Newham Council - not staffed by Knights of the Road

This story concerns a road near the Tate and Lyle factory, not all that far from the Thames Barrier.  It is a rather industrial area sandwiched between the river and docks.

It could do with a weekly wash.

The sign that was there in 2020 was nowhere to be seen two years later. Local workers will naturally and legally take advantage of free parking. It seems that signs at this location disappear or are vandalised quite often. The council's solution is to put new signs up, send a traffic warden or two down there straightaway, issue PCNs and then tow en masse. Naughty, as they should wait a day before enforcing, but an adjudicator had their measure.

This is Mr Goring's only entry in the PCN Appeal register so we can be fairly sure he is a victim not a sign stealer.

Mr Mustard doesn't know why he read this particular decision on 22 August but he did and it piqued his interest so he sent Newham Council some questions.

Very sensibly, the response was provided by way of a table which Mr Mustard has rearranged into PCN time order.

Look at that efficiency, 6 PCNs issued in 12 minutes. One traffic warden could do that but more likely there were 2 or 3. Removals also at pace. There must have been two lorries as there were removals 4 and 5 minutes apart.

The second PCN is that of Mr Goring. Two other people made representations but then didn't fight the rejection at the tribunal. If they had, they might have got their money back. 

Four motorists didn't even bother to try and challenge their PCNs. If all seven had gone to the tribunal three or four at least would have won. There was no risk of having to pay further monies. If you are towed you pay the 50% in order to release your vehicle, which freezes the PCN and you also pay £200 for the tow. If ever you are towed you must make representations as they are a free throw of the dice (unless you are monumentally stupid or selfish and parked on a zebra crossing).

Assuming everyone recovered their vehicles on the same day, so didn't pay £40 for overnight storage, Newham Council raked in £265 * 6 = £1,590

This is what parking has become. An immoral machine for sucking money out of the wallets and purses of innocent people. We need an independent external body to police the behaviour of councils and contractors and to force them to behave in a proper manner.

This ridiculous logo was on the bottom of the council's letter:

Best start building Newham Council as you are patently and obviously unfair.

The end.

Unprofessional, immoral, pure revenue raising

This is a car park which Mr Mustard knows well as his office was in Moxon Street, EN5 for two decades. he remembers when this was just a waste ground. Now it is neatly painted out into bays, many too small for an average car but that is a story for another day. This car park is intended to encourage short term shopping by offering one hour of free parking if you press the green button on the meter and obtain a voucher to put in the windscreen.

Old sign - business permit spaces do exist there now - avoid them unless you have such a permit

It is somewhat academic though if you leave by 9am whether or not you place a little piece of paper in your car windscreen as you cannot have been there for more than one chargeable hour as charging commences at 8am. The council wouldn't send traffic wardens to this car park before 9am would they? You bet your bottom dollar they would because it is all about the dollars, or pounds as we have here in the UK. How many times have they done this, issued a PCN before 9am? Only 114 times.

Some people won't have paid the PCN and some will have ended up paying at £60 this being a lower value contravention than being on a double yellow at £110 (take note, a lesser penalty for not paying where you should than being on yellow lines or in residents bays). If we average out the tickets at £30 the council have raked in an unjustified £3,420

They will also have annoyed up to 114 residents (although some folks may have been from out of town) and guaranteed themselves terrible scores in surveys of resident satisfaction.

The parking industry are trying to convince the public of this:

'the aim is to change perceptions, challenge misconceptions about the parking sector and local government’s role and make the parking experience a better one for all concerned'

but it isn't going to work when the public think that councils are spivs, out to rob them, are not fair and traffic wardens act like they have in the Moxon Street car park, giving out what may* be technically correct PCNs, but which are self evidently manifestly unjust tickets. There is no misconception about the lows to which many local authorities will stoop.

The council read Mr Mustard's tweets and hence his blog. Please instruct your traffic wardens not to set foot in the Moxon St car park before 9am. Much obliged, thank you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

*'May' is used quite specifically. If you get caught in the first hour do consult Mr Mustard by email mrmustard@zoho.com

Up the junction in Enfield

Is this a valid yellow box junction? Needless to say Enfield Council are still issuing PCNs here, at the supposed junction of Southbury Road and Eaton Road but clearly there isn't a junction, so there isn't a need to keep the area clear, although most people where, but the light blue car owner was sent a PCN.

A 'box junction' (at this locale) means 'an area of carriageway where the marking has been placed and which is at a junction between two or more roads'. 

That is the case normally whilst Eaton Road is open to traffic but Mr Mustard would argue firstly that if you can't drive down enter or exit Eaton Rd then temporarily there is no junction and there is, of course, no traffic management purpose to any PCNs issued whilst the side road is coned off. The only effect of leaving the camera running is to raise revenue.

Mr Mustard has been agitating for some time about the way that moving traffic systems work. The cctv computer controlled camera watches the footage 24/7 and selects clips which the computer programmer defines as a contravention and once a day a person is meant to watch the clips and come to a reasoned decision that a contravention did take place and that a PCN should be issued.

It is possible to automate the entire process of issuing such PCNs and Mr Mustard thinks that may be happening. Alternatively the people who watch the clips simply say yes to everything. There is no common sense. Mr Mustard thinks that operators assume the cctv is correct, of course the motorist is guilty, and ticks yes to a PCN.

This is the sort of immoral behaviour we have come to expect from the private parking sector, a local authority should be beyond criticism at all times.

Enfield Council - hang your heads in shame and pro-actively cancel all PCNs and refund monies paid for any PCNs issued during the days when access was not possible.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Enfield's response:

 

Parking Services were not made aware* of the closure of Eton (sic, Eaton) Road by our Highways Department and only found out last week.  We went through a process of cancelling all 247 PCNs which was completed on the 4^th October.  We have received a communication from your neighbour which was logged on our system on 6^th Ocotber. The case was reopened this morning to send a response to confirm that the PCN has been cancelled and case is now closed again.

*Parking must all use public transport to get to work then? Mr M.

Common sense has prevailed.

It takes 18 months for Ealing Council to do the right thing

The above image is Ealing Council's reverse date order log of all events for one PCN. If you look at the seventh line from the bottom you will see that it is a statutory document which has been returned. The only document issued at that stage was a postal PCN for a bus lane contravention. That should signal a pause in the process whilst the council establishes why the document came back (somewhere between the DVLA and Ealing Council the address got mangled, it was correctly recorded at DVLA). Did it stop the process? did it hell as like. The very next day the council issued the Enforcement Notice (not to be confused with a Notice of Enforcement) which is the bus lane equivalent of a parking Notice to Owner. From 15 October onwards every action taken by Ealing Council was ultra vires, 'beyond their powers', or just plain illegal to you and me, as well as immoral but council parking departments are often a moral free zone.

Mr Mustard's chronology in forward date order is easier to follow:

Following the filing of a witness statement, the council get the chance to reconsider their position and cancel, the smart choice, or to refer the matter to the tribunal. They chose the latter and then got hit with one of Mr Mustard's skeleton arguments, the type of argument which a certain adjudicator has said looks nothing like a skeleton, it being more than bare bones:

At this point many councils recognise they are in for a battle and gracefully withdraw, especially as failure looked inevitable on the PCN service point alone, but no, Ealing Council let the matter go to a hearing. Mr Mustard had 6 hearings that day and didn't expect that disposing of Ealing would slow him down much. The Adjudicator was more than fair to Ealing, who had been given 7 days notice of the skeleton argument so had ample time to respond to it, and he asked them to clarify two points which was too much for Ealing. Finally after 18 months of almost relentless pursuit (a bit of a hiatus in the middle) they withdrew the Appeal which automatically means the cancellation of the PCN.

Late is usually regarded as within 4 days of the hearing.

What a palaver, one which Mr Mustard is never defeated by, he simply reacts properly and in time to every piece of paper.

Ealing Council were bang out of order in continuing to escalate the case after the return of the postal PCN. Just looking at the file at that time would have revealed the address error and they could & should have sent a fresh PCN to the correct address or cancelled (a fresh PCN might have been out of time but that isn't the question today). The way they were headed the matter would have been with the bailiff before long and bailiffs don't listen to not had the PCN stories, they just take your car (generally speaking). Ealing Council are guilty, in Mr Mustard's view, of an abuse of process. What a pity there isn't a regular external audit scheme to check that they are not misusing their powers.

Councils have more power than they can be trusted with.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard