Helping the mentally or physically ill, the elderly & the poor to fight Council PCNs.
Writing about blunders, democracy and profligacy at Barnet Council.
On 4 June Mr Mustard lost a tribunal appeal which related to Redbridge Council. He advised his client to pay the £110 within the 28 days allowed, which was done. The motorist also very generously made a donation to the North London Hospice.
On 9 June Mr Mustard filed a Review request at the tribunal. The Chief Adjudicator considered it and listed it for a Review hearing on 2 July. At the Review hearing the original decision was over-turned and Redbridge Council were ordered to make a refund of the £110 'without delay'.
Mr Mustard thinks that allowing 28 days is reasonable for any refund, that being the same timetable as the public gets to pay up in.
On 30 July the motorist chased Redbridge for his refund. Silence ensued, a refund didn't arrive.
He kept on chasing to no avail and then asked Mr Mustard for his advice.
Mr Mustard gave him the direct email of a manager who he had previously dealt with. That was on 17 September. A reply wasn't received but a refund was.
Perhaps the apology is 'in the post'.
Councils should put as much effort into a refund as motorists have to do into paying them promptly. If the boot had been on the other foot the council could have increased the penalty to £165. There will be no compensation for the delay by the council.
Councils should also have good manners. They would be better regarded if they did.
The vast majority of Appeals by PHV drivers at this location have been accepted. They only occur of course once the motorist has made representations to Redbridge Council and been rejected, even though the council know that the small percentage of people who Appeal to the tribunal are likely to win. The council don't want anything to get in the way of revenue raising, certainly not fairness.
It is quite rare for red routes in London to be under the control of any authority apart from TfL. This has left PHV drivers in a difficult situation, they don't know when the passenger wants to be dropped on a red route whether or not they will receive a PCN for it.
If you are calling a minicab and are adjacent to a red route please help the driver by going 25m down a side road, where the red route has ended and calling from there.
The original Appeal was lost. It shouldn't have been as the Traffic Order was not in evidence and there doesn't need to be a consideration of exemptions until the enforcement authority has proved its case.
More Review requests are turned down than accepted for a hearing and more of the second hearings are lost than allowed but in this the Chief Adjudicator carried out the Review. He picked up the lack of reasoning and thus this request looks like it came under the 'Interests of Justice' ground.
Having asked Redbridge Council to produce the Traffic Order and not been sent it, it is no surprise that the PCN was cancelled accordingly by the Chief Adjudicator.
If you take a mini-cab in Redbridge please ask your driver to spread the word around his driving mates.
The end (although Cranbrook Road is likely to appear again in the blog).
Please join us on Tuesday 11 June 2019 at 6:30pm at Hendon Town Hall. We are holding a short protest prior to speaking at the Communities Leadership and Libraries (CLL) Committee meeting at 7pm. Please invite your friends and neighbours to come along too - children are welcome!
As you may have heard, the Minister for Culture recently refused our complaint about the Barnet Library Service. Unfortunately, his decision shows a blatant determination to ignore the evidence of Barnet residents and let the Council off the hook. You can read our response here.
In spite of this, the Council wasn’t able to get away completely unscathed: one important outcome of the complaint process is the Council’s long-awaited “Library Review”. In this, the Council must explore the impact of the library cuts on groups protected by the Equalities Acts – including children, older people, and those with disabilities. Not suprisingly, these are the groups most affected by unstaffed libraries, reduced facilities and locked toilets.
The process for the review is due to be announced at the CLL meeting. We need your support to put pressure on the committee to carry out a meaningful review that listens to residents' views and really looks at the impact of the cuts. Please help us to get all our voices heard.
The review is timely: you may have read about the recent report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty which finds "unheard-of levels of loneliness and isolation" and links this to austerity policies, including shrinking library services.
We will be organising speakers for the meeting – reply to this email by Monday 3 June if you want to participate. We are also collecting your stories about the library service - email us or share them via our facebook page or website.
Sorry this is a little late but Mr Mustard only found out about the review on 25 June and it was running until 28 June. Mr Mustard asked for a paper copy of the review form on 25 June and it only arrived today, 4 July.
This is what the council said they were doing:
Event Day Controlled Parking Zone Review
Overview
In January 2013 the Council introduced an Event Day Controlled Parking Zone in the area surrounding Copthall Stadium (Allianz Park) in order to minimise congestion and provide adequate parking facilities for residents, businesses, local organisations and their visitors when events are being held at the stadium.
The Event Day CPZ has now been in operation on seven occasions since its inception. Now that the rugby season has ended the Council is carrying out a review of the CPZ. As part of this review a consultation is being conducted with local residents. The consultation will aim to gauge residents opinions on how the CPZ has been operating, and explore in detail if there are any issues affecting local residents as a result of the CPZ.
The Event Day CPZ consultation commences on Wednesday 6 June 2013 and properties within the zone will be sent a letter with a link to an online questionnaire. If you live on one of the roads within the Event Day CPZ and have not received a letter please ring 020 8359 3059, email eando.consultation@barnet.gov.uk or write to the Design Team, London Borough of Barnet, Building 4, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP
If you live within the zone, and some 8000 properties are staggeringly included, then Mr Mustard feels sure that the design team would rather have your answers a little late than not at all. Hopefully the outcome of this review will be a shrinking of the size of the zone.
Stewart Murray was certainly minted when he was made redundant which was reported on 20 June 11 and the redundancy payment was actually made on 30 June 11. Mr Mustard was a bit fast out of the blocks with his FOI request and got it in on 22 June 11 not that it made any difference as it was refused, the review was refused, and the ICO refused on the grounds of planned future publication. This is a valid ground for refusal but if it was good news you can be sure that the tooting twister would have had it up on the front page of the council website before you could unwrap a Murray Mint.
When information is only published once a year it strikes Mr Mustard that the FOI exemption needs reining back a little to perhaps 3 months. We will see if the current review of FOI by the Justice Select committee changes anything. Mr Mustard did put his evidence in for consideration.
So what were Barnet Council so fearful of Mr Mustard finding out? Well the draft annual accounts for March 2012 are now out and on page 75 it shows that the payoff was
£167,018
No wonder Barnet Council wanted to keep it quiet.
In the previous full employment year ended 31 March 2011, Stewart Murray was "only" paid
£139,200
so he received 1.2 times his annual salary.
The council policy for redundancy payoffs (March 11 edition) had a maximum payoff equivalent to pay for 30 weeks if you were aged over 61 and had 20 years of service. Not Stewart then.
However there is a cute little paragraph which doesn't say "for senior management only"
a bit like "For New Customers Only"
but it might as well, which says:
In certain genuinely exceptional circumstances, consideration can be given to making a one-off payment, based on the merits of each individual case, up to the maximum permitted under the regulations* (i.e. 104 weeks’ pay calculated on a sum up to the employee’s actual week’s pay) taking into account continuous service with employees listed under the Redundancy Payments Continuity of Employment in Local Government etc) (Modification) Order 1999). There will be no right for employees to access this payment and the decision will be made on the circumstances as they relate to the particular individual. The payment incorporates the employee’s statutory redundancy entitlement.
What was genuinely exceptional? Maybe it is time that the GFC set out very tightly what the certain genuinely exceptional circumstances have to be.
Mr Mustard has only ever seen this applied for the really well paid. Mr Mustard hazards that the parking back office employees paid off by NSL as soon as they were TUPE transferred didn't get over a year's pay. If you are one of them please get in touch.
Update 08.33
It seems that Stewart was not out of work for long & there is a certain lead time to get another job. It looks more like a seamless transfer to Redbridge than anything else.
