Bailiff finds a PCN he doesn't want enforced

Mr Mustard keeps an eye on all Connell Crescent tribunal PCN decisions. It is a location where motor vehicles are banned from entering between 3 and 7pm during the week. Thousands of people have missed the badly placed & misleading signs although he could not get an adjudicator to agree that when he represented several motorists at once and he lost. He has since asked for a Review on two grounds. The tribunal software supplier, Northgate, accidentally booted the on time review request into the long grass. It is now on the pile of review requests awaiting the first sieve to see if they have any merit whatsoever.

One decision which tickled Mr Mustard's funny bone was one that concerned Marston Group, a very large firm of bailiffs, one of whose employees or self-employed agents, 'Milenkovic' (Miroslav Milenkovic does appear in the bailiff register & is registered by Hertford County Court) drove past the no motor vehicles signs at 3:27pm

The grounds of appeal were that Marston Group wanted to transfer liability to some other person which is allowed if the vehicle is on hire for less than 6 months, or on lease, or you can prove that there is a permanent transfer of keeper. The tribunal record is only a brief one so it might be the opposite, that Marston were objecting to the transfer from Zenith.

So, having asked for a hearing, the bailiffs were not respectful to the tribunal by dint of not showing up. Nor did the bailiffs produce any paperwork to show why the transfer might not be correct.

Mr Mustard could have told the bailiffs that the argument about signs would not have worked as he spent a whole afternoon in front of the adjudicator Mr McFarlane arguing about signs, which Mr McFarlane has visited site to see for himself.

Let's hope that Marston now settle the PCN at £130 as otherwise the bill will go up by 50% and then another £8 will be added for county court registration (the TEC) and then if payment is still not forthcoming a firm of bailiffs (probably Collect Services the main bailiff for Ealing Council) will be instructed and they will find the vehicle and clamp it in order to extract the payment.

Now that would be funny.

You have got to admit that Ealing Council are 'fair', they relentlessly chase every single Connell Crescent PCN as otherwise in their words

This is utter tosh, no decision by a council on a single PCN creates a precedent as they are not superior judges (except in their own 'Court') and even an adjudicator is not bound by any decision by another adjudicator or even of themselves. Ealing Council are fettering their discretion and thus being procedurally unfair by even thinking like this.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bailiffs don't like it up em

Not the car in question

Mr Mustard has often wondered if bailiff's vans get ticketed as he suspects that bailiffs think they are above parking law when it comes to themselves. Well in Lambeth they aren't above the law (Mr Mustard doesn't know if they were enforcing a Lambeth warrant or not). What is so helpful is to find a jobsworth CEO (traffic warden) who needs to meet his non-existent quota of PCN who issues a ticket despite whatever the bailiff might say. The traffic warden is correct, a bailiff going around enforcing a penalty for not complying with traffic/parking regulations should him/herself comply with them all.

Lambeth Parking back office held firm and rejected the representations which were made and the PCN ended up at London Tribunals (formerly PATAS) and below is the result:

So there we have it, the bailiff's van was not, in fact, on the footway. What a pity that the traffic warden did not take a better photograph as the result could have been different.

The part of the story above which is wrong is that the bailiff used his van to block the garage of the debtor, a bailiff cannot deprive you of your right to go about your daily business. There aren't many garages in Virgil St, it may have been one of these which have dropped kerbs. 

If only the PCN had been issued for being adjacent to a dropped kerb, the outcome would again probably have been different.

If a bailiff blocks you in, phone the police and report the obstruction or phone the council to come out and issue a PCN.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard