Newham Council are Cheats - #19

 

If there is a danger that you will be deprived of your car there should be a large clear sign on the way into the car park and consistent signage throughout (this car park is a small surface car park). Other councils provide an out of hours release service for a fee. That would be more reasonable than forcing someone to find their own way home, possibly late at night, all the way to Canterbury. That is far enough but they could have been from somewhere they couldn't easily get to and be faced with a hotel bill instead.

Presenting misleading information was cheating the motorist.

Newham Council - out of order

 

https://www.deviantart.com/benares78/art/Big-Bang-Theory-Out-Of-Order-323747067

This is the follow up blog to this one.

Picking up where the previous blog left off the Notice to Owner arrived (once the lease company had transferred liability) and Mr Mustard made a short formal representation.

That met with a long rejection.

If there was sympathy the PCN would have been cancelled.

Just because a 'traffic warden' doesn't see boarding doesn't mean it isn't happening and, if you go back to the first blog, he was told why the car was there.

A driver is adhering to the restriction if he is engaged in assisted boarding of an elderly person with reduced mobility.

An observation period of 2 minutes may not be sufficient depending on how fast the old person moves, if there are stairs and if he is at the back of the building.

Mr Mustard ploughed on and started an Appeal to an independent adjudicator at London Tribunals.

All it said was 'assisted boarding was ongoing' as the informal challenge and the formal representations which had already been made are automatically carried forward.

Newham Council started to prepare their standard evidence for the tribunal. They prepared the evidence list 'A' and the Case summary at 'B'. Here are the relevant parts of the case summary:

Suddenly after that the provision of evidence came to a juddering halt and a DNC (do not contest) form was filed, which said:

This is the first time that such an omission had ever been identified by an enforcement authority. All the other PCNs which had doubtless been issued in Hilda Road could not be supported as the document which authorises yellow lines to be painted simply didn't exist. Everyone who received a PCN for doing so and paid up at 50% had burnt their money (and Mr Mustard surmises that Newham didn't suddenly send out refunds). Mr Mustard always straps in for the ride if he has a half decent argument and gets some surprising wins along the way.

The end.

Nasty Newham Council

Mr Mustard has a client who doesn't like bothering him so tries to sort out parking tickets themselves and this sometimes goes wrong and the odd PCN ends up with a bailiff. That isn't too bad a problem as the car belongs to Motability and is used to transport a disabled person so cannot, in law, be removed by a bailiff (although they will threaten to remove it to bully you into paying). The physical needs of the disabled person are clearly quite severe as they qualify for a Motability car and their mental needs are such that they have a litigation friend under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Newham Council have ended up with a PCN at the bailiff stage against the Litigation Friend as that is the name recorded on the V5 registration document rather than the disabled person. That record will be amended.

Newham have their own bailiffs who work under the umbrella name of OneSource which is a shared service company (OneSource Partnership Ltd has filed dormant accounts) owned by the boroughs of Havering, Newham & Bexley.

To ensure the life of the disabled person was not disrupted by the wrongful removal of the car Mr Mustard emailed OneSource as follows:

As you know, a Motability car cannot be clamped or removed by you for two reasons. The first is that it is not the property of A (the litigation friend) or B (the disabled person). The second is that a car used for the transport of a disabled person is exempt, and a Motability car is patently such a vehicle & is so used.

What came back, after a bit of email ping pong, was this:

We are aware that Motability vehicles cannot be removed. Please be aware that under the standard terms and conditions of the Motability scheme the registered keeper of the vehicle is liable to pay all outstanding penalties and fines and failure to do so is likely to be regarded as “breach of contract” and may lead to the cancellation of the agreement and/or to you being refused Motability finance in future. oneSource Enforcement Services will notify Motability of all cases where we believe the scheme is subject to misuse and a refusal to pay has been identified.

As Mr Mustard was writing as a representative the use of 'you being refused' clearly points to this being a standard wording. Mr Mustard had heard of such threats before but not seen them in writing. The 'paramount' privacy statement and the threat of disclosure seem somewhat at odds with one another?

He was unhappy with the proposed actions so he emailed OneSource again.

You are hereby cautioned not to intervene in a private contractual arrangement to which you are not a party and in which your proposed actions would amount to a Data Protection Breach. I would suggest you consult the borough's in house legal team / information experts before you take such a step.

This email has been copied to my solicitor.

That was 2 months ago and no further email has been received by Mr Mustard which is the usual modus operandi of an authority caught in a compromising situation - go quiet and hope the problem goes away.

One bailiff letter has been sent since threatening that they will take control of goods but they have no right of forced entry to premises and as both the disabled person and the litigation friend are in receipt of state benefits they are unlikely to have anything worth the costs of seizure and sale.

The whole way in which councils go about chasing debts due (& there is one here although there is an 84% chance Mr Mustard would have beaten the PCN if given it at the beginning) from the disabled and/or mentally ill is just wrong, it is based on the blunt use of force. There needs to be nuance and finesse and a tailored approach. Offering time to pay to people who don't have the money now would be a much better solution for both parties but councils rarely offer instalments and the bailiff approach of pay it all or else leads to resistance to paying anything. 

What it probably needs is one council to analyse current results for all PCNs involving the physically or mentally disabled (this will show up by the nature of the contravention i.e. blue badge slipped off dashboard cases) and then try a new approach of inviting instalments, arranging a meeting with the vehicle owner if there are multiple outstanding PCNs to both try and stop further PCNs being issued and to see what arrangement can be made about current ones or to establish if the financial situation of the person is so hopeless that writing off the debt is the only logical step. What the council are meant to do is to make 'due adjustment' for the disabled. It isn't greatly in evidence.

Councils automatically increase unpaid PCN values by 50% as soon as they possibly can. They do not have to do so. The regulations say 'may' increase not 'must'.

Sadly, Mr Mustard thinks that in a year's time, nothing will have changed.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Newham Council out of line

Cinnamon clones

On 28 and 30 March the representations against 6 PCN for committing the same moving traffic contravention were delivered to Newham Council. The first set of representations were against 4 PCN and the second for 2 more which came along just after.

They read as follows:

This vehicle (LN08***) has been cloned. It is used during the working week in Rugby for commuting. The attached photos may help highlight differences in the actual car to your captured images.

It has been reported to Warwickshire Police under ref 123 and the Met under CHS12345 & 54321. They don't seem to issue paperwork.

The challenge is that the car has been cloned so the contravention did not occur.

Rather than issuing any more PCN it would be helpful if you were to report the car to the police if any CEO sights the car on the street.

Would anyone who was not genuine invite the involvement of the police? No.

This was one of the photos (without the redacted plate obviously)

against which the council could compare their camera footage. The number plate screws and the name of the dealer were different to the cloned car.

Mr Mustard's client has now just received, a few days within the rather too generous 3 months which councils are allowed (it is only 56 days for parking) to respond to representations about moving traffic contraventions, Notices of Rejection for 4 of them, but not the same 4 as were challenged together, only 2 of those and the 2 later ones.

This is part of what their Notices of Rejection contain:

Do you get the feeling that Newham have not studied the problem very carefully given that photographs were submitted, photographs that other enforcement authorities found to be adequate. Unfortunately for Newham, Barking & Dagenham Council cancelled, Redbridge Council cancelled, the IBIS hotel cancelled & the London ambulance service accepted that it was not Mr Mustard's client who hit one of their ambulances and sodded off. They all had similar evidence to assess.

Newham Council have issued 4 forms on which an Appeal can be made to London Tribunals. Each one of those costs Newham Council £30 so they are going to be £120 down at the end, the result of their failure to properly consider the representations. Mr Mustard wonders how often someone who lives in Rugby decides to pretend their car has been cloned and then carries out multiple driving contraventions in London? Probably never.

Mr Mustard has, during his preparations for the Appeals, realised that the wheels of the cloned car are much more fancy than the real car.

The cloned car about to pass a 'No motor vehicles' sign

The real car at home in Rugby.

Mr Mustard would send these extra photographs off to Newham and give them a second chance to cancel but as they don't provide an email address, nor a phone number to have a friendly chat on, he can't easily do that so they will just have to receive the photos with the official Appeals as he doesn't want to miss the 28 day deadline for getting the Appeals into the system.

Separately Mr Mustard has written to London Councils suggesting that they could play a role in collating information about cloned cars so that once one authority is satisfied that a vehicle has been cloned then other authorities would probably want to follow their lead and everyone would save time & trouble. Let's see what they come back with. 

Cloning is far too common and creates huge amounts of paperwork, and the necessity to prove your innocence otherwise you become guilty by default, as well as the worry that you will be financially liable for something you did not do which really is an injustice.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard