Postal delays

One would hope that all enforcement authorities in London (and those just around it) would have recognised the unfairness of sending out moving traffic PCNs (and other documents) to London's residents, which have a penal effect if the 28 day deadline is missed, and added extra time into their systems.

If not, they should be making due allowance and you the motorist should make your representations as soon as you get a document which is late and state the date on which it did actually arrive.

The umbrella body for all councils in London sent out an email to all councils in London on 14 January 21 to give them a nudge if they hadn't already thought about it.

Don't hesitate with Notices about PCNs, deal with them today. 

Procrastinating can be expensive.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Give Postman Pat lots of PCNs

Mr Mustard notices things. In late 2016 he noticed that the Royal Mail, whose liveried vehicles he thought had a countrywide exemption (which he can't find) for parking on double yellow lines were being issued with PCN by Barnet Council at a fair old lick. He went to the parking tribunal website and searched 2016 for all Appellant company names which started with 'Royal Mail'. He found 68 entries across London. There are 32 London boroughs along with the City + TfL who dish out PCN so you would only expect 2 or 3 of those 68 to emanate from Barnet Council. How wrong he was. 32 of the PCNs were issued by Barnet Council which shows a clear indication that the council and/or their agents NSL Ltd had decided that the Royal Mail were fair game.

Mr Mustard has copied the Barnet decisions for you.

The first thing you notice is that there were no parking tickets issued from January to June. Did Royal Mail van drivers suddenly individually decide to change their parking habits? No, it is probably that someone instructed traffic wardens to issue PCNs to them. Mr Mustard will ask the parking manager to reverse that instruction.

This idea of targeting the Royal Mail has been a right royal waste of time for the council. Every PCN issued leads to a small fee of just under 47p that they have to pay to London Councils and each Appeal to London Tribunals entails a fee of £33.32 (it will be £29.90 once Barnet Appeals can be started on line rather than by a form sent off in the post).

Let us suppose all the PCNs were at the £110 rate. If Royal Mail rolled over and paid them all Barnet would have gained £55 a time or £1,760

However they didn't as Royal Mail contested them all so Barnet Council had to pay out £33 for each PCN = £1,056 in fees. Out of the 32 Appeals, Barnet Council only managed to win one so they netted £110 for that leaving them nursing a net loss of £946. They have also wasted a lot of driver and management time and NSL's and their own and the tribunal's. Had Royal Mail only provided proof of a parcel being delivered in the case they lost, they would also have won that one.

What deeply concerns Mr Mustard is that on 24 out of 32 Appeals the council offered no evidence (which you find out when you click on the case number on the left on the public tribunal register but Mr Mustard knows that a blank location means the Appeal was a "Do not Contest" case). In every case Barnet Council (and/or NSL) will have rejected representations (possibly twice) made by Royal Mail and then suddenly decided when their bluff is called to cancel the PCNs after all. Mr Mustard does not know how many other PCNs there were which were cancelled at earlier stages.

Mr Mustard thinks it is an abuse of process, and a breach of the council's general duty at law to be procedurally fair, to use the PCN enforcement system in this cynical way.

Your parking reputation is in tatters Barnet Council and is it any wonder?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Enfield PCN - no address to write to

Mr Mustard currently has an Appeal running at London Tribunals on the basis that the PCN does not contain an address to which to write. Enfield Council think that providing a web address is adequate and Mr Mustard thinks that as the Regulations were written in 2007, when computers were less common, they are referring to a postal address. He also thinks that is necessary in order to comply with the Equality Act as those people (disproportionately elderly or disabled) who don't have a computer will be at a disadvantage.

The odd thing is that once the Notice to Owner is issued that contains an address which is:

Enfield Parking Services

c/o NSL Ltd

PO Box 65732

First Floor

London

N13 9BL

so do use that if you prefer writing. Always use the Signed For service (it costs £1.74, money well spent)

What the council have done is rather than nudge you into using the on line system is to bludgeon you into it as you are left with no choice and if you do not respond to the PCN placed on your car you lose the chance to challenge and preserve the discount at the same time.

What Mr Mustard wants to know is if you have complained about the lack of an address as Enfield Council say that only Mr Mustard has complained (Mr Mustard can usually be bothered to complain whereas the public tend not to, especially in a techncial area like parking regulations).

You can of course add to any current PCN that you are challenging (only one placed on your car or put into your hand) the argument that the PCN is not compliant as it does not contain a physical address and that was the way in which you had wanted to communicate, i.e. by Royal Mail.

This is part of what Enfield Council have just told the tribunal:

However, the Council recognises a postal address would assist members of the public and will look to re-introduce this on the schedule 9 penalty charge notice (i.e. ones put on your vehicle).

If they win the day on the Appeal Mr Mustard thinks they won't bother.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Freepost!

The white envelope above is the one in which the Notice of Rejection was sent out, probably by NSL on behalf of Barnet Council parking department but possibly by the council themselves.

It arrived OK without suffering a £2 surcharge

which would really have been an extra poke in the eye, but it isn't enough that the envelope actually arrived. If you have a permit and don't display it or if you don't pay for your parking, even though you meant to, then you are liable to receive a PCN . Similarly, if the council's Notice arrives but the council didn't send it first class (and this was sent unstamped which is no class at all) then the council have committed a procedural impropriety as Notices (and the Notice of Rejection is a notice) must be sent first class.

Mr Mustard knows that the envelope is the one which contained the Notice of Rejection from Barnet Council as it is a PremierTeam 731450 envelope and Mr Mustard has hundreds of them bearing a franking mark like the one on the brown envelope above (which was torn from an Evidence Pack).

Please keep all the envelopes that your Notices come in as Mr Mustard may need them if he is acting for you.

Yours frugally (but clearly not as frugal as the council have been)

Mr Mustard

Update 8 December (all's well that ends well)

Morning Mr Mustard (real name actually used)

The Notice has been cancelled, it appears that the member of staff who sent out the NoR didn’t check to see if it was correctly franked, I will speak to their team leader. I apologise on behalf of the service.  

Kind regards

Process Manager

Footnote

Mr Mustard nearly always tells senior parking management when NSL (or the parking department themselves) have blundered as it saves time & trouble all round. In this case Mr Mustard has not had to complete and post off the Notice of Appeal. NSL have not had to respond and spend 2 hours preparing an Evidence Pack. the council have not had to pay a close to £40 tribunal fee when the outcome was an inevitable loss. This is why the two parties talk to each other. When they can't agree then the tribunal decide the correct position.

What does "recently" mean to Barnet Council?

It means 2004!

this real French stamp didn't come to Mr Mustard from Barnet Council ! Quelle surprise!

In one of his FOI requests Mr Mustard asked about the spend with the Royal Mail of £353,451 in the year ended 31 March 2011. He is told that EU procurement rules do not apply to this spend ( he hasn't checked but will accept that as a true statement ) and so a tender has not been advertised in the OJEU. That should not be the end of the matter though as this is an area which is ripe for savings ( it's low hanging fruit in management parlance - he expects that every senior manager at Barnet Council will have heard of this concept - they just haven't implemented it ).

In addition to the full year spend shown above the spend on postage from April to November 2011 was £212,367 so we are again looking at something in excess of £300k in a full year.

In 2012 it is possible to send your letters by other services of which the best known is probably TNT.

Now we have to do some maths, sorry, and we have to make some assumptions just to illustrate the possibilities.

Let us assume that all the spend in 2010/11 was on 1st class DL size envelopes ( DL is when you fold a sheet of A4 into 3 ). If you bought a stamp at the Post Office it would have cost you 41p ( it's now 46p - it won't be long before the penny post is the £1 post ) but if you used a franking machine you only paid 36p. Think of that as bulk discount and compensation for delivering lovely uniform well typed letters with clear postcodes.

So £353,451 would buy you 981,808 first class "stamps". Post is sent on 6 days a week, say 300 days a year which means about 3,270 items a day.

If you now go the TNT website here you can use their savings calculator. You have to drag your slider with the mouse to the right until you reach 3,000. That shows you a saving of £108,000 so for 3,270 items the saving would be £117,700.

However, TNT have shown the saving against the full price of postage so we need to take 981,808 times 5p = £49,090 off the level of saving shown ( Mr Mustard does try to be fair and accurate ) giving a potential saving of £68,610 which is still not to be sniffed at. It would pay for 6 months use of Craig Cooper the Commercial Director ( third class? ) who is in charge of procurement and whom, one would hope, has already thought about putting postage out to tender.

So, over 10 years, the usual period Barnet Council talk about for cashable savings, the council could save £686,000 ( more as prices rise ). 

Now of course the real saving will have to be based upon the actual mix of postage sizes and whether second class is used much and upon the negotiation skills of the senior management of procurement. TNT would love to have the volume, look, they even mention local government on their website. Perhaps certain types of bulk post could be put out to tender?

It's not as if Barnet Council haven't heard of TNT. They paid them £41,397 in the year to 31 March 11 and £15,721 in the following 8 months (going down?) although some of that was supposedly for stationery ( Mr Mustard finds the analysis of the over £500 lists to be wanting ).

So what caused this blog post? It was the words added into the FOI reply which were possibly meant to be spin. Once the answer was that the supply did not need to be tendered there was nothing more to add but someone, person or persons unknown who was feeling defensive, added the words:

"Until recently there was no option but to use Royal Mail for postage"

and yet TNT started doing mail in 2004!

When will the council look at this? Probably "as soon as possible". Mark your diary for about 2020.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard