From Vexatious to merely vexing - a journey - stage 1.

Vexatious: seeking only to annoy (that is from the dictionary; vexatious isn't actually defined in Freedom of Information legislation and Mr Mustard has unfortunately helped to formulate what it means. Doh!)

Vexed: Irritated, angered,(of a problem) difficult and much discussed, problematic.

It was Mrs Angry of Broken Barnet fame (currently to be found paddling in the sea off Brighton due to some meeting or other, Mr Mustard wouldn't know the details because it involves Politics with a big P which Mr Mustard simply doesn't have time for. Ooh, and La Bloggeuse was on the telly) who told Mr Mustard that he was only vexing not vexatious. (Yes, she did also tell him he had overdone the number of questions, as did two other people, but by then it was too late and Mr Mustard had the ICO's decision to deal with.)

Rather than spend hours preparing for a long, tedious and difficult hearing in front of the First Tier Tribunal at which Barnet Council would have instructed the best specialist barrister available (an uneven contest against a lay person) at which every rotten word he had ever written would have been dragged out of the blog and given an out-of-context airing, which the tribunal would probably have frowned upon, Mr Mustard negotiated a settlement with the Chief Operating Officer but more of that later. Before then, you need the scene to be set. 

What were those vexatious questions that Mr Mustard asked a year ago and caused such angst. These:

and these (two others were answered recently as they weren't vexatious after all, but by then Mr Mustard didn't really need the answers anyway)

So Mr Mustard thinks you will agree that these were not particularly taxing in terms of time and weren't likely to lead to Mr Mustard writing about an individual except in one case where the post was quite senior and that is allowed and the intention was to blog about the rapid turnover in personnel within the post and improper procurement that he wanted to write about, in any case.

So why did Mr Mustard ask these question? Answers follow the question numbers.

1.  In order to compare the numbers of tickets issued since NSL took over to when it was in-house. We now know from other reports that following NSL's appointment parking tickets have increased by 25%. Coincidence? Mr Mustard doesn't think so.

2.  The invoices supplied in response to a question didn't match the ones on the over £500 spending list.

3.  Asked for NSL's invoices each month so that the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) payments could be tracked.

4.  To confirm what Mr Mustard already knew that the answer was nil. A gross dereliction of duty and the cause of much trouble now that they are being sent off to bailiffs a year after the event.

5.  The council had just voted to start enforcing these moving traffic violations. There is a consultation ongoing about the location of new cctv cameras but some will be placed at these locations whatever the public says.

6.  So that costs of PayByPhone could be compared to the cost of cash collection from meters.

7.  To see what template wordings were in use.

8.  To get a feel for the likely success of an informal appeal and whether 100% of them were rejected.

9.  The minutes cannot have been sufficiently clear.

10.  Just to see what the plan was and whether it included longer hours, targeting particular offences etc.

11.  The parking department should produce an annual report and send it to the mayor. If they had done so this question would not have been necessary. The question was so that the trend of income could be looked at accurately.

12.  The circumstances around the appointment of the AD were murky to say the least.

13.  It was not produced in breach of legislation.

14.  This question was about the manner of serving to get a handle on the numbers affixed to vehicle or handed to driver or sent in the post.

15.  This was to see if proper procedures had been followed for a friend who had a PCN. It was won on review at PATAS.

16.  To see if NSL were doing that aspect of their job or just issuing PCN regardless.

17.  The TMO were given to NSL on a memory stick so it was a few minutes work for the council to provide these and then not have to deal with individual requests.

18.  In Woodside Grove there are CPZ bays across people's drives which is rather odd and an explanation would have been useful and appreciated.

19.  This question was asked on someone else's behalf. Next time they can ask their own.

20.  as for 3.

Do these questions strike you as particularly long, complicated, unreasonable, obsessive, difficult, excessive or anything else if all asked in one month or vexatious? Put your view in the comment box below.

The second part of the story will follow soon although Mr Mustard does have to spend some time looking at the 2,000+ page Capita contract for Customer services (NSCSO) which Mr Reasonable asked for and Mr Mustard didn't as he hasn't asked a question of Barnet Council (hello to Governance in TfL, Haringey, Harrow and Islington where he has) since 12 July (which was a request for the locations & numbers of PayByPhone bays which must be in a spreadsheet somewhere: Answer - vexatious!) and he is now free to ask on Parking, Parking Tickets and CPZ's but hasn't. 

Ironically if he had asked for the NSCSO contract, a multi-million pound decade long and controversial outsourcing deal, that would not have been rejected out of hand as being vexatious (it would have been declined on the grounds of future publication which has now happened). Funny old world!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

From 99% to 50% to ?%

In the local paper a couple of weeks ago Cllr Dean Cohen, who has parking within his portfolio, said that 99% of people pay their parking tickets. Mr Mustard knew this was hopelessly inaccurate, although he didn't have the exact figure as it isn't actually a statistic that is tracked, it is money that is used to monitor payment success with. Anyway, someone else asked a short series of Freedom of Information questions about parking tickets which Mr Mustard fell over whilst looking for something else on the whatdotheyknow website and here they are:

Total number of PCN (Penalty Charge Notice) issued by the London Borough of Barnet in the year 2012 150,211 (looks like the calendar and not the council year)
 

Total number of recipient who paid up without contesting in the same period 74,938 (50%)
 

Total number of recipient who appealed to PATAS 2,158
 

Total number of recipient who were successful at PATAS 1,520 (70% of appeals to PATAS)
 

The date from which the mistake in wording was corrected? 5 December 2012

How interesting. The council used the incorrect wording for 4 years, although they say it is OK even though PATAS found against them the vast majority of the time, and just over a week after Mr Mustard blogs about the incorrect wording the council change it, as a precautionary measure naturally, not because it was wrong. As the wording is laid down by legislation two versions of it could not both be compliant. Draw your own conclusions.

Is it the intention of the Council to refund the money to all the recipients in whose case the non-compliant wordings were used?

No

So Mr Mustard emailed Dean Cohen 10 days ago to ask him to confirm he really did say 99%. Answer came there none, as yet. He might be on holiday or else too embarrassed to answer. It would appear though that councillors don't routinely read FOI responses, this one dates from questions posed in June & July so would have been fresh in the mind although Mr Mustard expects Cabinet members to have a better handle on what their department does in any event. The fact that 50% pay up does not fully inform us what the other 50% do (although we know that 1.4% go to PATAS and some of the rest will pay up after contesting and others will stick their head in the sand which is a very bad idea and yet more will leave the country or be driving a foreign registered vehicle)

Motorists in Barnet are far too compliant. Half of them just meekly pay up. Barnet Council get a lot of things wrong when it comes to processing parking tickets and once someone independent sees them your chances of getting the PCN squashed increase markedly. Might Mr Mustard advise you to study the process using his handy simple guide which is on the left of the blog and then once you know how the three steps work you can have a go at defending yourself from unjust tickets. If you pay up within 14 days you are on a 50% success rate. If you appeal every ticket to PATAS you will commence at 100% or 0% after your first ticket but after that you will, unless you are a hopelessly incompetent parker or chancer who never follows the rules, slowly move towards the 72% won average. Those are odds worth taking. By fighting you also give yourself time to save up if you need to. Once you have the PATAS result though and if you lose you must pay within 28 days if you want to avoid the serious aggravation and expense of the PCN going any further when costs start to rise.

The process of going to PATAS will be written about soon in a guest blog by someone who went there and won with the guidance of Mr Mustard.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

PATAS appeals soar

On this glorious day when David Attfield won, on behalf of all CPZ residents, his Judicial Review appeal against Barnet Council (and he was well supported and funded by the community) it is fitting that we have a look at another aspect of parking, parking ticket appeals.

Thanks to another enquirer using FOI, Mr Mustard has put together a little table of third stage appeals, to the independent adjudicator at PATAS, and the results.

Year / period to	Appeals	Won	%
31 Mar 11	1222	504	41
31 Mar 12	941	524	56
31 Mar 13	2217	1571	71
15 Jun 13	681	395	58

From which you can see that there was a surge in numbers in the year ended March 13. The curious coincidence is that NSL took over ticket issuing duties on 1 May 12 and final stage appeals have more than doubled since they did so. Mr Mustard would posit that this is thanks to more marginal tickets being issued and less appeals being upheld at the two earlier stages.

The 681 appeals for this year if multiplied up pro-rata to a complete year suggests that about 3,270 appeals will reach PATAS.

As more and more people go to PATAS and find that it is a convenient forum (on the Northern Line) staffed by decent human adjudicators who do try to be fair and that there is a more than evens chance of getting your parking ticket cancelled with no downside (28 days to pay if you lose) then Mr Mustard thinks that the number of appeals will just keep climbing. You can download Mr Mustard's simple guide to the process form the left hand side of the site.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Crossovers - crossed wires

Back in February 2013, Mr Mustard asked Barnet Council about the issue of parking tickets at crossovers (outside of CPZ areas) where the home owner had not asked for an attendance by a traffic warden, viz:

Are PCNs being routinely issued at dropped kerbs outside residential premises or only in response to a request from the occupier?

The answer he got was:

After some reiteration to NSL months ago I am not aware of recent problems where PCN's are being routinely issued at dropped kerbs outside single residential properties without a call or face to face request for help from those resident at the property.

What this response told Mr Mustard was that NSL were running riot at the start of the contract and supposedly aren't any longer. Hmmm.

Now let us look at a decision by the independent adjudicator at PATAS of 8 March.

The appellant denies the contravention. She states that she parked alongside the dropped kerb in front of her own driveway for the purposes of loading and unloading and therefore falls within the exceptions provided by the Traffic Management Act 2004 S.86(3) and S.86(5.

The local authority have not addressed these representations but incorrectly state that it is still a contravention to park outside their own driveway in direct contradiction to the legislation which require a complaint to be made by the owner of the residential premises.

I am therefore not satisfied that the contravention did occur and allow this appeal. If the appellant wishes to pursue a claim for costs she should send in an itemised note of the time and disbursements incurred in defending this appeal.

Costs were considered on 18 June and the adjudicator said:

The appellant has now applied for an order for costs and expenses to be made against the local authority on the basis that their conduct in failing to address her representations or the legislation to be "extremely unreasonable"

Under Regulation 12 of the Road Traffic (Parking Adjudicators) (London) Regulations 1993 it is provided that an Adjudicator shall not normally make an order awarding costs and expenses but may, subject to hearing representations from the party, make such an order against that party if he is of the opinion that the party has acted frivolously or vexatiously or that his conduct in making, pursuing or resisting an appeal was wholly unreasonable. Additionally, an order may be made against the local authority where the Adjudicator considers that the disputed decision, (the decision by the local authority to reject the appellant's representations), was wholly unreasonable.

I find the local authority complete lack of even an attempt at addressing the appellant's representations or checking the legislation despite being placed on Notice by the appellant, and in clear breach of their statutory duty, makes the disputed decision wholly unreasonable.

The local authority have not made any representation as to why a costs award should not be made.

I therefore award the appellant costs in the sum of £62.15 made up as follows:

1) £60.00 for time spent in excess of 5 hours which would be the maximum amount a litigant in person would be able to recover in the Small Claims Court under the Civil Procedure Rules.

2) £2.15 disbursements for the cost of a stamp and recorded delivery.

So now you wonder why the case was allowed to go all the way to PATAS at the very time that Mr Mustard was asking about this problem and why the council don't know as much about the tricks that NSL get up to as Mr Mustard does? The council have wasted £44 of your money on an unnecessary hearing and then had to fork out £62 on the expenses of the resident.

One day, one hopes, the council will become sensible and boring and exhibit some common-sense. Until then, Mr Mustard will keep an eye on them.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

2 caveats

1. Inside a CPZ there will probably be a single yellow across your dropped kerb so even the householder cannot park there during the zone hours. Sometimes there will be a parking bay across your dropped kerb which means, Mr Mustard thinks but this is a complicated area, that the householder could park across their own dropped kerb but no-one else should as a question of courtesy although you could argue you have explicit permission to do so during zone hours.

2. If you have a shared drive neither resident can park across the dropped kerb as it has to be left for access by the other neighbour at all times.

PCN's cancelled for issue period April 11 to March 13

So here we have a report in which the cancellation of lots of parking tickets is formalised.

Individually they are not large but they do add up somewhat and this is the first report of this kind that Mr Mustard can recall seeing.

There is no data available of the £2,798,473 written off for 2009 to 2011 but the appendices did list out the parking tickets cancelled of those issued from April 11 to March 13.

The pdf format in which the council presented the data wasn't very helpful and Mr Mustard has put it into a spreadsheet for you so that you can look up to see if your old ticket is there and then you can breathe more easily.

The listing is currently in AG number order and you can download the whole listing if you wish and sort it in date order instead by using the filter box at the top of date and then selecting the ascending date sort option.

Barnet Council DPR2065 Special Parking Account Write Off June 13 by MisterMustard

Barnet Council PCN Writes Offs June 13 by MisterMustard

The Friday Joke - In the wrong place

An avid reader has kindly pointed out a hilarious programme on Radio 4 this morning - Tom Wrigglesworth - who Mr Mustard is a big fan of.

Enjoy a happy half hour

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y2sdt

for the next 7 days only.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Saracens (Copthall) Event Day CPZ - Confused Parking Zone

Map of Saracens Event Day CPZ by MisterMustard

In the space of 10 days Mr Mustard has been consulted about 4 parking tickets given to 3 residents who live within the Event Day CPZ and didn't apply for an Event Day permit because they already had a Resident Permit.

In his operational guidance the Secretary of State wrote "motorists cannot reasonably be expected to read, understand and remember the parking restrictions at the entrance to a Controlled Parking Zone that covers an area of more than a dozen streets."

So, how extensive is the Saracens CPZ? Here is a plan of it.

Map of Saracens Event Day CPZ by MisterMustard

 

From Stanhope Gardens in the NW of the zone, to Garrick Way in the south of it, is a distance of 2.5 miles. This is self evidently not an area of about a dozen streets but a blatant disregard of the guidance for a CPZ zone. Every vehicle owner within the red dotted boundary needs an ED permit (ED stands for Event Day). They are free as Saracens pay for them and for up to 88 visitor vouchers each year to cover the 16 match days + 2 other days. (You are allowed 4.8 visitors per day. Mr Mustard doesn't suppose there is any rule that stops you providing them as gifts to your rugby loving friends who want to go to a match).

Why is it that a number of residents, out of the 7,500 who are estimated to live within the zone, have not realised they need to have at least 1 and possibly 2 permits in their car. Mr Mustard doesn't know the full extent of the communications with affected residents but he does have the information sent out in November 12. Here is the envelope that the letter was in.

Mr Mustard can imagine how this landed in amongst pizza leaflets and other junk mail and got thrown away. It is 2013 and databases abound everywhere. Surely it wouldn't have been that hard a job to run a search of the existing CPZ permit holders and the council tax payers within the affected roads and then write personally addressed letters?

According to the Delegated Powers Report concerning this CPZ, there are about 7,500 residences within the zone (although a recent FOI said 9,000 and if you are wondering why Mr Mustard asked a question he knew the answer to the answer is he hadn't stumbled upon the 7,500 at the time he asked).

Here is the letter that was inside The Occupier envelope

Barnet Council - Saracens CPZ by MisterMustard

Having read the whole two pages Mr Mustard concludes it is not the best bit of writing that Mr Richardson has ever issued (he is a helpful officer and probably pretty pressed so let us not be hard on him but instead be lenient on those who make an error) and he may not have actually written it. In an attempt to be thorough there is a lot of information but, like Craig Cooper's statement to the High Court on the NSCSO Judicial Review which the judge gave a kicking for being unhelpfully laid out, this letter suffers from a lack of headings and structure. The information would have been much better presented in a booklet with pages headed Why, Where, When, How to apply, Costs etc

What doesn't this letter say?

The zone is labelled the ED zone.

Even if you have a residents permit for, say, zone E, you need another one, issued free, for zone ED.

What it does say, and what has probably led many people astray is: 

"Any person wishing to park on roads within the CPZ when an event is taking place will need to display either a residents permit or a visitor voucher in their vehicle."

which means that a resident with a zone E permit might not have read any further as they did have "a residents permit". This would be one of Mr Mustard's defences to a parking ticket.

How many people have already obtained an ED permit? Only 3,449 so possibly 4,000 people are at risk of a parking ticket.

If you know anyone inside this monster CPZ zone please ask them if they have a free ED permit so that they are not at risk of getting a PCN (if you are unlucky enough to get one please ask Mr Mustard for help. He is building up a lot of expertise in appealing). If they need a permit they can apply on-line here or telephone 020 8359 7446.

Don't be shy to ask for visitor vouchers either. 269,743 have been issued so far. They are free.

Maybe the council should now follow up by putting an explanatory leaflet on every car found in breach on an Event Day rather than a PCN?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Motto: Don't get caught; if you get caught - appeal!

Mr Mustard's social gathering - parking tickets, FOI, beer etc

The second Monday of the month is nearly upon us and so it is time for another social gathering.

If you have a parking ticket problem, bring all, and I mean all including the envelopes, of your paperwork along to be scrutinised in fine detail. If that is done the parking ticket probably won't be up to the challenge. Mr Mustard will be handing out copies of the first version of his Guide to appealing your parking ticket and taking suggestions for what else should be included.

If you just want to soak up the atmosphere of being with eccentric individuals and discuss the rights and wrongs of the world, explain the off-side rule to Mrs Angry (you may be some time) or talk about books, theatre or film, starting a blog or anything you like, do please come along. If you don't have time for dinner at home before coming along, the Bohemia do proper food, Mr Mustard has sampled the crumble - it was great.

The Antic Bohemia is situated at 762-764 High Rd, Tally Ho, London, N12 9QH which is right across the road from that well known café, Café Buzz.

a good place for breakfast at any time of day.

Until Monday then, 13 May at 7pm until about 9pm as Mr M has to go then, but you can stay until closing time.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard's social club - 15 April 2013 at 7pm but first

Normally Mr Mustard would suggest meeting up on the second Monday. The Audit Committee happens to be meeting on the second Monday in April, i.e. on 8 April at 7pm. Mr Reasonable has written about this forthcoming meeting, here, and it behoves us to go along and support him as he is asking some of his usual curve ball questions as his is a razor sharp intellect beyond the dreams of many councillors (do they dream about the day when One Barnet is fully implemented and life is a bed of roses or are they having nightmares?).

Mr Mustard would be delighted if you would join him at Hendon Town Hall on Monday 8 April at 7pm and then in The Bohemia on Monday 15 April at 7pm.

If you have a parking ticket problem, bring all, and I mean all including the envelopes, of your paperwork along to be scrutinised in fine detail. If that is done the parking ticket probably won't be up to the challenge. Mr Mustard will be handing out copies of the first version of his Guide to appealing your parking ticket and taking suggestions for what else should be included.

If you just want to soak up the atmosphere of being with eccentric individuals and discuss the rights and wrongs of the world, explain the off-side rule to Mrs Angry or talk about books, theatre or film, starting a blog or anything you like, do please come along. If you don't have time for dinner at home before coming along, the Bohemia do proper food, Mr Mustard has sampled the crumble - it was great.

The Antic Bohemia is situated at 762-764 High Rd, Tally Ho, London, N12 9QH which is right across the road from that well known café, Café Buzz.

a good place for breakfast at any time of day.

Until Monday & Monday then.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Have you had a poxy post pay-by-phone PCN?

parking tickets are like a rash in Barnet

Recently Mr Mustard made a new twitter acquaintance. This person had paid for their parking on the pay-by-phone system and then 2 minutes later, whilst about their business, they received a PCN (Penalty Charge Notice or parking ticket in old money).

This means that, officially, they have to start filling in on-line forms or writing letters in order to get the obviously incorrect ticket cancelled as in the case of parking tickets you are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent. By keeping the text that proved they had paid, using twitter and chasing @barnetcouncil the parking ticket did get cancelled but of course most people aren't going to do that, especially those who are not au fait with computers in general and twitter in particular (Mr Mustard didn't tweet until he started blogging).

There should be a local phone number you can ring, and an email address you can send to, for when the parking ticket is patently wrong and should be squashed with the minimum of fuss. It is understandable that appeals on substantive grounds have to be in writing (and those should also be possible by email which you currently cannot do) but not what amounts to the correction of errors perpetrated by the council (acting by their agents).

Mr Mustard has been looking into this area. The handheld equipment used by traffic wardens (to use their old name) is meant to update within 2 minutes according to one FOI answer he has had, and according to the equipment manufacturer, Motorola, it should be updated in less than a second. Mr Mustard has asked about one sample day to see how often the equipment does not work properly or there isn't a phone signal as that is what is relied upon. If he gets a sensible answer he will let you know.

Mr Mustard had a chat with a traffic warden. They said it would take 4 or 5 minutes (that means 5 then!) for a pay-by-phone payment to show up on his/her handset. If you have paid for 30 minutes that is quite a chunk of time when you are at risk.

To find out how widespread the problem is, Mr Mustard needs your help. If you paid for parking using the pay-by-phone system or paypoint and received a parking ticket after you had paid please send proof to him at mrmustard@zoho.com and tell him how easy it was to get the ticket cancelled.

If you have sent in an appeal and been rejected please send copies of both letters to Mr Mustard who can probably sweep away the administrative hurdles for you.

If you paid for parking, had proof, appealed, got rejected and then gave up and paid the parking ticket please tell mrmustard@zoho.com about that as well and he will do his best to get your money back for you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Black Tuesday in North Finchley

funwithhistory

Since at least the start of July, North Finchley has been suffering the attentions of a person or persons unknown who has taken to spray painting the parking signs black thus meaning that motorists could park for free. Now this is naughty behaviour but perfectly understandable when you have a council that doesn't really listen to traders about the 30% downturn in business they have suffered. Richard Cornelius, the council "leader" claims to listen and then says there is nothing he can do or else postulates the theory that a good conservative does nothing. Well Councillor Brian Coleman certainly did something. He single-handedly ruined many businesses in Barnet in 2011 when he hoiked up the charges and took away the cash parking meters. Cash was a convenient payment medium for everybody in the country save for the Queen, who famously doesn't carry money.

Councillors are tinkering with the charges taking 30p off here and there and talking about introducing meters again (when? some unknown future date) for credit and debit cards at least and are now consulting businesses about what they should do. The answer is simple, go back to the situation in 2010 BC (Before Coleman).

Despite having a registered Limited company business in Barnet since 1987 Mr Mustard's alter ego was not on the list of businesses whose business received a consultation letter. He has asked for one. Will it arrive by the 28 September deadline?

What should Barnet Council have done with a vandalised sign? They should have replaced it. They should have done that as many times as vandalism occurred. Ironic that one of the claimed reasons why parking meters were taken away was the cost of repairing vandalised machines (which wasn't as bad as was made out and a profit of £5m p.a. was still made even after all costs of maintenance and cash collection). It has taken the council or NSL at least 2 months to replace these vandalised signs. In the parking contract it says that lines and signs are the responsibility of NSL (although the cost will get passed on doubtless with a markup) and word on the street is that Barnet Council are having to do them because NSL would not take responsibility for signs and lines until they were brought up to snuff.

Simply fixing signs wasn't the council's or NSL's plan. Instead all of a sudden this morning workmen turned up and replaced all of the vandalised signs and a posse of 6 traffic wardens descended like praying mantises and gave all the cars parking tickets. The motorists who have been penalised are not the people who vandalised the signs; they are innocent bystanders caught out by the childish behaviour of the council or their contractor NSL. If this has happened in your area, anywhere in the Country, do please let Mr Mustard know. Unamused Mr Mustard wrote to the "interim" Director of Environment, Planning & Regeneration (parking tickets are not going to regenerate North Finchley now are they?) with a copy to Declan Hoare, the Assistant Director of Highways, and Ian Baruch the Parking Manager (a temp from Hays HR because the council haven't yet been able to find a permanent employee) and to all 63 councillors who need to start to exert some authority over the senior officers if they want to be re-elected in May 2014.

This is what he wrote:

---

Dear Ms Wharfe

North Finchley this morning 

Council has just changed the blacked out parking notices and then systematically given everyone parked there a ticket, no warning, nothing.

Looked liked the (6 at least) parking attendants were laid on especially

arguments
shouting
police called

I am aware that a naughty individual has blacked out some signs and they may or may not be parked there today.

Was this vindictive and stupid idea of retribution one thought up by a member of your team or by NSL?

Innocent motorists are now suffering for having parked perfectly properly and then made into rule breakers by the acts of the council or its contractor.

I note this was done the morning after the North Finchley Traders Forum.

The council really is going out of its way to win friends and influence people.

By the way, there is a general requirement at law for the council to be fair in its dealings with motorists. Do you suppose that a swoop of this kind fits into the fair" category?

Yours sincerely

---

Mr Mustard looks forward to reading the reply.

This is what the council website says its wardens will do:

"We aim to deliver a good quality service in a fair manner, and to provide help and assistance"

except in North Finchley where the traffic wardens saw the signs being installed and then pounced. If you received one of those tickets Mr Mustard will help you appeal for free. Wait until the Notice to Owner arrives and then contact mrmustard@zoho.com

Why did it take from 4 July when the following photograph was taken until 11 September to change a few signs?

This week Barnet Council countenanced squatting at Friern Barnet library. They may just have opened the floodgates to copycat anarchist actions as that is what they react to.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Parking ticket bailiffs

Have you had the parking ticket bailiffs round because you haven't paid a Barnet Council parking ticket and you keep all of your paperwork stuffed behind a clock on the mantelpiece?

Mr Mustard thinks there is the possibility that the bailiff firm is not following the rules and so he wants to check the paperwork because he likes paperwork. Please contact mrmustard@zoho.com with copies of every single piece of paper so that he can study it and see if the bailiffs are doing their job properly and if Barnet Council are keeping an eye on them or letting them run riot.

Actually the originals would be preferred. Mr Mustard is based in High Barnet just behind the Spires & near the library so you could email him and then pop in by arrangement and leave the originals with Mr Mustard providing copies.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

PATAS pricing

http://www.signsfunny.com/

As readers will know, especially if they read the Miss Feezance blog as well as this one, if Barnet Council are unwilling to accept your appeal you can go, at the end of the process, to PATAS, the Parking & Traffic Appeals Service, to argue your case and it doesn't cost you a bean.

Barnet's bean-counters won't like it though as it costs them a whole heap of beans, which reduces the "profit", probably called a surplus to make it sound better, on the Special Parking Account.

The costs of PATAS, which is run by London Councils, have 2 elements. A fixed cost so that a building, staff, computer system etc can be in place and then a variable element which is paid each time an appeal is decided. The variable cost broadly pays for the parking adjudicators who are all legally qualified (and must by now know every arcane little detail about parking). The fixed cost is base on the number of parking tickets issued 2 years ago so that the numbers from year 1 can be calculated towards the end of year 2 to set the figures for year 3. 

London Councils publish the figures in their minutes and they are on their website. Mr Mustard has received copy invoices for the year just ended in order to double-check them.

The fixed cost for Barnet for the year to 31 March 2012 is £71,019 based upon 143,386 tickets having been issued in the year to March 2010 and 49.53p out of each one going to the fixed costs of the final appeal system; let's call it 50p to fixed costs. Every ticket Barnet Council have to cancel costs them 50p in addition to their own wasted time in-house.

The variable cost is £46.73 for every appeal decided upon in the year. In the year ended March 12 there were 1,548 cases decided for which Barnet Council ( on behalf of you and me ) had to pay £72,338

Together with a few sundry charges the total invoiced by PATAS to Barnet Council was £146,872

Dividing this by the 1,548 cases gives an average overall cost of £94.87 per ticket. As the average ticket income is £98 ( a weighted average of bus lane, higher and lower level penalties ) for Barnet Council to have to pursue you all the way to PATAS is not profitable for them, which is the very reason why you should appeal to the very end.

Barnet Council issue lots of tickets in doubtful circumstances. I see from reading this post on the Barnet Eye that the targeting of Cafe Buzz continued on Saturday and the traffic warden issued a parking ticket whilst still wearing his crash helmet and that is against the rules; he is not properly attired in accordance with the uniform rules. The traffic wardens routinely behave in this wrong way.

The ticket should be challenged on that basis in addition to the other reasons that the lady had to stop there, perhaps to set down or pick up her passengers. The observing bloggers probably suggested some grounds to her?

The whole parking system racket is heavily weighted against the motorist. Let's start to level the playing field out a bit. Only 1% of people keep appealing to the very end and reach PATAS. As PATAS reverse 50% of Barnet's decisions then if we could get the 1% up to 2% there would be another 750 happy people in Barnet and a £100,000 hole in the special parking account. Getting to 2% is only the first step. 

If absolutely everyone appealed to PATAS the systems of NSL, Barnet Council and PATAS would all come to a grinding halt and a review might be undertaken of the necessity to issue quite so many parking tickets. 

They are not about keeping traffic flowing and making sure that fire engines can get through. They are just a money-grubbing scheme to fleece the motorist and fill the coffers of the town hall. They also have the effect of snuffing out trade in our High Streets; Barnet Council are promoting their own short-term gain at the cost of long-term decline but they are so blinkered that they cannot see it.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard