Hammersmith & Fulham Council - delay: avoidable & otherwise

 

On 30 June you lend your car to a friend to pop to the chemists for you and they drive this way as they are from overseas, don't know the area very well and have cognitive dissonance when it comes to open roads which aren't open. The blue must go left sign doesn't help.

On 10 July H&F issue a PCN by post. The motorist sends it to Mr Mustard.

On 26 July Mr Mustard makes the formal representations on line. He then watches and waits whilst checking the PCN value each week so he might know if something happens (not a foolproof system).

On 14 November H&F decide to reject the representation. There is a 56 day time limits for parking PCNs but not for moving traffic ones. The council need to act with reasonable expedition.

On 2 December Mr Mustard starts a tribunal Appeal, one of his points is the unreasonable delay (motorists never getting more than 28 days to do anything).

The tribunal set a hearing date of 13 May . At least 5 days before then it is the duty of H&F to provide the tribunal with all of the paperwork. There is a completely redacted email on 2 May about the case but the contents are top secret for some unknown and unfathomable reason.

On 4 May H&F produce the evidence pack. They have to serve it by post on Mr Mustard as he can legally insist on printed evidence.

On 5 May H&F manage to get it into the post.

Mr Mustard was working away from home and so only received it when he returned on Saturday 9 May after a 200 mile drive. Dealing with it had to wait for a short while.

On Monday 11 May he filed the skeleton argument which was certainly faster moving than H&F. What he didn't know about was the emailing going on about him at H&F which has only recently come to light & is a post-mortem of the hearing.

 

Mr Mustard has asked H&F to note that he is not and does not claim to be a solicitor. The complaint that he asks for a PCN to be cancelled if the evidence pack isn't sent to him but to the motorist is because the tribunal ask the Appellant (the motorist) to provide their proper address for service. Naturally and quite properly Mr Mustard uses his home address as most motorists are overwhelmed by 50-100 page evidence packs. That comment by H&F displays their ignorance of procedure and law.

It is wrong that Mr Mustard does not submit arguments. You have to tick a box stating the category of your argument in order to start an Appeal at the tribunal. He does add extra arguments if they arise from the evidence pack, he would be failing the motorist if he didn't. The law allows for that.

At the hearing an employee of H&F started by trying to get the skeleton argument struck out but the adjudicator was having none of it, it being clear it had been produced in very short order indeed. The delay by H&F however, was fatal to the PCN:

 

Finally, Mr Mustard does not look for loopholes as suggested. He looks for mistakes by councils and as H&F abundantly demonstrate, they make loads of them.

If and when he is sent the unredacted internal emails, there will be another blog. Doubtless the emails paint Mr Mustard in as black a light as the redacting ink. 

Hammersmith & Fulham Council: following Mr M for ages

 

Following on from an interesting PCN tribunal hearing in May 2026 which tried to paint Mr Mustard in a bad light, Mr Mustard asked to see all emails which mentioned him, in the parking department, from 1 January 2025. He didn't expect there to be any from 2025 as he doesn't fight many H&F Council PCNs, he has records of 12 in 9 years. Here is the PCN in question.

That location description should be much simpler, who knows that CANw stands for Clean Air Neighbourhood west? (not many people). 

Why did Mr Mustard 'complain' about the signage? as it was turned away and couldn't therefore be seen by a driver.

Of course he will 'complain' (make representations about inadequacy) about the signage if it is invisible to drivers and leads then into error. He would not be representing his client very well if he didn't do so.

What H&F forgot whilst poking at Mr Mustard's behaviour is that there is a legal duty on them to erect and maintain adequate signage. 

They need to put their own house in order before they write sniffy internal emails about Mr Mustard who barely bothers H&F.

More to follow on this topic later given that an unredacted copy of the email has been requested, reasons for the redactions not having been given.

(Mr Mustard is not and has never claimed to be a 'lawyer' in the legally qualified sense of the word.  Elsewhere H&F described him as a 'solicitor' and he has objected to both descriptions being in their records which should only contain accurate data).

A cautious hurrah for Hammersmith & Fulham

Mr Mustard has a tribunal case relating to Imperial Road in Fulham. It is an easy restriction to miss as it just doesn't look like a road you shouldn't drive down.

Researching his case he looked at recent winning cases at the tribunal. One supported his over-signing argument and another a delay in responding to representations argument. Wednesday will tell us if either argument worked.

As a complete aside he found this in decision 2250382511:

The traffic order contains the following exemption so the Bolt / Uber deal is entirely sensible. Mr Mustard made an error, the traffic order exemption does not apply to Imperial Road but to the following streets in Schedule 2

Mr Mustard has just realised that gives him another ground of Appeal at the tribunal as the signs, below, don't tell you that you can enter for Boarding &/or Alighting or for Loading/Unloading.

The reason why the council have made the arrangement with Bolt & Uber must be because they were issuing, say, 100 PCNs a day and they were all being challenged and had to be cancelled which wasted a fee for each PCN paid to London Councils (about 50p a time) and whatever they had to pay the contractor for issuing each PCN and then cancelling it. A simple matter of administrative convenience and finance.

Mr Mustard is now wondering how far the council have made this administrative arrangement know to mini-cab companies within Hammersmith & Fulham and further afield in London generally. Mr Mustard will ask the question of the council.

In the meantime, if you have a mini-cab company in London or have to deliver within the borough (John Lewis must be there quite often and Harrods and other major department stores) you could start emailing your vehicle movements to the council using the email address of enquiries@lbhfparking.com thus destroying the belief in the mind of the council, necessary for the issuance of a PCN, that you have committed a contravention.

The end, for now. 

Imperial Road, Fulham

 

Mr Mustard used to drive across London quite a lot but no longer does. He has in the past used Imperial Road to get to Wandsworth Bridge but suggests you don't try it now as the council camera will get you and send you a lovely PCN in the post for £130, it will sting a bit.

Mr Mustard doesn't want to get embroiled in brutal LTN (low traffic neighbourhood) arguments (he is a cyclist as well as a motorist) but does want to say well done to Hammersmith & Fulham council as unlike other boroughs who have left residents unable to take the most direct route to their homes, H&F have allowed for residents and their visitors to enter through points which are prohibited to long distance traffic, see the clear map above.

If you have to visit your granny, or grandad, or any other resident relative, you can get a visitor permit that allows you to take the direct route without risk of a penalty. For that the council are to be commended and other councils should take note.

The explanation on the council website is here. So that's the praise part of the blog written.

Now the less postive part. Two contacts of Mr Mustard did go through one of the checkpoints. Mr Mustard made representations in both cases that signage was inadequate, in November and December 2020 respectively. For a parking PCN the council are legally obliged to serve a response to formal representations (those made in response to a Notice to Owner) within 56 days, there is no such time limit in the legislation for moving traffic contraventions but adjudicators normally find against the council once 90 days have passed by. The 90 day periods duly passed by for both PCNs and Mr Mustard smiled to himself. Then finally H&F stirred themselves and cancelled both PCNs without mentioning they had taken an age to put pen to paper (finger to keyboard in reality).

The letter doesn't actually say why they decided to cancel and is 'without prejudice' to their position, what position, of being incompetent? 'Without prejudice' means the letter cannot be produced in Court but PCNs don't go to Court so what is the point of including such nonsense?

Mr Mustard showed the letter to his Solicitor to see what he made of it and his opinion was:

'One and a half pages of hot air.  Why not just say we have decided to cancel it.'

Not very often you get a free legal opinion.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

White City ( Hammersmith & Fulham council ridiculousness )

So you have your car stolen when staying with family and naturally you report it stolen to the police as soon as you come out of the house and find it missing (can you find something which is missing?). The car gets smashed up and dumped in a White City council car park. Here is a photo of it (the black rectangle is where the numberplate was to be found, sitting there casually).

Now consider that the airbags were deployed, the front numberplate is on the bonnet, the front bumper is resting on the ground and clearly a serious accident has occurred.

What should a traffic warden do? Check the stolen cars database or issue a PCN? Traffic warden number 1 decided to issue a PCN (no there aren't ticket targets but you can see why the public think there are).

So did number 2, just 4 days later

and number 3 on the very next day

then we go a whole fortnight before traffic warden number 4 arrives (either the car park isn't patrolled very often or there are some traffic wardens with gumption)

 not traffic warden number 5 though some 3 days later.

The following month the police somehow come across the car (an ANPR equipped police car perhaps?) and give it to the insurance company who now own it, having paid out on the claim. The police take the five PCN and say they will sort them out. Somewhere the system breaks down as all 5 PCN are live with £195 owing on each one (150% of PCN value) on the H&F council website except for one which has been sent to bailiffs so is £202 which with bailiff's fees is now £512, which is how my client heard about it, the new owners of their former residence having been knocked up out of bed at 6am (the earliest time that a bailiff can call). The bailiff gets a phone number from the new occupier for the wife of my client but will not listen to reason about the car being stolen and not being her responsibility (she wisely refuses to give the bailiff a new address). A copy of the warrant (which is invalid in any event as it has the wrong address on it) is refused by the bailiff until she pays it (naughty bailiff, there is an absolute right to know by what authority you demand payment). Luckily the bailiff can't clamp Mr Mustard's client's car as he no longer has one.

Mr Mustard will be logging complaints with the council about their own actions as well as the bailiff's but he likes to share with you some of the stupidity he has to deal with.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update: 15 May 15

Out of the blue H&F have just cancelled these 5 PCN (as they jolly well should have done)