Barnet Council - seeing what isn't there

 

The above photograph was taken by a 'traffic warden' (now called Civil Enforcement Officers) when giving out a PCN. Miraculously, he could see a bay that is no longer clearly there.

 

Mr Mustard took his own photograph a few days later which gives a better overview.

It is the legal duty of the council to maintain signs and lines. Traffic wardens prioritise giving out dubious PCNs over reporting signs and lines which need to be maintained.

Mr Mustard made a challenge.

In order to issue a PCN a motorist must have been alerted to the presence of a restriction by, in this case, adequate bay markings.

In this case they are eroded way beyond the point of substantial compliance as the CEO's own photograph makes plain.

The CEO should never have issued a PCN, their first duty is to check the state of signs and lines and report any that require attention.

Please cancel the PCN.

Needless to say, despite the obviously sub-standard lines the informal challenge was rejected (Mr Mustard will take this as far as the tribunal where he expects an independent adjudicator will take one look and cancel the PCN).

Clear lines, not !

The legal test is substantial compliance, viz:

In the very first tribunal hearing which Mr Mustard attended an experienced adjudicator, a lawyer, said that could be equated to 'If it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck.'

The dregs of the original bay lines are far from substantially compliant. No reasonable (& impartial) person could conclude otherwise. The council only do so because they want £130. They are going to have to fight Mr Mustard very hard for it.

Mr Mustard looked back through some of his previous tribunal case hearings (785 of them since 2017) and found the below line which was more clear than this one is and was still found to be wanting.

Note the perfect yellow line in the background

This is what the adjudicator had to say.

The end, for now.

Why traffic wardens might not be popular

If Barnet Council ever wondered why the traffic wardens that they allow NSL to foist on us, at lower rates of pay then the council used to give them, are unpopular then maybe this decision by an independent adjudicator at PATAS, could be one reason. The traffic wardens are quite simply out of sight of their masters and out of control.

The Appellant attended this hearing.

The Appellant parked his vehicle outside his house in a permit bay and displayed his disabled badge, but the wrong way up. The Enforcement Authority accept that he can park there with his disabled badge, but say that as it was displayed incorrectly this Penalty Charge Notice was properly issued.

The Appellant produced a letter from his neighbour, Mr L, who was there at the time and states that he saw the civil enforcement officer around the vehicle. He told the officer that the Appellant was allowed to park there with a disabled badge and the officer replied that the badge was not correctly displayed. Another neighbour came out and said she would get the Appellant to show his disabled badge. She went to get him, but as she did so the officer issued the Penalty Charge Notice. It was on the vehicle when the Appellant came out. The officer would not let the Appellant open the vehicle door and show him the badge. An argument followed. The officer's notes do not mention any contact with the Appellant or his neighbours.

I found the Appellant to be a credible witness & believed what he told me & the evidence of Mr L.

Whilst the badge must be displayed so that all the correct details can be seen, if before the Penalty Charge Notice is issued there is an opportunity for a badge in the vehicle to be shown to the officer so that he can check it is valid and then be correctly displayed, it is inequitable and unreasonable for the officer to proceed to issue a Penalty Charge Notice.

The appeal was allowed.

This isn't funny but traffic wardens are now known as Civil Enforcement Officers. A misnomer if ever there was one.

What Mr Mustard likes about this story is that the neighbours rally round and help each other just as they do in Mustard Avenue. The bad behaviour of council representatives leads to big society behaviour. Ironic really.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Dry cleaner taken to the cleaners by Barnet Council

Go on, give us a parking ticket.

Now it is agreed that you shouldn't park on the pavement anywhere in London but, and it is a big but, there is an exemption for "loading and unloading where there is no other way the delivery or collection could be made" (see the bottom of this London Councils website page).

In the case of this particular dry cleaners the front of the shop is next to a bus stop and zig zags etc and you can't get anywhere near it so using the rear service road (a clue in the name there) is the only answer. The service road is too narrow for a vehicle to park without obstructing the road and so the delivery driver popped the vehicle on the pavement for a few minutes whilst the unloading took place. What can you see in the boot? yes clothes for dry cleaning. This vehicle received a parking ticket for pavement parking. The traffic wardens have their favourite places to go to dish out tickets and this is one of them, a quiet backwater where no-one is causing any traffic flow troubles. Hardly anyone will walk down this service road except for the staff of the shops as it is a cul-de-sac so it is unlikely that parents with prams or others pushing or auto-propelling wheelchairs will be trying to get along the pavement.

Given that we are looking at the tradesman's entrance of a shop and that is a place where loading and unloading goes on we have to ask ourselves why a parking ticket was issued. Could it be for the money or one of those non-existent targets?

How does Mr Mustard know that the traffic warden knew that unloading was likely to be taking place? Easy, the photograph above was taken by NSL's traffic warden.

Oh but I hear you say, wait, there is no proof that loading or unloading was ongoing and this is what the council will say. Well it is a risk in 2013 to leave your vehicle with the boot open because thieves seem to abound and make off with your goods in an instant (you only have to follow @MPSBarnet on twitter to know that, sadly @MPSBarnet seem to have had their mobile phone stolen as they have not tweeted for a week) so loading is not always obvious.

Well here is another photo:

That looks like a hand at the left holding clothes in plastic covers. How much more evidence of unloading could you possibly want? Whose evidence is this? yes the traffic warden's.

An appeal is being sent in for the unloading exemption. What are the chances that it will be rejected?

Why did the traffic warden issue the PCN in the first place? Does he/she not know the law? Perhaps they are being sent out on the streets in breach of contract before they have passed their NVQ level 2 in parking. They would be even less qualified than the Not Very Qualified that a level 2 NVQ represents.

The sooner the contract with NSL is cancelled the better so that our own local people can be employed as traffic wardens and report in to a parking manager with some commonsense and some accountability to the public, the parking manager is a person who should be at every residents forum.

If you wondered why the High Street is dying? it isn't only because of the internet (you can't send your dry cleaning off this way), upward only rent reviews, the recession, the lack of parking meters that take cash, and the high parking charges (amongst other reasons) it is traffic wardens who are sent on duty with the express intention of issuing tickets and applying zero tolerance which puts off shoppers and makes the long hours of a shopkeeper not worth the trouble. 

If Barnet Council want their High Streets to survive, they need to call off the dogs.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard