Barnet Council - 5 minutes late, that will be £130

 

It is clear that whilst a technical contravention has occurred this is clearly a case in which discretion should have been applied and the PCN cancelled. This type of miserable, petty minded, mean, common sense free, money grubbing PCN just gets councils a bad name. It certainly doesn't bring the council closer to its residents. The resident did his best to comply and should not have been treated in this way. It is churlish in the extreme.

Motorists who are represented win a greater percentage of their tribunal Appeals. To get good free help start a thread here.

The end.

A cruel world in Barnet

 

Don't blame the Adjudicator, their job is to apply the law. If this had been a parking PCN the adjudicator could have recommended that Barnet Council exercise discretion and cancel or not pursue the PCN. That power is not available to an adjudicator for moving traffic PCNs.

The exercise of discretion over their PCNs is the sole province of Barnet Council. Councillors are kept out of, or don't try and get involved in, the day to day process and this case sadly and perfectly demonstrates why they should be more involved. Don't leave the day to day decisions to 'officers' (staff or contractors) who may be blinded by the revenue raising imperative.

Perhaps Barnet Council are trying to get their £4,000 back from when they failed another autustic person.

Mr Mustard is sure that Barnet Council (and others) hate the regular kicking they get from Mr Mustard. When they stop being utterly mean and miserable he will have nothing bad to write about (and there have been a few occasions when he has written about kindness). Will that day ever arrive?

The end.

The Fairway - again

Sometimes when Mr Mustard looks on the internet for information he finds he has himself put something relevant into the public domain. That was how it turned out when it comes to the keep clear yellow zig zag markings in The Fairway, the previous post being here.

This latest tribunal decision is equally devoid of any real world view by some faceless council bureaucrat:

 

A learner driver will make errors (although they didn't on this occasion) because they are a learner and at the start of their first lesson they will know nothing. Some leeway should logically and fairly be given to driving school cars.

The end.

We mustn't let council revenue raising stall

A recent decison from a Traffic Adjudicator

Is there no limit to the depths to which Barnet Council (and/or NSL) will sink to extract money from an innocent motorist? A learner driver must be allowed to learn to master clutch control without the fear of their instructor being penalised. (Ignoring a banned turn would be a different matter as the instructor should prevent that from happening).

Mr Mustard's guess is that the cctv extracts retained by the council are so short that the full situation was not apparent and the council took the view that the motorist is always guilty (they nearly always have that as their default position).

The adjudicator probably only took 20 seconds herself to make this decision.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard