Islington Council having a laugh

If a PCN offers the ability to make representations by email

a council cannot then in all fairness unilaterally withdraw the option (until they have stopped putting the method on Penalty Charge Notices and other documents) but for some unaccountable reason Islington Council have done just that (2023 isn't a good year for them, see previous blog post).

Mr Mustard often raises the concept of fairness with traffic (PCN) adjudicators as there is a duty on councils as pronounced by Lord Mustill.

One adjudicator wrote this in a tribunal decision:

 

Councils must act with honour, a concept which parking departments lose sight of when they focus on the money.

Mr Mustard will ask Islington Council to either accept emailed representations or remove the option from their documents.

The end.

Due adjustment - #1 Barking & Dagenham

Regular readers will recall that Mr Mustard recently set the scene for a series of blogs about enforcement authorities in London and the due adjustments they should make for a disabled person who cannot write - put simply, the local authority should accept representations on the telephone.

The first response in alphabetical order, from Barking and Dagenham, was very disappointing.

Mr Mustard really didn't understand that, a council is by very definition a public service and must therefore be 'customer facing' (recipients of PCNs don't really relish being called customers though).

The legislation for parking PCNs says this about the form of representations:

and the joint committee, said this in March 2013, so not new:

which proposal was duly accepted:

Therefore the council's reply is utter twaddle, misleading, unkind to the disabled and in breach of the law.

As it happens the Chief Executive of the council, back in October when Mr Mustard started his research, was Chris Naylor who used to be the second in command at Barnet Council and Mr Mustard had met him. Mr Mustard asked Chris for his help as he rather hoped that such behaviour would bother him.

It was only last week that Mr Mustard started thinking about writing this blog post and recalled he had not had a reply. By then it was public knowledge that Chris was leaving the council for a post in the private sector. However, on the council website he was still shown as the Chief Executive. A follow up email was replied to by an out-of-office email that he had left and the interim Chief Executive was Claire Symonds. When Chris was at Barnet so was Claire and Mr Mustard had met her. So Mr Mustard duly emailed Claire.

Mr Mustard didn't get what he asked for but did instead get a review of the Freedom of Information request, which didn't need reviewing, it accurately set out how they don't care for the disabled at Barking & Dagenham Council. Here is the review:

Mr Mustard didn't ask if there was direct dial access to the parking team, only if there was a telephone number for the council that a disabled person could ring in order to make representations. It is merely a case of typing what the person says and in this day and age the task could probably be completed by a speech-to-text system backed up by a person listening afterwards to the saved audio file in case of query. The system could prompt for information such as the PCN ref, car registration, name, address and phone number of the caller and then ask them why they want to challenge the PCN.

Mr Mustard went to the contact us page and it isn't explicit but he presumes the disabled are meant to phone 020 8215 3000

Mr Mustard did click through to the Parking page and then to the PCN page and then again to the Challenge a PCN page. There was a Help with your PCN page, it is no help to the disabled.

The telephone number is not printed on PCNs. It should be as otherwise how are the disabled, if they can't use the internet, going to find the number? this is setting them up to fail and gives them another hurdle to jump in a fixed time or they get timed out of the process and the penalty can then increase by 50%. Isn't the life of the disabled hard enough without Barking & Dagenham Council making it even harder?

What assistance is there for the disabled printed on a PCN? The FOI review said this:

Mr Mustard didn't have a copy of a PCN so he has sent to Barking & Dagenham council for a copy. Then he came across one from October, here it is

There is absolutely nothing on it to tell the disabled how to obtain help. Mr Mustard has been lied to, not for the first time.

It isn't the role of the Citizens Advice Bureau to make up for the failure of the council to do what it is legally required to do. That is an attempt by the council to avoid having to accept a telephonic representation, the hope that the CAB will write to or use the online form instead. The CAB have enough to do with sorting out complex problems, not undertaking routine challenges.

Mr Mustard took himself to the One Stop Shop page. It says it is for 'assisted self-service' which is not what the disabled need, they need a full service, the ability to explain to a person what the challenge is and have it written down for them.

Mr Mustard checked the council's webpage about libraries, there is no mention of help for the disabled.

To summarise the situation at Barking & Dagenham Council.

They are despicably obstructive to the disabled and failing in their legal duty.

It would be useful if you are the helper for a disabled person who cannot write to test out the system the council says is in place to assist them. Will it work? Mr Mustard doubts it. Please try it out and if the helper could let Mr Mustard know what happens he can then contact the Chief Executive again.

The end, for now.

TfL - avoiding the tough questions and the easy ones.

Mr G's house was undergoing major refurbishment. If the builders were not on site there was no letterbox to put his post through. He made other arrangements with the Royal Mail but they went wrong. This meant that he did not receive the cctv based PCN dated 8 November 16 for allegedly stopping on a red route where prohibited on 4 November.

Postal PCN of this type have a nasty sting in the tale. Not long after 28 days have elapsed a Charge Certificate is served. This is a demand for an extra 50%. Thus the first that Mr G knew of the event was a demand for £195 dated 15 December 16.

On 6 January 17 Mr G heard of Mr Mustard though a mutual friend. Mr G asked for help.

On 13 January Mr Mustard wrote to TfL and asked them the straight question, was the PCN returned to TfL.

On 19 January TfL registered the PCN as a debt at the TEC (think of it as a PCN debt register within the County Court). The standard £8 court fee was added.

On 25 January Mr G signed, & Mr Mustard filed at the TEC, a witness statement that the PCN had not been received. This entitled TfL to issue a fresh one.

On 27 January TfL wrote to Mr G responding to Mr Mustard's letter (very poor form and possibly calculated to undermine the representative) as follows:

Do you see an answer to the simple question as to whether they got the PCN back undelivered? No. Silence implies assent. The correspondence never claimed to be a representation, just a factual request but that didn't suit TfL so they ignored it. Silly billies.

Also on 27 January the TEC cancelled the charge certificate and told TfL as such.

On 17 February TfL as was their right, a foolish move but there you go, sent a fresh PCN in the post to Mr G. By then we were back to £130.

On 3 March Mr Mustard made the representations (challenge to you) on line in the name of Mr G:

On 28 March TfL wrote to Mr G as if he had not made any representations at all

There was no letter, there were clear representations made on line and Mr G not writing back at this time did not give TfL the right to do anything other than consider the representations made.

On 4 April Mr Mustard wrote in Mr G's name to say that representations had been made and then he kindly popped them into the appropriate legally defined categories.

On 12 May TfL sent a Notice of Rejection. This is meant to tell you why the particular representations have not been accepted. Can you see the reasons?

There was more nauseatingly sanctimonious irrelevant drivel after that but nowhere did TfL explain why they were rejecting any of the three clearly made representations. TfL offered to accept £65 instead of £130 if Mr G did not take them to appeal (which costs them £30). With the cast iron case that Mr Mustard was looking at there was zero prospect of Mr G having to get his wallet out so the inducement fell on deaf ears . Mr Mustard wrote to Mr G:

I suspect that TfL will not contest the Appeal once it has been made. 

This was for several reasons one of which, an unassailable ground, was that TfL did not serve the Notice of Rejection until more than 56 days after the representations had been served on them. That timetable is set out in law for parking contraventions (it is longer for moving traffic, but stopping = parking).

On 24 May, Mr Mustard hand delivered the Notice of Appeal to the tribunal (one of seven he handed in that day). The date for an oral hearing was set, 21 June 17. Yesterday Mr Mustard started checking to see if any evidence had been filed, instead he found that TfL had decided on 9 June to not contest the Appeal = they will cancel the PCN. A pity they have not told either Mr G or Mr Mustard as yet.

What lessons should they learn from this sorry tale:

1.  If Mr Mustard asks you a question you should answer it even if that is to your detriment.

2.   Mr Mustard contests every single Notice of Rejection at the tribunal so think before you Reject.

3.  It is necessary to at least tackle the representations, even if you answer them badly. Failing to tackle them at all is a procedural impropriety which is a guaranteed win at the tribunal.

4.  Issuing a Notice of Rejection out of time is also a procedural impropriety, one which Mr Mustard will spot.

5.  A proper system should be put in place to deal with undelivered mail. It is dishonest to plough on as if nothing has happened.

6.  If you behave in the manner in which an enforcement authority should behave, with the utmost probity, you will not get your dirty linen aired on a well read blog.

Think about it TfL.

This case reinforces Mr Mustard's view that there needs to be an external, at least annual, audit of parking enforcement within local authorities to proactively assure the public that authorities are acting honestly because they sure as heck aren't. The external auditors need to be able to impose sanctions and order redress for wrongdoing to make councils less money and more service motivated than they currently are.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Enfield Council in time travel trouble.

Mr Mustard complained about the use of the non-statutory pre-debt reminder to Enfield Council on 26 January. He had previously complained about it in November and was told that all his points were valid and the reminder would be changed. The revised version was so similar that Mr Mustard didn't notice the subtle differences, he having expected radical change & possibly withdrawal of the use of the reminder as Haringey Council decided at about the time that Mr Mustard complained to them.

This is what Mr Mustard wrote on 26 January:

Dear Mr Parking Manager

Nothing has yet changed with the pre-debt reminder?

I don't think the contravention description is substantially complaint (sic) as looking at the meter on google streetmap it looks to have the red dash sticker on it. That means that payment could have been made by phone, which is not part of the alleged contravention. Surely this should have been a code 11, parked without payment of the parking charge and your PCN is unsustainable?

In the circumstances you could please cancel EF00123456.

Many thanks

Mr Mustard

There then followed a game of email ping pong which culminated in Mr Mustard's complaint being sent from parking to the complaints department from where it will end up with the Ombudsman who, his recent report Fairer Fines shows, is currently concerned about the fair treatment of motorists.

As there had been a pre-debt reminder Mr Mustard knew that a charge certificate had been issued. His client had not received the Notice to Owner and was awaiting the Order for Recovery so that the process could be rewound to the Notice to Owner stage.

On 27 January Mr Mustard's client sent him a copy of the Order for Recovery. Mr Mustard duly submitted his client's witness statement to the TEC the very same day.

On 9 February the council, as they were perfectly entitled to do, issued a fresh Notice to Owner.

On 15 February Mr Mustard's client sent him a copy of the fresh Notice to Owner and on the same day Mr Mustard went on-line to the Enfield Council computer and made representations that the PCN had been issued for the wrong contravention code.

Imagine Mr Mustard's surprise when he received a Notice of Rejection on 16 February which had been written on 14 February and which contained the following:

The order set out in the legislation is simple, it goes like this:

1 - Notice to Owner

2 - Representations against the Notice to Owner

3 - Notice of Rejection (or Acceptance) of the Representations

4 - Appeal to the tribunal (done!)

Enfield Council have decided to make Mr Mustard's email of 26 January which pre-dated the Notice to Owner of 9 February into a document which was issued 2 weeks later after the Notice to Owner.

In the four years that Mr Mustard has been fighting PCN he has never seen such a blatant procedural impropriety. They are defined as a failure to follow Parking Regulations but you could simply think of them as a council blunder.

He know has an Appeal pending which technically he shouldn't have but which he has no doubt will be allowed if it reaches a hearing which it probably won't as Mr Mustard will be filing a further complaint with Enfield Council. Mr Mustard will be making a claim for costs, which is very rare for him, as the council have been wholly unreasonable.

Mr Mustard doesn't suppose, or rather hope, that Enfield Council are playing guessing games about the representations that ordinary members of the public intend to make on a future date. If they are though, the public don't know the correct procedure like Mr Mustard does.

What the council's actions do disclose though is an indecent haste to reject Representations not yet made by Mr Mustard.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

No, No = Yes

Mr Mustard is persistent and not easily put off.

You need to be the same if you are challenging a PCN.

It is a game of brinkmanship and Mr Mustard will go to the wire because once you have forgotten about the 50% discount you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You will have read Mr Mustard's guide (top left of the blog if you haven't you naughty reader) and know there are three rounds. Here are the arguments advanced in the three rounds of a recent PCN:

Round 1: informal representations in response to a PCN.

You have issued a PCN for failing to pay in Percy Rd. I have seen a PayByPhone receipt for parking in Percy Road that day, for £1.20. Payment was made for this vehicle at 16:30

Accordingly, the alleged contravention did not occur.

Secondly, the sign in the council's photographs is not authorised for use on its own, only as a sign plate in conjunction with a standard pay-and-display sign. The council has therefore not properly signed the location in accordance with the Secretary of State's authority and may not issue a PCN.

Please cancel the PCN.

Response: The council are not able to cancel your PCN.

Round 2: formal representations in response to a Notice to Owner (they may look familiar: you can quite properly make the same representations as before).

You have issued a PCN for failing to pay in Percy Rd. I have seen a PayByPhone receipt for parking in Percy Road that day, for £1.20. Payment was made for this vehicle at 16:30.

Accordingly, the alleged contravention did not occur.

Secondly, the sign in the council's photographs is not authorised for use on its own, only as a sign plate in conjunction with a standard pay-and-display sign. The council has therefore not properly signed the location in accordance with the Secretary of State's authority and may not issue a PCN.

Please cancel the PCN.

Response: We do not believe it would be appropriate to cancel.

Round 3: filing an Appeal at PATAS (you should be suffering double déjà vu).

You have issued a PCN for failing to pay in Percy Rd. I have seen a PayByPhone receipt for parking in Percy Road that day, for £1.20. Payment was made for this vehicle at 16:30.

Accordingly, the alleged contravention did not occur.

Secondly, the sign in the council's photographs is not authorised for use on its own, only as a sign plate in conjunction with a standard pay-and-display sign. The council has therefore not properly signed the location in accordance with the Secretary of State's authority and may not issue a PCN.

Please cancel the PCN.

Response: The Council has re-examined all of the evidence and on this occasion has decided to not contest your appeal. The PCN has been cancelled due to a processing error.

Is it odd that the processing error was not noticed at rounds 1 & 2?

The challenge that was made at all three stages was the same.

All the council have achieved is wasting £40 on a PATAS Appeal as that is payable as soon as the Appeal is lodged regardless of whether they contest it or throw in the towel as they did in this case.

The PCN was only worth £60 so the council are really out of pocket on this one. They should probably accept all formal representations against lower level (i.e. £60) PCN as otherwise they will; lose money as if half are upheld they have an average income of £30 with a cost of £40 giving a net loss of £10 per PCN. Smart.

So now you know not to be put off by whatever seemingly definite "no" answer the council give you, twice, they may simply be bluffing to try and get you to cough up quietly and they might just throw in the towel when the going gets tough.

Mr Mustard has never yet failed to progress from round 1 to round 3 so when answering his round 2 representations the council should bear in mind that a "no" answer means they will have to write a cheque for £40 and they will almost certainly have zero income to show for it.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

N.B. the wrong bay was paid for and the road was the same as was the tariff so although the paid for wrong location is usually a losing argument Mr Mustard was intending to show that the Traffic Management Order had not been breached. He also had another argument he had not previously advanced as a reserve for the day of the hearing (without needing to produce any further evidence).

new NSL appeal strategy - give in (April Fool)

This post was an April Fool, in so far as it is in red type.

Mr Mustard has been making NSL look like fools when it comes to Appeals at PATAS and to PCN in general (for which NSL are the appointed One Barnet parking enforcement contractor of Barnet Council).

In 2013 Mr Mustard handled 102 PCN and 98 of them were cancelled.

So far in 2014 he has 34 cancelled PCN to his name (with 3 people told by Mr Mustard to pay up rather than fight). Of those 34 PCN, 20 have got as far as PATAS and each one costs the council £40 in fees whether they win or lose. So far, in 2014, the council have either lost every case at PATAS or in a few cases thrown in the towel without a hearing. That has cost the council £800 in fees to help run PATAS. They paid £14,400 out in January to run PATAS and want to get this cost back within budget.

A new manager has arrived at NSL and has carefully studied the cases that Mr Mustard has won. He has done a cost benefit analysis of the situation and given that Mr Mustard appeals at most 160 PCN a year out of 165,000, so is only messing up 0.1% of the PCN issued, the new manager has worked out that it is cheaper to let Mr Mustard win every case at the formal appeal stage (the representations that are made in response to the Notice to Owner) as that way the council doesn't lose £40 and doesn't have to spend 2 or 3 hours preparing an Evidence Pack which Mr Mustard then chops into little pieces.

Needless to say NSL were trying to keep this quiet (they haven't even told the council thin client side) but inevitably one of Mr Mustard's moles got to hear of this new policy, which has only come into force today on the start of the new council year, 1 April 2014, and told him. The simple fact is that all you have to do in order to get your PCN cancelled is to add to your representations:

"If my PCN is not cancelled I will be represented at PATAS by Mr Mustard".

To preserve face and to avoid complaint from other lesser known PCN representatives who abound on Pepipoo you also have to put in the other grounds under which you think your PCN should be cancelled (i.e. the sign was facing the wrong way, the lines were faint, you were unloading etc etc) so that NSL can choose one of those grounds and cite some vague processing error and the normal order of things will be preserved. NSL won't officially cancel the ticket just because Mr Mustard beats them hands down every time.

If for some bizarre foolish reason your request for cancellation is not met then do please email mrmustard@zoho.com for advice.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

That's enough Christmas cheer; have some statistics.

	March 13		March 12	March 11
PCN issued – London-wide	4,895,252		4,931,816	4,810,561
Appeals made to PATAS	66,810		74,568	69,580
Percentage appealed	1.36%		1.51%	1.45%
Appeals processed	57,888		64,903	69,132
Barnet PCN issued	165,569		148,118	124,139
Barnet PCN appealed	2,393		1,548	1,183
Barnet PCN appeals processed	2,253		1,322	1,277
Barnet PCN % appealed	1.45%		1.05%	0.95%
Barnet appeal ranking – volume	7		19	22
Barnet appeals allowed	1,684		841	580
Percentage appeals allowed	75%		64%	45%
Ranking	2		14	19
Highest % allowed	78%		98%	98%
Borough	City of London		City of London	City of London
Lowest % allowed	25%		26%	26%
Borough	Kingston		Croydon	Greenwich
Appeals not contested by borough
Barnet	30%		28%	12%
Highest % not contested	42%		77%	83%
Borough	City of London		City of London	City of London
Lowest % not contested	6%		5%	2%
Borough	Enfield		Greenwich	Kingston

The stats for PCN appeals at PATAS for the year to 31 March 13 came out just before the Xmas break, and Mr Mustard has extracted some of the relevant ones for you.

At the top we see that on a pan-London basis the number of PCN was down on the previous year although it was up on the one before that. No valid conclusion can be drawn on a variance of a mere 2.5%. Just look at the number of PCN issued, five million (that is the real scandal, not whether it has gone down a  few thousand in a particular year which will be the one statistic that always gets quoted).

The number of appeals made to PATAS varied a whole lot more and is really low. The proposed change to the rules so that prompt payment after losing a PATAS appeal would lead to a discount of 25% would see a whole lot more cases going to PATAS. It is a civilised place and not at all formal and everyone with a PCN should go there at least once in their lifetime for the experience. If you go on a Wednesday morning you'll probably bump into Mr Mustard.

The number of Barnet PCN going up was already known to regular readers. The larger jump comes after the appointment of NSL on 1 May 12. Mr Mustard finds it hard to believe that the pattern of motorists' behaviour changed markedly at that time; could it be the approach taken by NSL that has led to the jump in PCN numbers?

It is interesting to contrast Barnet with other similar boroughs, such as 

Enfield with 72,857 PCN

Harrow: 70,623

Croydon: 97,169

It can't be the motorist who is greatly different in their parking habits in Barnet, can it?

What is unsurprising is the jump in appeals being made to PATAS (when you ask in response to a PCN or Notice to Owner to have your PCN cancelled they are not appeals but representations, by the way) with a greater increase after the appointment of NSL, and the jump in the number of PCN issued, than beforehand. Mr Mustard puts this down to more marginal PCN being issued. The sad truth though is that 50% of all PCN issued are paid without demur and so the temptation must be to issue PCN like a drunken sailor as the income from an extra 30,000 PCN, of which 15,000 will be paid just like that, makes the extra time, cost and trouble of another 900 appeals a relative flea bite.

The number of appeals to PATAS is already well up for 2013-14 (well done everybody) with 2,751 processed in 37 weeks with a projected final number for the year to March 2014 of 3,866. Barnet have already got themselves from 22nd out of 34 boroughs in terms of absolute volume of PCN appeals up to 7th, which is an impressively bad performance.

If we look next at the percentage of appeals that are won by the motorist at PATAS then Barnet's poor performance is laid starkly bare. Even before the move to NSL the wheels were starting to come off, probably caused by all the time spent on getting ready to outsource with the council going from being in the better bottom half of the table of London boroughs into the top half at 14th worst. Then NSL take over and rocket up the league table to 2nd, behind only the City of London who have long had a reputation for not contesting appeals. The City issued a mere 47,555 PCN in the year with 702 going to appeal and 78% of them being won mainly because the City didn't bother to fight 42% of them. You can see that Barnet's failure rate is similar to the success rate of other boroughs with Kingston currently being a good place to park properly.

Some boroughs fight you all the way to PATAS which indicates a confidence in their argument and proper resourcing of the parking department. Barnet on the other hand don't contest 30% of all PATAS cases and this means that their possible two rejections of your representations could have been spurious, or a bluff or signifies a lack of resource for preparing appeal packs.

The lesson that you, dear reader, can learn from the statistics is that it is worth going the three rounds with Barnet council as you will probably beat them in the end. You just have to persist a little. You can present the same argument in your second representations as in the first and then the same at the PATAS appeal. There is a brief guide to the process available to download at the top left of the blog. Let's see if we can get appeals to 4,000 this year and then at least 5,000 next. At some point the wheels will well and truly come off the NSL machine.

All the best for 2014.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

On 28 January Mr Mustard realised, thanks to the external auditor sending him some statistics that are much more out than he is!, that he had forgotten to include 13,317 bus lane tickets in the figures to March 12 and they are now included.