Knowledge is Power and persistence pays off

Mr Mustard helps a loft conversion company if the boss or any of the staff get PCNs. Their contracts with customers require that they provide as many visitor vouchers as are required but still things go wrong sometimes.

This PCN was picked up in Merton:

During the to and fro emails with the office it turned out that the driver had spoken to the CEO (Civil Enforcement Officer = traffic warden) to tell him of the works which were taking place in the street and that he was waiting for his client to sort out a visitor voucher. On arrival the client was on the phone and once he was off it he had run out of printed vouchers in any event (virtual ones may be available in Merton but how tech savvy is the client and does he have to go off to work?).

 

Mr Mustard looked at the photographs and found the driver in one of them. It is timed at 08:51 so two whole minutes before the PCN was issued.

Mr Mustard enquired as to what was said. Apparently the CEO said that the information was in the machine and although the PCN had not yet been printed there was nothing he could do other than complete the PCN. Mr Mustard was not amused. He decided to get the notes made by the CEO by making a Subject Access Request (you too can do this for your own data). He did that on the same day (5 August) as he made the informal challenge. Mr Mustard wasn't worried about the discount for early payment as he intended that nothing would be paid.

During the evening of 15 August Mr Mustard checked the PCN on line, the balance was zero. Clearly when a motorist makes a Subject Access Request the parking department knows that a critical eye is going to be cast over their handiwork so if it is defective it is best to cancel as early as possible. It turned out that they had cancelled the PCN that very morning. He was sent copies of the PCN system after reminding Merton that a response was overdue.

The notes are very interesting. The CEO certifies that he has attached the PCN to the vehicle at 08:52 a PCN which wasn't issued until 08:53 !

 

The payment system was only checked up to 08:46 so any payments made on arrival wouldn't show up, that is a huge flaw in Merton's systems.

 

The CEO comment that no driver was seen would go against Merton at the tribunal as the driver, wearing a liveried shirt, is shown in one of their photographs. If the CEO got that simple fact wrong how much of their evidence could be relied upon?

As to the notes of the conversation, which are mandatory, they didn't exist.

Lots of people assume that local authorities must be right, the truth is far removed from that, incompetence abounds.

 

The loft company were as honourable as they always are, another £50 was paid to North London Hospice.

End.

Merton Council - pay to park for free!

Graham had business in Merton and one condition of his contract with the customer was the provision of visitor vouchers but on this day that deal failed.

A PCN was issued for code 12, being in a residents bay without a permit or voucher.

The informal rejection was written by someone who doesn't live in the real world.

Mr Mustard wasn't concerned, he told Graham to sit and wait for the Notice to Owner. The 50% discount didn't matter as he was after 100% off. Once the Notice arrived a more comprehensive representation was made.

The response was also longer.

Longer wasn't better in this case. The Grounds of Appeal set out the stall in detail.

Once an Appeal was made to an independent adjudicator, a lawyer, whose knowledge of parking law is vast, Merton Council could finally see the writing on the wall and they filed a Do Not Contest form and cancelled the PCN.

Take no nonsense is Mr Mustard's advice.

End.

Amazing coincidence

When your PCN reaches the tribunal Barnet Council often put into evidence (at item C) their processing notes. The notes can be revealing as to the thinking which goes on.

In this case two different back office workers put the same notes, displaying an identical choice of words, on the same file a week apart.

Anyone would think that there is a set of ready typed rejection notes to try and make out that deep thought has been given to the representations rather than a standard formulaic rejection.

Of course there wasn't a permit on display. The motorist had just parked and popped to a nearby property to obtain a visitor parking voucher. The council are rejecting the representations because the permit/voucher was not on display from the very first second of parking. Mr Mustard is sure that he has previously written about the preposterous attitude of the council in this matter and he will keep on doing do until some common sense is bashed into the back office and/or management.

Civil Enforcement Officers don't ensure anything except that a whole load of PCNs will be issued by them every day. Permits are no longer displayed as 99% of them are now electronic records.

No-one was arguing that the Owner wasn't liable (if anyone is).

Saying that a permit was being obtained isn't mitigation, it is a direct challenge to the legitimate issue of the PCN.

Mr Mustard hadn't seen this attitude from Barnet Council for a while and now he has two similar cases in both of which the observation time by the traffic warden was zero minutes.

Do not pay if you were genuinely obtaining a Visitor Voucher but ask Mr Mustard for help (mrmustard@zoho.com)

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Pedant of the week - Barnet Council

Note the PCN wording, not clearly displaying a (visitor) voucher.

Note also the statement 'no voucher was displayed in the windscreen'. That is the requirement but the helpful workman who received the PCN whilst working for a resident, placed the voucher in the side window, on the pavement side, so that it was much easier for the traffic warden to read & has done it like this for 30 years. Being helpful means Barnet Council want £110 from you.

Here is the visitor voucher, in close up. The scratched items were correct.

Here is one of the photographs taken by the traffic warden, whose reflection can be seen to the left of picture. They must have seen the voucher and issued a PCN regardless.

Anyone think that the actions of the traffic warden were fair and reasonable? (no not you, a council parking or NSL employee, your judgment is suspect).

Anyone think that revenue raising is the name of the game?

Anyone got any idea why Barnet's parking 'service' scores so lowly in resident perception surveys? That isn't going to change whilst ludicrously petty PCNs like this one keep being issued.

Mr Mustard will fight this to the bitter end which will cost the council a £30 tribunal fee. He has a card or two up his sleeve.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Beam me up Scotty

Mr Mustard is indebted to a PCN client who reads The Archer

www.the-archer.co.uk

and to The Archer (good for all news of East Finchley) themselves for giving permission to reproduce the following article from their February 16 monthly newspaper.

To add some detail, it is common for instant PCN to be given which completely lacks common-sense or fairness but the traffic warden must speed on his/her way to issue as many PCN as humanly possible, even though there aren't targets, no sirree.

Barnet Parking Services are not in Sheffield, a scanning machine is. Back Office parking is in Croydon (of course) senior management are in the North London Business Park (for now) and traffic wardens are based in Solar House in North Finchley. Joined up government if ever there was any. Oh yes, and permits seem to be processed by Capita in Coventry although that isn't very clear at present.

Eva is bang on the money.

The adjudicator, as quoted above, was correct and was much milder than some adjudicators on the subject of getting a visitor permit beamed from a property to a car without human help (perhaps we will all soon have to own a drone to send the voucher down to the car?).

The council are obliged to accept the decision of the adjudicator unless he applied the law wrongly which he didn't so they were stuck and had no say in the matter, they just have to suck it up.

The council will still use this stupid idea in their letters of rejection. Be like Eva, fight them to the end, it costs the council c. £33 in tribunal fees. If you need help with a similar PCN please email copies to mrmustard@zoho.com

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Hang on a minute

Just a minute

Traffic wardens are in such a rush to issue PCNs that they can't find 5 minutes to actually do their job properly, of observing a vehicle for a reasonable time as the following independent adjudicator's decision (from the PATAS register) shows:

 

Mrs W does not dispute that her car was parked in this parking bay without displaying a permit. However she has maintained from the outset that she came to visit a resident in the street, and only left the car without a permit for the time it took to go to her house, obtain and complete a visitor's voucher and return to the car, a process she estimates as taking about 3 minutes. She points out that the Civil Enforcement Officer (CEO) issued the Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) after only one minute's observation, and suggests that he/she must have actually seen her leave the car. Mrs W has now produced a letter from Miss A, the occupier of 7 Redacted Road, the person whom she was visiting, which confirms her account.

The Enforcement Authority have insisted throughout that a permit or voucher must be displayed from the moment the car is parked in such a bay, and that no period of grace is allowed. Mrs W contends, by contrast, that it is not possible for a visitor to a resident to have a visitor's voucher already in her possession; it is necessary to go to the resident's house to obtain it, and so a short time must be allowed for this to be done.

I am perplexed by the Authority's stance in this case. It is self-evident that a reasonable period must be allowed for a visitor to obtain and complete a visitor's voucher from a resident, for the reasons Mrs W has clearly set out. Had the CEO observed the vehicle for, say, five or more minutes, then it would have been reasonable to assume that the owner was not obtaining a visitor's voucher, but by allowing only one minute that assumption could not be safely made. In this case I am satisfied that it was in fact wrongly made.

I am not satisfied that the contravention occurred, and so I allow this appeal. 

 

[I would respectfully suggest that the Authority give some thought to the instructions they give to their CEO's and to their decision-makers in relation to this issue.]

 

That final sentence is a typically understated hint from an adjudicator and if NSL, on behalf of the council don't do so, a costs award will inevitably arise on a future case.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard has just remembered he has a PATAS Appeal to attend in mid April which centres on the time it takes to get a blue badge from a resident and where the observation time was also only one minute. He will take this decision with him in support of his argument.

Mr Mustard is a scratch player at PCN (his golf is rubbish)

A few months ago Mr Mustard and one of Barnet's parking managers (there are 4 with the word manager in their title and only 5 staff in the client side; too many chiefs? possibly not as their main function is to decide on policy and monitor NSL, who also have at least one manager on the team) had a difference of opinion (and this is not a euphemism for a row - it was a polite exchange of emails with our respective points of view; Mr Mustard is always polite to the parking managers, albeit robust in his views) about a Visitor Voucher which had been scratched with a pen rather than a coin.

Mr Mustard's view was simple (what, because he is? lol). Scratch in the dictionary refers as much to the method of doing so as to the implement used and included scratching with a pencil so Mr Mustard felt he was on firm ground. The pen scratching clearly displayed the correct voucher details and the voucher had been altered in such a way that it could not be sued again.

The parking manager's view was that the coating should be scratched off, preferably using a coin.

Anyway, the parking manager could see that Mr Mustard would take this appeal all the way to PATAS and it would cost the council £40 (Mr Mustard didn't mention a problem with signs and lines in the road concerned, he was keeping his ammunition dry) and both sides felt they would win so the parking manager cancelled the PCN. Now an independent adjudicator has stepped in to settle the difference of opinion on an appeal that Mr Mustard was not involved in.

Here is the decision of the adjudicator.

I heard from Miss Y. at a personal hearing. I found her a credible witness.


In any event, the documentary evidence tells a clear story.


Miss Y. produced the original visitor voucher which was on display in her vehicle at the time in question. Clearly visible are the blue ballpoint scratches which have been made across the relevant day, date and year to show that it was valid for the day in question. I conclude that a valid visitor voucher was displayed.


The officer appears to have issued the Penalty Charge Notice on the basis that the voucher had not been scratched out properly. This seems to me to be utterly without foundation. It is clear from the marks on the voucher that in scratching across the relevant items with the pen Miss Y. had put the voucher well beyond a second use. In the circumstances there is no doubt at all that she had complied with requirements.


The authority has pursued this PCN on the entirely separate ground that this permit was not valid for use in this car park. This allegation, similarly, is without foundation and the authority withdrew it in its appeal summary, but not before Miss Y. had been forced to make the appeal.


The evidence shows that the use of this permit is expressly allowed in this car park, and indeed Miss Y. confirms that she and other residents have been permitted to do so for years.

Mr Mustard finds the fact that NSL and/or the council could advance an argument that a voucher is not valid in order to persuade a motorist to pay, very unattractive. let us suppose that the motorist gave in when their appeal was rejected a second time, and paid up. Subsequently the authority realised they had erred. Would an automatic refund be issued? Is that a pink pig flying past the window? The answer to both is no.

We are entitled to an honest service from NSL and the council. There is doubt as to whether we get it 100% of the time.

A final note for any parking managers who are reading this. Please instruct all Civil Enforcement Officers (traffic wardens) and Notice Processing Officers (appeal clerks) that as long as a voucher is put beyond a second usage, a PCN should not be issued and an appeal should be allowed. If any similar cases land on Mr Mustard's desk there will be an application for costs for wholly unreasonable behaviour.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Voucher - What voucher?

Sometimes there is a policeman around when you want one (well, a retired one anyway). The following are the notes of the adjudicator from PATAS where you get an independent review of your parking ticket unbiased by the effect on their wallet (unlike Barnet Council who hope you will pay them some money if they decline your appeal):

The appellant Mrs V attended the personal hearing for today. Mr P who is a witness in this case also attended the hearing.Mrs V denied the contravention.

She stated that she was visiting a friend and knew she was going to be parked during the hours of restriction and therefore obtained a visitors permit from her friend and displayed it on the drivers side of the vehicle.

Mr P who is a retired police officer confirmed that he did not know Mrs V prior to this incident but saw her looking quite anxious on seeing the penalty charge notice as her vehicle was parked outside his house.

In addition to being a retired police officer Mr P also assists with the neighbourhood watch and did not recognise Mrs V's vehicle so actually checked it and noticed a visitors permit prior to the PCN being issued and which he thought was very considerate as normally people usually park their vehicles and then remove them before the restrictions take effect or take a chance, in which case and particularly as a local resident he believes that they deserve to receive a penalty charge notice.

There is a direct conflict of evidence in this case. However I found both Mrs V as well as Mr P to be very convincing and credible witnesses and am not satisfied that the contravention did occur.

I therefore allow this appeal.

It looks like the traffic warden failed to see the visitor voucher. One would think that would be impossible if all windows are checked as they are meant to be.

There is at least one resident who photographs their car every time they park so as to have evidence that all is as it should be.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Oxfordshire - Putting the Community First

Oxfordshire don't have a slogan which is empty words - they evidently believe in actions speaking louder, so Mr Mustard juxtaposed the hollow Barnet Council slogan.

Mr Mustard is lucky to have many dear friends and one of them, "AA" (you know who you are and you like to remain anonymous) returned from a trip with a little present for him and he was so excited, look, here it is:

(Mr M also received some artisan made Macaroons - all eaten, delicious)

Mr Mustard's friend thought this was a most useful voucher as it meant that for her overnight stay only one voucher was required which saves time and there was no waking up in a panic that you have forgotten to put out a permit for that day.

The price of the voucher wasn't known as his friend was a guest. Mr Mustard surfed across to Oxfordshire and looked up the answer. He was very pleased with the answer he found.

The first 25 visitor vouchers in each 12 month period were the princely sum of 

£ nothing at all.

The next 25 were only £16 for the lot which is a mere 64p each. Now that is what you can describe as "Putting the Community First".

It isn't as if the council make up for it in the price of the resident's permit either. That is only £50 for the first car.

Mr Mustard is going to write to the Cabinet Member whose responsibilities include parking, Dean Cohen, and suggest we have some of these vouchers. If you agree, email him at cllr.d.cohen@barnet.gov.uk

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The impossible Visitor Voucher Quiz

personal identifier has been redacted

So here we have, in reverse date order, three visitor vouchers which cost £4 each. On 8 March the builder put another voucher out which he dealt with in the same way as these and scratched out Mar, Fri & 8. He got a parking ticket on the 8th but not on the 3 previous days. Why?

Now you are scratching your heads. You are looking and going "what have I missed?"

the problem is not any of the following:

wrong year

wrong zone

mis-matched month, day & date

wrong car registration (not needed on these vouchers)

scratched off too many details

scratched off too few details

mutilated voucher

expired voucher (they don't expire)

not displayed correctly

wrong way up or round.

do you give in? You do? OK, the problem was:

the wrong traffic warden. 

Traffic warden 374 gave out a parking ticket because, wait for it, the motorist scratched out the details with a biro and not with a coin as he explained when challenged (the traffic warden is indeed lucky that the residents are decent folk - others would have been very forceful in their opinion which would have been delivered with force). The fact is that the voucher has been permanently changed and cannot be used again.

Nowhere in the instructions does it say you have to use a coin and nowadays, ironically, coins are generally of no use in Barnet for parking because you have to use a mobile phone which isn't itself of much use as a scratching implement.

How desperate are traffic wardens to dish out parking tickets? how much pressure are they being put under to issue so many per shift? (if any traffic warden has lost their job recently and wants to come and chat to Mr Mustard in private then they should send an email to him at mrmustard@zoho.com and/or ask for an address to which to send interesting paperwork).

Mr Mustard writes to the parking process manager ("PPM") when he thinks something is completely out of order. This is. The Oxford dictionary on the subject of scratch can be found here, and it is clear from the definition that scratching can take many forms including using a pencil, a nail, your fingernail as well as a coin. For once the PPM failed Mr Mustard and he isn't prepared to step in and squash this stupid ticket without further ado (he must be missing his budgeted parking ticket income) and so now the informal challenge will have to await the usual rejection from NSL and then the formal appeal will go in after the Notice to Owner has been issued and if that is rejected the case will go off to PATAS the home of the independent adjudicator where Mr Mustard is confident of success and Barnet Council will have wasted £40 if they let it go that far.

Does anyone (who isn't a traffic warden or a parking officer) think that this parking ticket isn't just ridiculously pedantic and avaricious?

There is a theory that traffic wardens exist to help regulate the flow of traffic and to ration space. That is poppycock when it comes to residential roads; traffic wardens exist to make money, pure and simple.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Friday Joke - The London Borough of Catch 22

Catch-22 is a satirical and somewhat historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century.

Among other things, Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Bomber Pilot Orr was crazy and could be grounded. 

All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. 

Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. 

If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

Someone at Barnet Council or NSL is evidently a fan of this book. See what argument they presented at PATAS the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service. The adjudicator's comments follow (the parking ticket was cancelled):

On parking a vehicle a motorist is of necessity allowed a reasonable, in normal circumstances brief, time to do whatever is necessary to validate the parking; and while this is actively in progress the vehicle is not in contravention. The motorist must of course act promptly, and not spend time in any other activity whilst doing so. After a few minutes a CEO would be perfectly justified in issuing a PCN leaving the motorist to explain to the Council, or an Adjudicator, why it took so long.

In the present case the Appellant has provided a satisfactory explanation. The observation period is brief and I see not reason to doubt the Appellant's evidence that at the time of the observation he was engaged in obtaining the necessary permit from this very elderly lady. He was entitled to do so and I do not accept the Council's suggestion that he was required to park elsewhere, obtain the permit and then bring his vehicle round to park. As it transpires the vehicle was not in contravention and the PCN was incorrectly issued.

Mr Mustard isn't sure whether he should laugh or cry at the council's desperate attempt, possibly inspired or started by NSL who present the evidence to PATAS, to extract £110 from a motorist who was visiting an elderly person, the very kind of Big Society activity that the council claims it is in favour of. If we took the council's argument back in time as applying to cash meters you would be at risk of getting a parking ticket in the time from reaching a car park applying the handbrake and turning off your engine to reaching the parking meter, inserting coins and returning to the car with your ticket, you then would be told that you shouldn't have entered the car park in the first place until you had paid!

This argument is ridiculous, patently absurd. Barnet Council need to go and stand in front of a mirror and give themselves a good dressing down.

Barnet Council - a complete joke.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard