Hammersmith & Fulham Council: bluff then fold

 

Scaffolding lorry stationary in a yellow box

Sorry about the poor quality image, Mr Mustard didn't grab a full sized one before the PCN was cancelled and he can't then access photos.

The driver clearly made an error and was in contravention. He could and should have changed lane and had he planned a bit further ahead he could have exited in lane 1 but Mr Mustard deals with PCNs which are due to such errors and has to make the best of them.

In this case the alleged contravention took place on 18 March 26. For 'moving traffic' contraventions like this one (even though ironically the lorry isn't moving) a council must serve (not just send) the first PCN within 28 days (there may be more than one PCN if a vehicle is hired, this one is owned). The PCN was dated 15 April and in the absence of other evidence about delivery was deemed served on 17 April, which was day 31.

H&F failed to issue the PCN in legal time. Mr Mustard handles all the PCNs for this small scaffolding company who wouldn't cope without help. He looked at the dates and smiled. He then made the formal representations. Mr Mustard took his own advice and kept it brief:

Now you might hope that the local authority, whose duty it is to respond to the representations which were made, would simply cancel at this point. They didn't. They decided that sophistry was the way to go:

Here is the substance of the reply which does not counter the legal point:

 

That unsophisticated non-reply gave Mr Mustard a second basis on which to argue, a complete failure to consider the representation which was made, it considered one which the council found easier to reject (had the PCN been in time Mr Mustard would have advised the scaffolding company to pay at 50%).  

He nearly had a third one as the representation was made on 28 April and not rejected until 24 July and Mr Mustard recently won a case based upon a delay at H&F of more than 3 months (there is no legal time limit for moving traffic PCN rejections) being procedurally unfair - a point which exercised an employee at H&F and about which a blog will appear soon.

H&F did offer the 50% reduction which they weren't legally required to do and which many councils don't now offer as they think they will make more money that way. It has very little effect on Mr Mustard's strategy which is to go to the tribunal 99% of the time. Again he kept the grounds brief:

The Appeal was started on 27 July. The tribunal processed it on 28 July and H&F would have been notified of it on 29 July.

On 29 July H&F wrote to the scaffolding company.

Total denial, however, is still in full swing. The vehicle was 100% in contravention but miracle of miracles H&F have decided to use their discretion to cancel. They don't say why and the without prejudice statement is absolute nonsense, H&F are trying to say that there was a contravention but they are forgiving it with no clear reason as to why, it wouldn't be that they 100% understand they have broken the law and don't want to commit that to paper, would it, surely not?

Now as it happens the council employee (or 'officer' if you like the grand titles that councils seem to favour) was in the tribunal hearing in May (voice only they were both attending without turning on the video feed) at which they launched an attack on the methodology employed by Mr Mustard to fight PCNs at the tribunal alleging, in effect, ambush and 'looking for loopholes' - Mr Mustard struggled to not laugh at that, a blog for another day. It got them nowhere and didn't even warrant a mention in the decision. 

There is no need for councils to think of Mr Mustard as the enemy (and some don't, they have an open dialogue from which both sides benefit). He fights less than 300 PCNs a year and in London there are about 9,000,000 being issued annually. Calm down dear is his advice. If councils simply follow the law and make no errors Mr Mustard will lose, easy enough surely?

The end but not as more H&F stories to follow. 

Newham Council - an open letter to the Local Government Ombudsman

17 August 2024

 

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman
PO Box 4771
Coventry
CV4 0EH

 

Dear Sirs

Decision 22 001 827

 

I refer to the above decision which dates from January 2023.

I help people to challenge PCNs. I am assisting a lady with PCN reference PN37240236 which was issued in November 2023 and in view of your decision I made the following enquiries of Newham Council.

to which the council duly responded

 and

to which a self incriminating response was received.

It seems to be that Newham Council are treating the LGO with disdain and the public with contempt whilst simultaneously breaking the law.

 

By chance, I also came across four decisions of an independent adjudicator of London Tribunals on the subject of defaced signs in Newham, all for the same motorist, one is set out here:

which serve to show ongoing improper behaviour.

I'm not sure of the powers you hold to compel Newham Council to follow paragraph 28 of your decision. I thought I would bring this to your attention in case a nudge by yourselves to the council might bring about a desire to follow the law. If not, I could raise a complaint, with due authority, on behalf the lady who is still being chased for PCN PN37240236 for which the relevant sign looked like this:

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully

I feel like a criminal

photo by @IOSNTwelve

Mr Mustard is never worried by a PCN as he has the money to pay one should it be deserved and the knowledge & experience to beat it most of the time anyway. What he often forgets is the pressure and worry that the actual recipients feel. Recently a PCN was wrongly given out for a right turn out of a yellow box, Barnet Council cancelled it pretty fast but offered no compensation to the wronged party, the vehicle owner. The following words are the motorist's:

---

Barnet Council’s letterheads contain a snappy slogan; “Putting the Community First”.
Well, I am part of that community and today feel like I have been accused of being a criminal from none other than Barnet Council’s parking services.

On the 29th July I received a PCN stating that I had committed a traffic contravention of stopping in a yellow box at the Ravensdale Avenue - High Road Junction. Residents and visitors to Avenue Road are all too aware that the only way to enter Avenue Road travelling Southbound is to enter said box to perform a right turn. This does not contravene the highway code, however Barnet Council seemed to disagree.

Not only was this PCN unlawful, it proves how dysfunctional this department is. The footage was either:
a)    Not reviewed, or
b)    Reviewed by an incompetent operator
both of which are pretty damning.

I informally challenged this appeal asking for clarification as to whether Barnet Council were now charging residents to enter Avenue Road or whether there was a “no right turn” policy in place.

I received a contrived and infuriating response from the Barnet Parking Compliance Manager who, although he apologised, wrote one of the most passive aggressive paragraphs I have seen in an apology.

Mr “Barnet Parking Compliance Manager”, please do not quote me the highway code when you obviously have no clue as to how it works. Yes, my cancellation does set a precedent for further cancellations, otherwise you have all but admitted that all right turns will be issued with a PCN unless contested. You may want to learn how to use a spellchecker as well, although I realise that may be asking a bit much.

So I still have no clarification to my original question. Well done Barnet Council, you’re helping contribute to further pollution while I drive southbound just to turn around to come back and do a left turn into Avenue Road.

Although you’ve wasted my time with this debacle, I have to thank you for the opportunity as I will now be enquiring into how my data was processed by making formal contact with the DVLA and/or ICO.

---

Mr Mustard doesn't think that the cancellation of a wrongly issued PCN amounts to sufficient recompense, or indeed, any recompense at all.

Let's imagine a different but similar scenario. You go to the supermarket to do your shopping. You self serve at the checkout. You pay. You leave. A week later the supermarket write to say that you are suspected of stealing a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk. You write back indignantly and the supermarket say, oh sorry for any inconvenience, we identified the wrong person, we have cancelled our claim. Who, apart from a parking operative, would regard the cancellation of the wrongful accusation to be an adequate conclusion? No-one. So why is it acceptable in parking & traffic circles?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

This blog should not be necessary (see update at end)

http://theonlygreenroom.blogspot.co.uk

This blog post really shouldn't be necessary.

It concerns a businessman in North Finchley who regularly parks in the Lodge Lane Car Park and PaysByPhone. He has the code to use, 7521, imprinted on his brain. You can see it in the above photo (if you find it in google images).

On 11 September 13 he arrived in the car park and PaidByPhone the sum of £3.25 (which for businesspeople includes vat which you might be able to reclaim, you can get receipts online from your PayByPhone account - they arrive as an email from support). The receipt number (Txn ID) is 97099284 and clearly covers from 8:11 until 8am the next day. It is for the correct day and the correct registration.

At 9.20am he got a £60 parking ticket (AG25051099). No worries, thought the businessman, he scrawled the fact of his payment across the PCN and sent it back to the council. He didn't hear anything more and thought that the obvious administrative blunder had been corrected (we don't know if the traffic warden made an error or if the payment wasn't showing on his handheld equipment).

On about 19 November he received a Charge Certificate putting the bill up to £90. His thoughts were probably not printable in a family blog. Anyway, he wrote in to the council to point out the blunder they had made and this PCN is unlawful after all but has, in the council's mind, been made lawful by his failure to respond to a Notice to Owner issued on 14 October 13 which he doesn't seem to have.

Shockingly, despite pointing out that payment has been correctly made the council's response (written by an employee of NSL naturally) is tough luck mate, you are out of time, you only had 28 days from the date of service of the Notice to Owner (approx 13 November 13 - except that it wasn't served because it didn't arrive for some reason). Technically the council are correct, they can disregard any formal representations outside of the 28+2 day period. However some commonsense should be applied. That rule does not exist so that the council can gain an unfair advantage over a motorist to collect payment for a contravention that clearly hasn't occurred.

Luckily this businessman had met Mr Mustard at a dinner party held by a long time friend of his who just happened to be the computer boffin of Mr Mustard since the time of the IBM PC AT (gosh Mr Mustard is getting old - a 10mb Hard Disk Drive remember those?) and so knew of Mr M's expertise in the parking ticket arena. Rather than pay up for a quiet life, he made a phone call and here we are now.

Mr Mustard has the advantage of a direct line to the council client side parking managers and really he only wants to bother them with important matters of state but if NSL can't sort out a simple query, or are deliberately abusing the power invested in them, then he has to spend his time blogging about small matters (this might be symptomatic of a wider problem in Lodge Lane, see this blog as he has seen that time paid for problem occur twice) and bothering a parking manager who should be managing the bigger picture. Mr Mustard would also like to be blogging about some of the other bigger issues that abound in Barnet, as he is letting the blogger side down, and he can't because PCN wait for no man.

Mr Mustard predicts that this PCN will be cancelled by Friday. If it isn't he will have to follow the procedure that allows him to file a form TE9 at the TEC (a blank is being signed and sent to Mr Mustard so that he is ready to act) and then the PCN will go back to the beginning and appeals can be made on the regular timetable. It is all such a waste of time. Businesspeople want to run their businesses, not faff about with correspondence with should not have been necessary.

Anyone would think that the council were desperate for money at any cost, even at the cost of honesty?

One final thought: the council have a duty at law to be fair. Are they being?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

At 9:43 Mr Mustard emailed a parking manager. 
At 10:07 he got this reply. The parking manager knows a PR disaster when he sees one.

Dear Mr Mustard,

Thank you for drawing this to my attention. The Penalty Charge Notice has been cancelled.

I do not know why the CEO issued the PCN, as payment was made, I will be asking the CEO supervisors about this. With regard to the Notice Processing Officer disregarding the late challenge, I will be raising this with the manager of the Notice Processing Team when I next see him, I am not pleased with the response given in this instance.

I apologise to Mr X.

Kind regards

So all ends well for Mr X but what about everyone else in the same boat who have to deal with NSL by post or email, you can't phone them directly. They would have to go through the TE9 procedure if they even know of it andmight pay up rather than be bothered. Outsourcing certainly has its problems.