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. 

Don't be green in yellow boxes

 

This location on the A1 just north of Apex Corner has had cctv installed to monitor the yellow box.

Mr Mustard knows that the car in the top right of the box received a PCN as probably did the car in front and possibly the cars in lanes 3 & 4 as their rear wheels were in the box. You are fine exiting Marsh Lane, it is the drivers coming south who should all stop at the top edge of the box and then only move forward once they can cross the entire box and make an escape but that would make traffic flow worse so we all have to gamble and pay the price if it goes wrong.

If Mr Mustard realised he had erred and was going to be caught if he stopped he would have turned left into Marsh Lane, not done a U-turn until it was allowed (as there is a ban just as you enter Marsh Lane) and then rejoined the A1 south.

Be careful out there.

A decade of moving traffic PCNs in London

 

Welcome to the goldmine which is PCNs for moving traffic contraventions. These are all enforced by cctv camera linked most of the time to a computer which identifies alleged contraventions (although council staff or contractors probably assume the selected clips are correct, when that isn't always the case).

The right to issue PCNs for moving traffic contraventions (banned turns, yellow box junctions and the many often part time 'no motor vehicles' streets known also as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and School Streets have proliferated since Covid in 2020) started in 2003.

Back in 2015 many of these cameras would have been watched over by real people sat watching video screens who manually recorded what appeared to be contraventions. TfL still do it that way. However advances in technology now enable locations to be watched 24/7 by cameras linked to computers that look at the movement of vehicles and can tell when they go where they shouldn't, read the numberplate, send to DVLA for details of the registered keeper and then send out a PCN, all with no direct human intervention. They don't miss the slightest error.

That is the second factor which explains the fourfold increase in moving traffic PCNs over the decade. If we assumed a 50% recovery of what were £130 PCNs the income to councils in London would be £254,000,000 (they are now £160). 

The third factor is councils who decided to start using their powers which is definitely Kensington & Chelsea, Greenwich, Sutton, Barnet & Bromley and others like Bexley which had just started.

Only four councils failed to at least double their PCN count in the decade, being Brent, Waltham Forest, Kingston & Harrow. 

You need to chuck your satnav away and look out of the windscreen like a hawk. Join the Institute of Advanced Motoring or ROSPA and improve your observation skills.

The end. 

Address problems

 

DVLA, Swansea: Lovely place to work, it must lift your spirits as you arrive there each day?

You must make sure that the address for your vehicle as recorded by the DVLA is full and accurate. get your V5 registration document out now and give it a once over. The address on your driving licence must also be changed at the time you move.

Wrong addresses cause havoc. Whilst councils should make enquiries if they get post back some of them, Barnet included, just make a note and then plough on as if nothing has happened.

That wasn't the problem in the case that Mr Mustard is about to highlight, that was a case of a number of properties having the same number, different supplementary letters, ABC etc, and also a house name which started with that letter and that is why Mr Mustard suspects that everything went astray, the motorist knowing nothing about a PCN until the bailiff clamped the car and were paid in full.

Mr Mustard then usually makes a Subject Access Request, goes meticulously through the processing and finds the errors. Once he points them out councils usually back off. In this instance they agreed to refund back in November but haven't managed to do so yet. This is probably a side effect of the change of PCN processor from NSL to APCOA which, masterly understatement follows, has not gone 100% smoothly.

Mr Mustard watched the cctv. The PCN was issued at a problematic yellow box junction situated at the exit of the B&Q access road in Crickleood Lane and with an exit only junction to the other side. People often 'barge out' from the side road even though they should give way. That then causes a stop in the box. In this case the stopping was after such an event.

There is absolutely no traffic management purpose to the PCN. Access to B&Q was barely affected, any incursion into the box was trivial, the box is painted beyond the exit, the car could have moved forward if the driver has chosen to do so & therefore the stop was not due to a stationary vehicle (a legal requirement) and the box needs a repaint as it will be much less clear at ground level where the end of it is.

If the DVLA address had been 100% perfect Mr Mustard would have saved hours of work and got the PCN cancelled at the beginning.

Luckily the parking manager agreed to not pursue the PCN which should never have been issued in the first place.

Almost the end.

Belief - the supposed foundation for a PCN.

 

The motorist in this case wrote his own representation with help from experts on FTLA 

In order to issue a PCN an enforcement authority, such as Redbridge Council, must have a belief that a contravention has occurred. The way it works these days is that a computer watches the traffic and when it thinks it has spotted a contravention it extracts a short clip and saves it for a human being to check and then authorise a PCN. Much of the time Mr Mustard thinks that either the operative doesn't pay attention or blindly presses yes or assumes the computer is correct (a dangerous assumption as the Post Office Horizon Inquiry has shown us).

Mr Mustard thinks there is an inbuilt belief amongst back office PCN processing staff that because a PCN has been issued it must be correct and defended at all cost.

Here is the position at the moment which the car entered the box:

There is room to exit.

Here is the position on stopping:

Needless to say Redbridge Council rejected a perfectly good representation as 90% of the time, especially when the discount is offered again, the motorist caves in and pays because of a combination of ignorance, worry about having to pay the full penalty and an assumption that councils tell the truth (they are serial liars).

This is the relevant part of the Notice of Rejection.

Mr Mustard's comments. Careful consideration would have led to a cancellation. This is a standard line in the template. Careless consideration would be more accurate.

The exit was clear on entering so this was another standard paragraph.

Mitigation cannot have been considered as none was pleaded. 'Comments' waters down the value of the words of the motorist who made a representation not mere remarks.

The writer may well be satisfied but who knows how easily they are satisfied in their own cause?

They were also confident that the PCN was valid.

Mr Mustard took over at this point and he was confident he could get the PCN cancelled. Who was over-confident? (yes, you know the answer).

This is what he wrote in the Grounds of Appeal (you have the images above).

Grounds of Appeal - no contravention

This is the position as the car enters the box. There is clearly room for the car to exit (as can be judged by the white car in the other lane). Thus the first part of the contravention, on entering, is not made out.

The position on stopping is as follows:

The blue car had moved further away so there was even more room to exit. The driver simply chose not to, it was not due to a stationary vehicle in front.

All of a sudden Redbridge Council were less confident of their case. They left it late but 5 days before the hearing they told the tribunal that they would not contest the Appeal and they had cancelled the PCN. 

Why would they do that if they were correct in issuing the PCN and rejecting the formal representations? It is because it is a big and generally profitable game of Bluff. It is a game which Mr Mustard is happy to play all day long. Mr Mustard decides at the outset if there is a good case or not and 90% of the time he is correct.

Don't be bluffed into paying out. Work out your defence and stand your ground. Don't be diverted by talk of a discount. Why would you want to pay a 50% penalty for being innocent?

Remember you can get a free second opinion about your chances from numerous experts here, which sometimes includes Mr Mustard.

The end.

Seeing red in Hillingdon

Mr Mustard's client, let us call her Innocence (not her real name) made a small error in Hillingdon in the early hours of the morning. Hillingdon Council pounced on her but for an error she didn't make. She did overshoot the stop line at the traffic lights but did not stop in a yellow box due to the presence of a stationary vehicle. The police could have sent her a Notice of Intended Prosecution but they didn't, those lights may not have a police camera, only a council one. Mr Mustard can't share the video on the blog as he doesn't want to release the registration number so has extracted and redacted the still images which tell the story.

Here is the car about to pass the stop line with the lights on red.

Next, the car having entered the junction with the lights on red and the brake lights are on.

Innocence reverses back.

She finds the lights are green so moves forward again and exits the box in one movement.

The next event is the arrival of a PCN.

 

The rules for a box junction are patently clear. It is only a contravention if  a vehicle has to stop due to the presence of stationary vehicles (which is read as including a single vehicle).

Clearly, patently, obviously to all the world, this, whilst a slightly sub-standard piece of driving, is not a contravention within the letter of the law.

Mr Mustard made the representation. Hillingdon Council's on line 'smarti' system is being used dumbly, it offers the wrong selection of grounds on which one may make representations. This is enough alone to win on at the tribunal.

Mr Mustard happily selected the wrong ground. The way these systems work is that the ground you choose then pre-determines the template letter which will form the base of the response so Mr Mustard messes with the system by often choosing the wrong one, or none at all, and then adding a document which has to be individually considered.

The response was utterly wrong.

The vehicle was permitted to stop as there wasn't a vehicle in front of it which had stopped.

Mitigation was not put forward. A full on challenge was made that there was no contravention.

The CCTV evidence shows the exit was clear at the moment of entry and for the entire period the car was within the junction. The exit space was 100% clear. There was no vehicle in front, except perhaps half a mile away.

The word 'obstruction' in this regard does not appear in the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 - Hillingdon Council are well out of date. A contravention has not been committed.

Mr Mustard's representation having been summarily and wrongly dismissed in five days it was only two days later, as soon as the Notice of Rejection arrived with Mr Mustard, that Mr Mustard started an Appeal on line to the independent adjudicator at London Councils. He was supremely confident of success. Hillingdon let most of the month pass in the run up to the hearing without doing anything and then with a week to go they DNC'd the case. DNC is shorthand for notifying the tribunal that they 'Do not Contest' the Appeal. They didn't give a reason but perhaps it was that they were 100% in the wrong and were going to read about their shortcomings in a public register. Instead they can read them here.

Had this vehicle been leased the lease company might have paid it and charged an administration fee for so doing. That is a good reason to not lease a car but to take out a normal loan with which to buy your car outright.

Councils don't think about people, they think about money from this source. Innocence's life is tough enough already. Cancer and radiotherapy have caused her to lose 40% of her body weight. Think about that Hillingdon Council when you send bogus demands for £130 and then don't see sense when your wrongdoing is pointed out to you.

Faceless, ignorant and stupid is the restrained description of your behaviour.

The end.

 

You can stop in an empty yellow box junction

 

Another random tribunal decision which caught Mr Mustard's eye.

This not being one of Mr Mustard's cases the cctv is not available (unless you can put Mr Mushtaq in touch with him).

Mr Mustard went looking for a suitable image and found this one of a black cab which is stopped somewhat obstructively (although there isn't another vehicle in sight) but it isn't in contravention.

 

The story about the black cab is here. Mr Mustard does not know the outcome of the black cab PCN.

The issue of many moving traffic PCNs is 100% automated with a computer extracting snippets of footage, obtaining keeper details from DVLA and then printing a PCN. Before a PCN is generated, a human being is meant to check the cctv to verify that a contravention had occurred, this clearly does not happen. It doesn't seem to happen in Redbridge.

If Mr Mustard is out late one night he will visit Goodmayes Road and pull up in the empty yellow box for 10 seconds and see if he gets a PCN.

The end.

Stop the rot

Mr Mustard expects that most drivers/residents will know the Golders Green station area as will many coach travellers as it is a stop on some long distance National Express journeys (e.g. Manchester to London). Here is an aerial view

Mr Mustard didn't realise when he snipped the image but there is a handily placed bus to demonstrate bus scale, Mr Mustard having drawn a line to show a gap of 10.9m into which a bus is meant to fit at the lights if going south down the Finchley Road and navigating around the island with the clock on it.

Why is Mr Mustard writing about this subject? It is because of this tribunal decision.

Mr Mustard looked up the coach in question to find it is a Mercedes Benz Tourismo and longer than the gap between the traffic lights and the yellow box it was going over.

Thus, as Mr Thacker said, it is impossible to not overhang the yellow box.

As the adjudicator pointed out the stop was due to red traffic lights not due to a stationary vehicle so absolutely no contravention had occurred and this behaviour is, in the words of regular reader Fraser 'ruthless, venal and rapacious' and Mr Mustard would add stupid and procedurally unfair.

It is hard enough to safely drive a coach through London especially around busy junctions without having to worry if you might get wrongly ticketed by some numpty at NSL who doesn't know the rules and thinks that because the computer controlled cctv has selected this as a possible contravention, that it must be so. In fact, two people are meant to watch the cctv extracts before pressing the PCN button but Mr Mustard suspects that the task is either not being performed or not diligently or with any real thought.

Mr Mustard is going to send this case to the relevant labour councillor who can start to bring some common sense and some law abiding behaviour to the parking / PCN department.

The end (or at least perhaps the beginning of it for revenue raising).
 

Emergency PCN - nothing must come before revenue raising

Here is another decision by an independent adjudicator putting to the sword Barnet Council's terrible moral standards. When driving along and an ambulance wants to come past we should all make way for it if we can. Would you want your ambulance delayed because other motorists refused to get out of the way for fear of receiving a £130 PCN? - no, Mr Mustard thought not.

There really does need to be an outside body to keep a tight rein on the dubious moral standards exhibited by local authorities, and Barnet Council are not alone in this. There hasn't been a survey of the opinion of residents in Barnet for some time but the low regard in which Barnet Parking was held will not improve whilst harsh decisions like this one are being taken.

Sod traffic management, this is all about the revenue.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Box junctions are tough on buses & lorries

To get a bus across a box junction without stopping and into a long enough space on the other side is tricky as smaller nimbler traffic, cars, can fill the empty space as soon as 5m is available beyond the box whereas a double decker bus needs at least 15m so the bus can sit there in lane 2 at the location in question

(cars in lane 1 should go left but some will go straight on) whilst those rowed up in lane 3 can 'steal' the 5m space one at a time and leave the bus unable to proceed legally.

It seems from the adjudicators decision above that in this case the bus driver entered when he did have room to exit so whatever happened next he could not be in contravention, no matter why and for how long he stopped. The council don't seem to understand this and blindly follow the assumption that if the computer thought it was a contravention, it must be one.

Whilst the rules of the road apply equally to buses and lorries, there needs to be some common sense applied for larger vehicles, and generally across London there is as Mr Mustard rarely sees bus companies taken to the tribunal for being stopped in a box junction. This is Barnet though, recently described to Mr Mustard in the following terms:

The overwhelming impression is that Barnet see every PCN as sacrosanct and that to cancel one is a personal defeat.

Mr Mustard knows that Barnet Council read & consider his tweets & blogs so maybe someone in management, with a less rigid approach, will apply the brakes to such cases in the future.

The council seem unable to link the way they behave in relentlessly pursuing unmeritorious PCNs with the poor public perception of the department in surveys. Doh!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

a reminder of how to approach safely navigating, in financial terms, a box junction 
http://lbbspending.blogspot.com/2016/06/yellowboxfever.html