impropriety as it was unlawful. He started an Appeal to the independent tribunal on 19 July.

The Notice to Owner is defined as the Enforcement Notice. Strictly the PCN was still alive but there were no legal steps which could be taken to enforce it as it was over 6 months old.

Mr Mustard waited for the expected 'DNC' document (Do Not Contest) and on 5 August it reached the tribunal. The council sensibly threw in the towel rather than fight on and risk an application for costs for unreasonable behaviour. It was unreasonable but Mr Mustard had hardly incurred any costs in starting the Appeal and only qualifies as a lay person for £19 per hour when his time is far more valuable.

So this is the second enforcement authority in a month to have broken the law. Many processes within parking are automated with PCNs moving relentlessly forward through a series of steps. The one which should be automated to stop a council from breaking the law isn't automated. This is because most motorists wouldn't know, wouldn't dream even, that a council would break the law. The second is that it is assumed councils will be honest and follow the law, maybe that was the case decades ago when PCNs were decriminalised, not now they are a £multi million enterprise. The third is that there is no sanction from an outside supervisory body for the simple reason that there isn't an all powerful overseer.

Mr Mustard will have to fulfil part of that role.

The end, for now.

Dilatory Barking & Dagenham Council

Councils are churning out so many PCNs that they can't keep up, that isn't cricket. They should only issue as many PCNs as they can professionally process. The public should not be left hanging, unsure of what is happening, for months, as this is stressful.

If you have a Notice of Rejection and thus the opportunity to have your case heard by an independent adjudicator at London Tribunals you would be well advised to do so as that increases the chance that Barking & Dagenham Council will be unable to cope and will have to cancel.

End.

Democratic deficit - Barnet Council

 

In the opinion of Mr Mustard councillors have gifted (delegated) far too much power to 'Officers' (the rather grand name for highly paid staff) and there is then far too little oversight of what they are up to. We get quarterly reports of the decisions if you know where on the website to look but that is of little use when the report for October 19 gets published in January 2021.

Decisions taken by councillors are public on the day they take them as the meetings are live streamed. Decisions by 'officers' take place in their home office (most probably) and if we are lucky we get to hear about them a few months later, or in the case of the Deputy Chief Executive 15 months later. That is to thumb your nose at Barnet residents. It is not democratic.

Should an 'officer' have taken a decision which a member of the public wishes to challenge and maybe take up with their local councillor, the horse is out the stable door and way out of sight. Nothing can be done about the decision, even if it was the worst decision in the world.

If a resident wishes to pursue a judicial review ('JR') the Court is going to be unimpressed. The general rule (and there is a lot of case law on this, not to forget Nash v Barnet which was out of time) is that a JR should be brought

(a) promptly; and

(b) in any event not later than 3 months after the grounds to make the claim first arose.

These DPR report should not be produced quarterly, they should be produced monthly and even better, every time a decision is taken by an 'officer' it should be the subject of an individual delegated powers report which is published the minute they sign the decision.

You can find the decisions of all 'officers' here always assuming they have bothered to produce them (cue some frantic work by the million pound PR department to get all officers up to date once they see Mr Mustard's tweet).

Just so you can see how much money is involved here is the final quarter of 2019 for the Deputy CEO alone:

Enjoy your lockdown reading.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard
 

Postal delays

One would hope that all enforcement authorities in London (and those just around it) would have recognised the unfairness of sending out moving traffic PCNs (and other documents) to London's residents, which have a penal effect if the 28 day deadline is missed, and added extra time into their systems.

If not, they should be making due allowance and you the motorist should make your representations as soon as you get a document which is late and state the date on which it did actually arrive.

The umbrella body for all councils in London sent out an email to all councils in London on 14 January 21 to give them a nudge if they hadn't already thought about it.

Don't hesitate with Notices about PCNs, deal with them today. 

Procrastinating can be expensive.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Harrow Council - manifestly unfair

This was not a case dealt with by Mr Mustard

Luckily Mr Mustard keeps all of his files open for as long as it takes to reach a point of finality.

Harrow Council on the other hand put theirs away in a dusty cupboard for a year or two, or three, and then drag them out, dust them off and restart the process at the point where they previously stopped. Not many people would still have their paperwork for a 2016 PCN and if the motorist had moved in the meantime would find that a bailiff had been instructed unbeknownst to them and the bailiff traces a new address, has the address on the warrant changed (that strikes Mr Mustard as an abuse of process as the Order for Recovery has not been served) and then clamps the car leaving the motorist with little choice but to pay up.

There isn't a body which keeps an overarching critical friend eye on what local authorities are up to in their parking departments, as if there were, this sort of abuse of the system could be stopped in its tracks.

Mr Mustard has dealt with four such cases in the last few months and luckily none of the motorists he was helping had moved so the proper pieces of paper were dealt with in time. Instead of gaining the income from four PCNs Harrow Council are instead out of pocket for four wasted £8 court registration fees and four tribunal listing fees of c. £30 each and there is an application pending for costs, for wholly unreasonable behaviour, of just one hour at £19. This is because the council behaviour in letting a PCN go to sleep, waking it up, messing Mr Mustard about at the representations stage by saying what he wrote wasn't a representation when it patently was and then throwing in the towel as soon as the going got tough i.e. once a tribunal appeal was started. They have to learn that incompetence and ill-judged actions don't pay.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The slowly grinding wheels of Barnet Council

Lovely grinding stones

On 23 December 2015, yes 2015, Mr Mustard made the following informal representations in response to a PCN placed on a car.

He was not parked outside of 33 but outside of 37 (I suspect the traffic warden counted house numbers in the wrong direction) and accordingly the alleged contravention has not occurred. The suspension sign itself was at the boundary of 33 & 35. This is a process error. Please apologise to my client. (I have just re-read the suspension sign and it is patent nonsense. The house at 33 Russell Road will be about 5m wide. You cannot therefore suspend 20m of road outside no. 33, the other 15m of suspension could extend either way along the road, ambiguity is construed against the causer in consumer law).

Incidentally, my client parked up on 23 November and was on a course on 24 & 25 November so did not use their car during that time and the suspended bay sign was not in place when the car was parked. It would appear that the requisite notice was not given.

Please cancel the PCN.

Mr Mustard then kept an eye on the balance and it remained at £110 until the last time he checked, on 18 April 17.

Then suddenly, out of the blue, came a letter from the council, dated 25 April 17, as follows:

Mr Mustard is pleased that the council have now officially cancelled the PCN and tidied up their records & wonders how many more similar PCN are stuck in the system. It is also one file fewer in Mr Mustard's live drawer of PCN. He follows everything to the end.

The council were unable to proceed to enforce the PCN as they have to issue a Notice to Owner within 6 months of the PCN being served to the vehicle, and they didn't as they got the computer stuck at an earlier stage.

The council are also under a legal obligation to consider (and thus respond to) informal challenges.

In addition guidance from London Councils is that if there is a delay of more than 6 months at any stage in processing a PCN (except with the bailiff who gets 12 months by law) the PCN should be cancelled.

So we have correct behaviour albeit very slow.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Brent Council raking over old PCN for every last penny

can you remember what you were doing on 5 June 2012?

This letter from Brent, which is probably one of hundreds or thousands of them, is a desperate attempt to raise revenue from PCN which the council have themselves neglected to chase in a timely manner.

They need to take heed of this adjudication decision (one of a dozen similar ones which Mr Mustard knows of) 

Mr Mustard will make a complaint to the monitoring officer.

What you should do if you get one of these missives is to write and demand the date and destination of every statutory document so that you can work out what went wrong in the process. If the council left your PCN to rot at any stage for more than 6 months they should follow the guidance of London Councils (and the adjudication decision which is persuasive) and write off the PCN.

You would be justified in filing a witness statement that you did not receive a document because you can't remember it from 4 years ago.

Is it just about the money? oh yes.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

p.s. The Court fee is £8 not £7. Brent could at least threaten for the correct amount.

Human Rights Act - Article 6

When it comes to Penalty Charge Notices the council are required to get on with the processing in a businesslike manner (a vulgar person might call it the piss or get off the pot principle).

Barnet Council have not done so.

There isn't a strict time limit laid down in the Human Rights Act but PCN sent by post have to be issued within, usually, 28 days.

Notices to Owner have to be issued within 6 months with 56 days being best practice.

Replies to formal representations have to be within 56 days.

The Code of Practice of London Councils states that there shouldn't be a delay at any stage of more than 6 months and if there is a council should cancel a PCN. Barnet Council don't like doing that as it costs them money (is the way they see it).

So if we follow the Code of Practice there should be no more than 168 days between the Notice to Owner and the Charge Certificate or more than 365 days between the PCN and the Charge Certificate.

Here are 30 or so cases which ended up in front of the Adjudicator at PATAS. As soon as a motorist mentions delay and Human Rights the PCN gets binned. Do make sure you mention it.

PATAS	Hearing	PCN	NtO	C.C.	Delay - days
2130290209	03/08/13	23/04/11	28/07/11	09/01/13	531
2120323727	05/08/13	07/07/11	08/09/11	26/03/13	565
213026715A	06/08/13	15/04/11	21/07/11	29/01/13	558
2130267138	06/08/13	18/04/11	18/08/11	05/02/13	537
2130332444	06/08/13	25/06/11	23/08/11	05/02/13	532
2130314737	06/08/13	11/05/11	25/07/11	30/01/13	555
2130299597	06/08/13	24/04/11	03/08/11	09/01/13	525
2130296850	06/08/13	08/07/11	06/09/11	06/02/13	519
2130290934	06/08/13	03/06/11	16/08/11	05/02/13	539
2130267841	06/08/13	06/07/11	06/09/11	06/02/13	519
2130267386	06/08/13	24/06/11	23/08/11	05/02/13	532
213038799A	20/09/13	31/05/11	11/08/11	19/03/13	586
2130408943	24/09/13	22/09/11		05/04/13	561
2304453008	08/10/13	24/06/11	24/08/11	22/03/13	576
2130422172	13/10/13	15/09/11	25/10/11	04/04/13	527
2130443525	14/10/13	21/05/11		16/01/13	606
2130433667	16/10/13	03/06/11	16/08/11	05/02/13	539
2130504517	21/10/13	10/08/11	26/10/11	05/04/13	527
2130465073	24/10/13	26/09/11	03/11/11	08/04/13	522
2130473468	28/10/13	13/09/11	24/10/11	04/04/13	528
213044810A	28/10/13	02/06/11	16/08/11	20/03/13	582
2130473468	28/10/13	13/09/11		04/04/13	569
213044810A	28/10/13	02/06/11	16/08/11	20/03/13	582
2130473821	29/10/13	09/07/11		27/03/13	627
2130478310	29/10/13	13/07/11		27/03/13	623
2130512548	30/10/13	25/07/11	04/10/11	28/03/13	541
2130450837	30/10/13	12/05/11	26/07/11	12/03/13	595
2130522530	04/11/13	20/07/11		28/03/13	617
2130517621	04/11/13	26/07/11		28/03/13	611
2130491867	04/11/13	19/07/11		27/03/13	617
2130433496	04/11/13	13/07/11		27/03/13	623
2130450939	05/11/13	03/06/11		20/03/13	656
2130487870	08/11/13	19/04/11	11/07/11	09/01/13	548
2130434626	08/11/13	21/06/11	22/08/11	21/03/13	577
2130435844	19/11/13	06/06/11		15/03/13	648
2130504528	20/11/13	18/10/11	18/10/11	02/04/13	532
2130517177	26/11/13	24/09/11	01/11/11	08/04/13	524

So the number of days from PCN to Charge Certificate should not exceed 365 and the number of days from Notice to Owner to charge Certificate should not exceed 183. You will see that it frequently does. 656 days is the winner so far although Mr Mustard did have a case heading for 1,000 days but he fixed it without recourse to the Adjudicator.

Mr Mustard remains hopeful that if he continues to highlight the ways in which parking goes wrong, they will start to do it right.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard