Fat finger PCN relief

 

Another tribunal decision that Mr Mustard only looked at because the location was familiar.

Decent people everywhere will probably agree with Mr Mustard that this is a typical case of a penalty charge too far. There is zero traffic management purpose to this PCN, there was no wish to avoid paying and a PCN of this kind just helps the public to hate faceless council bureaucrats.

What Mr Mustard notices, and the adjudicator may well have done but he usually writes refreshingly short and to the point decisions, is that the letters E and W are adjacent on a qwerty keyboard and that the keyboard in question is a small metal type designed for its robustness not for the efficiency of pressing. With all respect to Mr Wall, who may have a piano player's fingers (at which point someone will tell me of excellent piano players known for their pudgy pinkies) this looks like a fat finger error. 

What Mr Mustard does in this kind of case is to give the council a choice, to accept the challenge and cancel the PCN or to refund the sum paid to park. Of course the greedy swine usually do neither and so hoist themselves on their own petard.

It couldn't just be about the money, could it?

the end.

Short shrift in a Barnet Council car park

No harm is being caused

The photo at top left is part of the Moxon Street Car Park in EN5 (High or Chipping Barnet as you please).

The next two photographs show the car of a new driver, aged 18, who left room at the front of his modest car, a VW Polo, to be considerate and careful near the thumping great big expensive Range Rover which was parked across his front bumper. For this he got a PCN for being parked partly outside of the bay.

Mr Mustard set to work. He made an informal challenge and pointed out the shortness of the bay. The council (NSL most probably) rejected the challenge and said that the bays were DfT compliant (Department for Transport). Mr Mustard pointed out that the bay was a mere 3.85m in length. An old VW Polo is about 3.7m in length (all cars grow as they evolve).

Mr Mustard knew that there are no rules for these bays so he asked for the DfT rules that the council were relying on. An interim manager sent him the rules. Mr Mustard checked the link and it was for Northern Ireland and not applicable to off street parking in England and not from the DfT. However, the bays were still meant to be at least 4.8m in length. Mr Mustard pointed this out. Still the council wanted the PCN to be paid.

The council then maintained that they had merely sent guidance and that the bays were of an adequate size for 'most cars'. Mr Mustard considers a VW Polo to be at the shorter end of the scale of most cars. Mr Mustard checked the balance of the PCN. All of a sudden it was £0.00. Doubtless this was something to do with the traffic management order for the car park saying that cars up to 5.5m in length could park there. Given that rule, the bays must, in all fairness, be at least 5.5m in length. This is Bunns Lane all over again. When will the Council learn?

Please don't pay any car park PCN for being outside the bay if your car is too long to fit within the bay as marked.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

28 billion coins worthless in Barnet's car parks

coins might as well be collectors' items in Barnet

Sometimes you hear that there isn't a demand for some product or service and so it is not offered.

Here in Barnet we are not offered the most convenient method of paying by coin of the realm, you have to find a shop to buy a permit or a paypoint outlet. In that time you are at grave risk of getting a parking ticket.

It isn't as if there is a shortage of coin in the UK, per the Royal Mint there are 28 billion coins in circulation, so the method of payment is not hard to find. It is simply that the council don't want us to use it.

Yesterday the debit/credit card meter in the Moxon St, High Barnet car park was fixed. The cause of the problem was coins inserted into the card reader. Now that shows you how desperate people are to pay by cash and how hard it is for the man in the street to believe that a parking meter doesn't take cash.

What a pity that the council don't want to listen to the public or provide a service for which there is self-evidently unfulfilled demand.

One day, cash meters will return as will shoppers.

Update; A twitter follower suggested that Mr Mustard was being optimistic about the return of cash parking meters. Perhaps, but next May lots of councillors want to be re-elected or newly elected. This decision was taken by the Conservative majority. Every time one of their councillors or would be councillors comes knocking on your door asking for your vote, say yes of course, if you bring cash parking meters back (and then vote for who you like!).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

How many lives has the removal of parking meters ruined?

A guest blog by a trader who would rather stay anonymous - it could be any of them, well any of the ones who are still there.

an empty car park one week after meters bagged over

I took the above picture in Moxon St car park in High Barnet one week after the council put bin bags over the meters ( 8 November 2011 ). 

As you can see, the car park is empty. Historically on a Wednesday at this time you were lucky to get a place.

The second picture is from when they actually took away the meters, the reverse of what’s happening this morning – ground has just been broken for the replacement meter 532 days later. From observation, I calculate lost revenue to the council coffers (at  £577 per day) to be over £307,000!

the hokey cokey meter dance

This debacle has cost our towns MILLIONS of pounds. Our business alone has lost tens of thousands of pounds. Many jobs have been lost, partnerships have reached impossible levels of stress and children left in broken marriages. It’s not just the businesses that have closed: those that survived have let go cleaners, laid off full and part-time staff, they have cut back on advertising and charity sponsorships and they themselves cut back in spending amongst their peers in the high street. They have been forced, like us, to work impossible hours. Forget the Working Time Directive, I now work over 78 hours a week and have little time to spend with my children. The knock-on costs have been immense.

Have the council apologised? No

Have they made any attempt at recompense? No

Have they held out a hand and offered to help stimulate the high streets? No

It all leaves you feeling a little sick and disillusioned with those that pretend to be civilised but are simply masquerading as ‘humanity’.

---

and now back with Mr Mustard. You can feel the personal pain from the above heartfelt words that traders are suffering.

The cash option was removed as it cost about £500,000 a year to employ a team of people who collected the cash from 400 meters. This is about £1,500 a day and when compared to the possible lost revenue from one car park alone it seems that a proper cost benefit analysis was not done. The problem is that the solution was thought to be a simple choice between two options, 400 cash meters or none at all. That was the thinking of closed minds.

The first thing that should have been done was a cull of 25% of the meters that collected the least amount of money and make those bays free with a time limit for parking to balance supply and demand. Then a review of those meters that remained to see if some could be converted to free bays or to stay the same, and those in car parks retained as cash payment machines with pay-by-phone offered as an option for those that wanted to pay by card using an app on their smartphone. In a car park with multiple meters some could have been cash and some for credit card only making them less liable to be vandalised. Cash only machines could be put under cctv and enclosed in a protective metal cage so they are harder to attack.

This could have left an estate of 100 or so machines and a much reduced cash collection cost along with the flexibility that the public wants and needs.

In Barnet the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard