PCNs in London double in a decade !

Here are the stats taken from Annual reports issued by London Councils, the mouthpiece for councils in London and the body which has various statutory functions.

Bare numbers are hard to follow so here are some charts to make it digestible.

First, a chart of the overall numbers, please keep your eye on the scales on the left as they are all different:

The dotted line is Excel's idea of the trend. Anyone can see they are on a steady upward trajectory apart from the year to March 2021 which is when covid hit.

Next, parking PCNs

Again down in covid when lots of us stayed home

London is getting more built up and that means more people and more cars which will explain some of the increase. The main driver is, in Mr Mustard's opinion, simply the number of traffic wardens on the street or, for TfL, if they added extra cameras on Red Routes, which they have.

Next is bus lanes of which there have been a few new ones over the period:

Finally the main reason for the increase, moving traffic PCNs for stopping in box junctions, not turning in the direction shown by blue arrows, doing U-turns where banned and 'school streets' and 'Low traffic neighbourhoods' which clearly aren't low traffic, they don't stop the unwanted traffic, they just punish it, deliberate and innocent error alike. Mr Mustard suspects that the number of these will drop as Londoners get to know where they all are and change their routes and/or travel times to avoid PCNs.

PCNs are meant to be a deterrent.

Clearly they aren't otherwise there wouldn't be nearly 10 million PCNs a year issued in London. Mr Mustard's clients, or potential clients, have done their best 99% of the time.

Just to get a ball park idea of the money involved let's assume that every PCN is for £160 and that they all get paid at the 50% value.

9,457,848 times £160 at 50% =  £756,627,840

That is money which the government would otherwise have to give councils towards their costs or that they would have to raise through council tax.

Of course, the whole sum isn't profit, there is a massive industry and hundreds or thousands of council staff behind this. 

When he has time away from his day job and the 50 hours a week spent fighting PCNs, he will look at the major costs of Barnet Council to collect their 278,209 PCNs issued in a year.

What is abundantly clear is that PCNs don't work. The stick has failed. We need a different solution.

The end, for now. 

 

 

The judge is the judge (not you!)

 

This Appeal was about a lorry exceeding the Greater London 18 tonne weight limit without a permit. The penalty is £550 so is well worth fighting. The company in question has a lot of lorries and so Ivan has been retained to help fight the PCNs on a commercial basis.

That means that if there has been vexatious, frivolous or wholly unreasonable behaviour a costs application can be made as the company has incurred some. Mr Mustard no longer requests costs as his clients don't incur any, their outlay being a voluntary charity donation to the North London Hospice.

The main reason why Mr Mustard has brought this decision to your attention, another one that he read at random, is because of the final paragraph in which London Councils, the umbrella body for all the London boroughs, seem to have suggested that the adjudicator, a qualified lawyer, and a long serving adjudicator, will be told what to do by an Appellant's representative.

The main reason why Ivan wins about 97% of the time (a few % above Mr Mustard) is that he has an outstanding knowledge of parking and traffic law and puts huge time and effort into presenting his cases. The duty of a representative is not to be partisan but to assist the Adjudicator and the same goes for enforcement authorities. If therefore there are prior decisions both for and against your particular argument, if you present one you should present the other. They aren't precedents in any event although they may be legally persuasive. An adjudicator can decide two apparently identical cases in different ways.

Telling the Adjudicator what to decide is a stupid idea, you might be back in front of them next week and you want your borderline cases to go your way so best be polite and helpful at all times. Mr Mustard tries to be the same when he loses as when he wins.

What London Councils have shown here is a typical attitude of enforcement authorities that having issued a PCN, no matter how unjustified, it must be paid, they cannot possibly be wrong. Well, news for them, they can.

The end.

PCN values in London - too high, too low or about right?

London Councils is the umbrella body for London Boroughs, it has some statutory roles when it comes to parking and is looked to for guidance on toher matters. You can find out more about them on their website, here.

They are running a survey on PCN values as they describe below

Here is a link to information about the survey in case you wish to respond.

Mr Mustard has responded and also sent an extra email, which he shows you below.

 

The end.

How to get a bus lane PCN in London cancelled

It was a foul night but Ealing Council still wanted a bus lane PCN to be paid despite the terrible visibility causing a motorist to cut across the last part of a bus lane, one he knew was out there somewhere but couldn't see. This is a PCN that should either not have been issued or else cancelled exercising the council's discretion; no chance, they are desperate for your £130 or £65, the greedy fools.

This is the second consecutive blog in which Mr Mustard pays tribute to another PCN expert, one Ivan Murray-Smith, who unlike Mr Mustard didn't take it for granted that councils (& TfL) in London had done the necessary paperwork to properly authorise their use of bus lane cctv but checked and decided that officialdom had erred, big time.

The principal legislation which pertains to bus lanes is the London Local Authorities Act 1996 (as amended) which contains two provisions as to cameras.

The first is that it is a 'prescribed device' and the second is that it is 'approved' by the Secretary of State. Mr Mustard was going to set out the particulars for you but they are comprehensively discussed in the adjudicator's extremely well considered written decision in Duthieuw v London Borough of Ealing.

 

Before discussing the decision Mr Mustard just wants to ask all drivers to stay out of the bus lane during the hours of operation. No decision at the tribunal is a precedent and although this is a key case it is still possible that there will be a change in legislation which will change the legal position. (No decision by an adjudicator sets a precedent as that is what the legislation says but a key case on the tribunal website will almost certainly be followed by other adjudicators as the chief adjudicator must think it is of general application or it surely couldn't be so published).

Look at this, the seriousness of the challenge to one PCN worth £130 worried Ealing Council so much that they threw a barrister at the problem, a perfectly civil gentleman who Mr Mustard happened to see at the tribunal as he was there for another case. The barrister will have cost a pretty penny, far more than the £130 that Ealing would have not garnered if they had looked at the foul weather and cancelled the PCN in the first instance. Ealing weren't fighting Ivan alone, a whole host of experts were rowed up behind him in the shadows.

The barrister was given a hopeless case, the legislation is clear, and it would have been a travesty of justice if Ealing had won. There have been a dozen cases on this ground which each separate local authority had lost. Mr Mustard had deployed the argument to good effect in August against Barnet, some 3 months prior to the Duthieuw decision (and thank goodness for people like Davy Duthieuw who are prepared to risk losing £130 for the good of every other motorist and Ivan who spends a huge amount of his spare time helping the public for free).

Now you can see the argument, the camera is prescribed but not approved. The umbrella body for councils in London is called 'London Councils' (yes, not at all original). They covered this point in one of their committee meetings which Mr Mustard listened to on line as they are public. A small note was buried within the copious meeting papers

They left the word 'London' off the name of the legislation

and this simply didn't get discussed at the meeting.

This sets out the legal position. Councils in London and TfL can legally issue PCNs but if anyone makes representations against the Enforcement Notice and then, if rejected, starts an Appeal to an independent adjudicator at London Tribunals the council concerned can't produce any legally admissible cctv evidence so the Appeal must be allowed and the PCN must be cancelled (as a first step you will have to challenge the PCN and then get a rejection and wait for the Enforcement Notice some 30+ days later, so be patient). This is almost certain to be the answer if you enlist the help of an expert by posting your PCN on the sillily named but very useful website PePiPoo here where one of several selfless experts will step forward to help you for free, save for a charitable donation directly to their favourite charity.

The opinion of a solicitor friend of Mr Mustard's, a proper big city lawyer, now retired but helping various charities, was:

"With all due deference to Mr Rhimes, who did his best with what he had to work with, the 'it's not admissible, but I can fix that by watching it for you' argument is one of the daftest things I've read all year."

Now, let's assume you have a bus lane PCN or Enforcement Notice, what should you do? Fight it, you may have to fight both documents but the challenge to send is the same for both (you are allowed to repeat your arguments and need to for consistency). Go onto the council website, if they have one, otherwise email or write, and say this

'I deny the contravention occurred. I put the enforcement authority to proof that they have a valid Traffic Management Order and that signs were in place at the start of the bus lane which put me on notice of the time and days of operation of the bus lane.

Furthermore, I deny that the enforcement authority has the necessary approval of the Secretary of State in order to allow for their cctv evidence to be produced to an independent adjudicator and so ultimately the PCN must be cancelled. I rely on the key case listed on the London Tribunals website of Duthieuw v London Borough of Ealing - case 2220486482'

and add any other grounds which apply to your particular situation.

Any sensible enforcement authority will recognise a motorist who knows their rights and will cancel the PCN so as not to waste c. £30 of tribunal fees (which they can't get back from the motorist as you are not being frivolous, vexatious or wholly unreasonable and so costs cannot be awarded against you).

This failure by enforcement authorities won't last for ever. What are you waiting for, do your representations now, today, don't dilly dally.

The end.

p.s. outside Greater London you only get a PCN to fight, no Notice of Enforcement, as their bus lane legislation is different and this blog post does not apply.

This blog applies if you were filmed within this map and sent a Bus lane PCN and/or Enforcement Notice including by TfL.

 

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

Grenfell Tower

Mr Mustard is nothing if not a practical soul and he didn't want any further misery (such as a bailiff taking away the only remaining asset of a survivor of the fire because the statutory notices didn't reach the vehicle owner) heaped on the survivors so he emailed a contact at London Councils, the umbrella body for councils in London, as follows:

I thought it would be a welcome relief for people who have been through a horrific experience if every London enforcement authority were to have a look through its PCN files and cancel every PCN where Grenfell Tower was the DVLA registered address.

I would do it for humanitarian reasons if it were me but the PR would do the cause of council parking and traffic enforcement no harm at all as it gets battered when things go wrong (often by me!) and councils could show that they don't just care about the money.

If some sort of concession is already being discussed do please let me know.

If you are not the best man to deal with this email, please pass it on to whoever is, within London Councils.

It wasn't long before a reply came:

Thank you for your email.

I can confirm that we have been liaising with RBKC (Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea) and a message regarding the cancellation of outstanding PCNs, warrants etc. for Grenfell Tower has been sent to all London boroughs. I can confirm that this has been met with a positive response.

I can also confirm that following discussions that RBKC have had with DVLA, the DVLA has made the decision to suppress the vehicle record for any vehicles identified as being registered to the two post codes for Grenfell Tower. As a result of this, where a vehicle keeper enquiry has been submitted on one of these vehicles (and hopefully this will not happen), the DVLA will only provide a notification letter that the vehicle is registered to this address but no keeper details will be provided.

London Councils agree that those impacted by the terrible events at Grenfell Tower do not need the added worry and burden of parking and traffic fines and we are all trying to ensure that this will not happen.

Mr Mustard had also been in touch with Royal Mail on twitter and they DM'd him their response but it is now available publicly:

Mr Mustard is quick to criticise when things are wrong but is pleased to see that, after the initial emergency response, minds were turned to possible repercussions. 

To RKBC, London Councils, Royal Mail & DVLA in particular, he says 'well done'.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Copyright in sets of meeting minutes

Once Mr Mustard found out about the warning circular sent by London Councils, some questions came to his mind. Here they are along with the answers.

3. Similarly to the anonymous employee who was over-using his/her initiative Mr Mustard thinks that the circular that was sent breached his expectation that the circular would not have been sent and his name effectively disclosed.

4. No point in having in-house FOI experts if you don't ask them the necessary questions at the material time.

5. There was no need to do anything other than respond to the enquiries actually made.

6. So the circular that was sent should never have been sent as providing advice on FOI is not part of the remit of London Councils. All London boroughs have their own experts or access to them.

7. In short, Yes.

8. Very odd that different boroughs sent Mr Mustard minutes with different dates, none of which were correct.

9. London Councils were blind.

11. Oh no, no copyright in the minutes and yet the following bodies told Mr Mustard there was so he could not have them. 

Ealing Council, Enfield Council, Harrow Council, Hounslow Council, Lambeth Council, Lewisham Council, Newham Council, Sutton Council, Waltham Forest Council & Wandsworth Council.

What a shocking lack of knowledge of FOI and Copyright.

13. There was discussion of the subject of minutes and copyright though. The next set of minutes will be interesting. Want to bet that they are even briefer now?

Parking departments can run from Mr Mustard but they can't hide.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

London Councils - not applicant blind

When Mr Mustard was struggling to obtain the full set of documents from London Councils and the names of the parking managers or substitutes who attended, he decided to go straight to the councils concerned as they would, if the employees were senior, have to tell him their names. He did this on 13 September.

On the very same day London Councils had heard from some boroughs of Mr Mustard's* request for the minutes etc. and they decided to email other councils in London to warn them of the likely request. Bo so doing, they effectively outed Mr Mustard as having already asked London Councils the same question. The whole point of FOI is that it is applicant blind. It isn't when bodies take it upon themselves to send circulars like the one above.

What London Councils didn't point out was that they told Mr Mustard there weren't any documents (in addition to the agenda and minutes) appertaining to the meeting. That was odd, and wrong, as the minutes themselves referred to two documents about PCN codes and utility suspension charges.

The councils around London weren't holding the document on behalf of London Councils but in their own capacity as parking authorities for their own areas.

Mr Mustard though that the 'if they are still held' comment was an unspoken suggestion to chuck away any minutes that individual officers had taken so that they did not have to be disclosed. Certainly many council did not have any notes to disclose.

You can rely on Mr Mustard to battle to the end. The denouement is coming soon.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

*Whether or not any indivdual council who consulted London Councils released Mr Mustard's name is not a question he asked.

Parking managers' seminar - why bother going?

Notes made by the typical parking manager

Those parking manager seminars organised by London Councils, the umbrella body for councils in London, which has certain statutory roles and others for lobbying, take place once a quarter. There is so much material in the June 16 meeting that Mr Mustard is still blogging about it (and there's more).

When he hit the buffers getting the minutes from London Councils he wrote to every council and asked many of them for the notes taken by whoever attended (they didn't have to be the actual parking manager) and he expected to receive pages of detailed notes given that the minutes were really just bullet points. Surely you couldn't go to such a meeting, when you know the minutes will be pretty thin, without taking detailed notes and then informing the rest of your team as to what happened. Some of the attendees might as well just have gone straight to the pub, rather than wait until after the meeting. Here is some information about what the representative for each borough made in the way of notes on the day and/or communicated to their colleagues:

Barking & Dagenham - One A4 page of clear notes. The funniest part "No significant adjudication, just general ramblings about how unfair the Adjudicators are (If motorists and councils are both unhappy the tribunal decisions are probably about right)

Bexley - One A4 page of clear notes.

City of London - A dozen lines of which five were about QR codes and the consensus was there is no appetite for them on PCN.

Enfield - Made no notes at the meeting or thereafter. Mr Mustard wonders how the attendee managed to remember anything that wasn't covered in the brief minutes. They might as well have stayed in Enfield.

Harrow - Made no notes at the meeting, there were two attendees. Mr Mustard wonders how the attendees managed to remember anything that wasn't covered in the brief minutes. They might as well have stayed in Harrow.

Hounslow - Made no notes at the meeting. Mr Mustard wonders how the attendee managed to remember anything that wasn't covered in the brief minutes. They might as well have stayed in Hounslow.

Lambeth - There were no notes made / retained by Lambeth Council at the meeting.

Lewisham - No notes made available to Mr Mustard so presumed there aren't any.

Merton - "Did not make any notes regarding or during the meeting." The attendee might as well have stayed in Merton.

Newham - 10 lines of scant notes.

Richmond - "Did not make any notes regarding or during the meeting." (the identical wording to Merton - perhaps they collaborated)

Waltham Forest - Made no notes at the meeting, there were two attendees. Mr Mustard wonders how the attendees managed to remember anything that wasn't covered in the brief minutes. They might as well have stayed in Waltham Forest.

Wandsworth - "There are no recoverable notes made by individual officers at the meeting."

They might as well have stayed in Wandsworth.

Mr Mustard will, on an unknown future date, ask again for the notes taken by attendees to these meetings. Wise managers would start to take some notes and communicate the interesting points of the meeting to their colleagues on return to their offices.

The public are paying for 30+ managers to get together for a chin wag, the least we can expect is some diligence and a 100% attendance from all councils in London.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

London Councils give a little - but not much

You may recall Mr Mustard's blog of October about London Councils and their heavily redacted minutes. Mr Mustard challenged the redactions and got the above set in their place and the following explanation.

The notes of the Parking Managers Seminar have now been amended and are attached to this email. Because the majority of the attendees are officers not employed by London Councils, their exemption from redaction is by their consent only, not necessarily because they are senior officers or because of their salary threshold.

Regarding the request for the document pack, I can confirm that this information is not held by London Councils.

Mr Mustard didn't understand about the document pack not being held by the creators of it but the number of other documents given out was only 2 or 3, it wasn't zero though. Mr Mustard put his cunning plan into action. If London Councils couldn't provide him with the documents then ask all the councils to do so which led to a surprising answer, more of which another day.

Parking managers have nothing to fear from Mr Mustard, the worst that will happen is that he gives their PCNs a drubbing, it isn't personal. The people who decide, in effect, parking policy (councillors do so in theory but none of them are invited to these cosy chats) should be known to the public & it would be much more transparent if they had to throw their meetings open to the public.

So well done to the staff who have allowed their names to be published.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Have you heard of London Councils?

So council tax payers give this body almost 700 million £ to play with and you don't know who they are.

In the parking area they set the contravention code descriptions, they suggest PCN values for the Mayor to decide upon, they run London Tribunals (formerly PATAS) which independently adjudicate on PCN issued by the boroughs who provide the funds with which to run London Councils and they host quarterly meetings of parking managers which have, until today, taken place without the disinfecting glare of publicity.

Mr Mustard decided to ask for the minutes. This is what he got for the June 16 meeting.

June Seminar Minutes #1 by MisterMustard on Scribd

Note the redaction (blacking out) of the names of every single person who was in the room. Now that isn't what Mr Mustard calls open and transparent and the names of managers, likely to earn enough to be within the definition for release of senior employee & public facing, really should be released.

Mr Mustard wonders about the point of these quarterly meetings. If they are really important then surely every London local authority would send a person to keep abreast of developments in the world of parking (and moving traffic). If they are just a talking shop followed by a trip to the local tavern then fair enough, don't bother.

The following boroughs did not send a delegate (most boroughs have 50 to 100 employees in parking so you would think they could find someone who fancied a trip up town?)

Barnet
Croydon
Greenwich
Hackney
Havering
Hillingdon
Kensington & Chelsea
Kingston
Merton
Redbridge

which is more than a quarter of them.

There is more to come on this subject.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard