Lewisham lose

 

A long battle which ended up with an order for disclosure.

One wonders why the council fought for so long to keep the cctv of one of their own vehicles out of the public domain as the image of the driver wasn't likely to be that clear, their name was already known, and a pixellated version could easily have been supplied at the time of first request.

The bigger question is what the council were up to sending a PCN to themselves, a monumentally pointless PCN which involves taking money out of the council's left pocket and putting it into the right one. All this time and expense wasted.

Are Harrow Council deliberately incompetent?

Readers with good memories will recall that Mr Mustard wrote about Harrow being horrible at the start of 2018, the back story is here.

It might have been the case that Harrow Council just got a little bit behind and their slowness was a one off which they should then have fixed. Unfortunately that is not the case as twice this week Mr Mustard has been contacted by clients who hadn't heard from Harrow Council for a year and then suddenly they did. If his clients thought the PCNs were over due to council neglect they would be correct in principle but wrong in practice as Mr Mustard checks every PCN twice a month to make sure nothing gets away from him.

The case with the worse delay has the following timeline:

You can see that Harrow Council have been sat on their hands for 33 months.

The Order for Recovery was sent to the same address as the PCN. Luckily the recipient had not moved home. If you had moved home in 2018 would you notify the council of your change of address from 2016? No, I didn't think you would. Nor would you have a postal redirection for more than 12 months, most people probably only have 3 or 6 months of redirection given how so much documentation now arrives by email.

Mr Mustard recommends that if you have had a Harrow PCN in the last 5 years that you contact them and ask them for the number (give them your car registration and date of purchase) and ask them to tell you the current balance of every PCN ever issued since you bought the vehicle and if it is not zero, to tell you the dates of all the statutory documents they have issued.

If you have moved you could do this even if you don't think you have had a PCN as it may have gone to your old address. Mr Mustard also recommends leaving a note for the incoming resident with your new address, as he did recently for a house he sold and he left a few parking visitor vouchers to help them in their moving in period - they were very pleased and have already dropped a final utility bill letter through his door. (Another tip, he read the gas, electric & water meters hours before they moved in and left a note of them at the property to save the buyers the time of performing the same task.)

What happens next to a PCN, if you don't file a witness statement (or statutory declaration in moving traffic cases) is that a bailiff will be instructed. If the bailiff finds the car, and most people don't move far and bailiff vans have ANPR, is that it will be clamped. As all of the paperwork will have been sent to your old address and you haven't been served with at least one obligatory statutory document Mr Mustard does not think you have been properly served but it is you who has the problem, a wheel clamp on your vehicle, which you may need urgently, so you end up paying. This is grossly unfair.

In this way, by being incompetent, Harrow Council and their bailiffs profit at your expense. That is unjust.

Once Mr Mustard has the current PCN sorted out, he will file a complaint with the council and if they don't apologise he will go to the LGO. He will also complain to the Iinformation Commissioner as the council, having abandoned enforcement of the PCN by their failure to act expeditiously, they no longer have the right to process your data.

After writing this blog post Mr Mustard decided to look through decisions made at the tribunal in October 19 & he found this one:

Councils are meant to learn from the decisions of Adjudicators, Harrow haven't learnt a thing and are plouging ahead with PCNs which they know is prejudicial.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Once more unto the (data) breach

suitably blurred email address so the data breach is not repeated

When the email about consulting on teachers being allowed to have resident permits was sent out to hundreds of residents in batches of 50+ the email addresses of all recipients were put in the "to" box and so were visible to all the other parties, as the picture above to give you an idea of the number of email addresses. If the bcc box had been used there would not have been a data breach but it is an amateur way of going on as this sort of error is prone to occur (Mr Mustard met a friend the other day who had just recovered from a long operation and sent, he thought, a txt to a common aquantance with a report on how the patinet was recovering but accidentally txted it to the patient themselves, doh! Luckily it was not at all negative although the patient did suggest that Mr Mustard could have said he was "looking fabulous" - he will from now on even if he looks like death warmed up) and there is special software that can be purchased for customer contact and/or the mail merge functionality built into Outlook (and presumably in similar email software) could be used:

A schoolboy error having occurred the council response was to send round an email asking you to delete the message thus guaranteeing the exact opposite as it must be interesting if the council want you to get rid of it.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I refer to our email regarding the engagement for the introduction of a School Parking permit sent today.

We are aware that the email has gone out with other email addresses contained within the address list and sincerely apologise for this error.

We would ask that you kindly delete this email from your inbox and in your deleted items.

Again we apologise sincerely for this error which was caused by human error. The Council takes data protection responsibilities extremely seriously and this incident is now being investigated by our Information Management Team.

Again we apologise for this error.

Yours Sincerely,

On Behalf of Information Management

As to whether or not the council should report itself to the Information Commissioner, the council's view is this:

This incident is not of the level of severity that warrants reporting to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

A number of people were livid and emailed Mr Mustard. Mr Mustard thinks the data breach is a serious one due to the volume of email addresses involved. This isn't the first data breach that the council have perpetrated. At least one person (not Mr Mustard whose email addrees is well known so isn't really breached by publication) is reporting the council to the Information Commissioner.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Can you keep a secret? Mr Mustard can (if he wants to)

So here we go again. The second secret meeting of a wholly owned subsidiary of the "Open & Transparent" Barnet Council.

Mr Mustard asked to see the papers for the meeting of 18/12/13 because he thought they must be interesting. Barnet Homes refused. Mr Mustard involved the ICO. Barnet Homes had its mind changed. In an email from Barnet Homes, a tacit admission of intending to be secretive.

There was no notice given to the public.

Eventually Mr Mustard got a copy of the email which invited directors to attend. The redactions have been done by Mr Mustard as he didn't think that even board directors should have their email addresses posted to the internet for public consumption.

"Tezza"? - ffs

Who is Gerard Naughton?; not a board member. (Ah thank you LinkedIn, the interim head of business support. There were other invited & attending interim staff: Karen Patten - interim Director of Care & Support: Helen Astle - interim Director of Corporate Services)

A very odd meeting. Not taking the minutes of the previous meeting for approval and not going to take any minutes at this one.

Next, the agenda:

If you know what the item of business is why list it as "Any Other Business" and not under its own item?

Then finally Mr Mustard was provided with the minutes, the ones that were not taken.

Robert Heath used to supply the gas service for Paragon so perhaps that is why an interest was declared?

What was so controversial in these minutes that the meeting was decided upon as being completely secret? One would expect that a HSE investigation would be discussed at board level. Maybe it was this one?

http://press.hse.gov.uk/2014/barnets-housing-firm-fined-for-safety-failings/

Mr Mustard can't see anything controversial about a relationship with the BEBP.

If you know what the Directors of Barnet Homes were so petrified of becoming public knowledge, and any other items could have been discussed and not minuted, do feel free to create an email address in a false name and send an email to mrmustard@zoho.com

Having had to look at the directorships of the various

Barnet Homes Ltd (BH)

Your Choice (Barnet) Ltd (YC) &

TheBarnetGroup Ltd (TBG)

companies Mr Mustard thought you might like a table as the websites of the three companies muddle all the Directors up together as one Board.

Name - per website	BH	YC	TBG
Terry Rodgers	Y	Y	Y
Tracey Lees	Y	Y	Y
John Marshall			Y
Ross Houston			Y
Nigel Turner		Y	Y
Rebecca Toloui		Y
David Atta	Y
Angela Purcell	Y
Washington Ainabe	Y
Bob Colquhoun
Troy Henshall	Y	Y	Y
Jeffrey Baker	Y

Tracey Lees has just left so she will probably be replaced as a Director shortly by the incoming Chief Exec.

John Marshall & Ross Houston are councillors.

Bob Colquhoun is listed on the website as a member of the board (of Directors for that is what the board is) but isn't listed as a Director at Companies House (having resigned from Barnet Homes on 1/2/2012) and LinkedIn locates him in Aberdeen which isn't exactly local. No wonder he didn't attend.

Troy Hensall is listed under "Officers" (staff) but he is a Director at Companies House; all very odd.

A Krishnaswamy Murali was appointed as director on 3/11/14 subject to references and then resigned on 19/1/15 so perhaps they weren't up to snuff. If anyone knows any other reason do email mrmustard@zoho.com

Mr Mustard somehow thinks that no further confidential Board Meetings will he held.

A blogger to concentrate on Barnet Homes & Your Choice is still needed as the existing ones can only be spread so thinly.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard