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

Waltham Forest 56 day error #2

 

The above is the grounds of Appeal to the tribunal. The act of parking is irrelevant given the council's own unlawful behaviour.

 

Although written after the earlier post and labelled as error no. 2 this 56 day error occurred before the other one. It does show a pattern of not being legally compliant.

 

Needless to say Waltham Forest didn't want to argue about their dirty linen at the tribunal.

 

 

 

Note the complete lack of any sort of apology for trying to get a motorist to pay a PCN at a time when it was legally no longer due.

 

The 56 day rule only applies to responding to representations made in response to a Notice to Owner for a parking contravention (or a postal PCN for a parking contravention). It does not apply to moving traffic or bus lane PCNs.

The end.

Ridiculous Redbridge

 

You will struggle to believe this story. You are driving along the High Road in Goodmayes and due to a car turning around the traffic comes to a standstill and three cars comes to a halt on the bus stop. No problem with that in law (it isn't a yellow box junction when it would be a contravention) and the number plate of the rearmost car is easily read and a PCN is issued, probably by an automated system. In theory a person watches the cctv clips before a PCN is authorised but for obvious reasons Mr Mustard doesn't think that occurred unless the operative wasn't paying proper attention or is incompetent, or both.

Here is the PCN. Your jaw would drop on opening the envelope containing this.

Mr Mustard made the representations. Whether anyone gets in or out is irrelevant but a slippery enforcement authority might try and argue that alighting was the reason for stopping so Mr Mustard cut off that avenue.

The PCN was cancelled.

The reader will note one thing which was missing from the cancellation. Any hint of an apology.

A lease company might have paid such a PCN and given the motorist an administration fee which would obviously be unjust in the act of paying the PCN but justifiable in terms of having to administer a PCN which they should not have received. If you can avoid leasing a car, perhaps by taking out a loan instead, you do make your life easier.

The end.

Double jeopardy in Haringey

 

It sometimes surprises Mr Mustard how often he knows when something goes wrong, its as if processes go wrong all the time in PCN processing (spoiler alert, they do). As you can see from the above Haringey managed to issue a number of postal PCNs, which must have been for moving traffic contraventions (stopping in yellow boxes, banned turns etc), twice, two weeks apart. 

That must have confused some recipients.

 

Lease companies, some of whom, wrongly in Mr Mustard's opinion, just pay everything, will have tried to pay them twice and might have charged two administration fees which they can't really be blamed for, they have had to process two documents instead of one.

 

The enquiry Mr Mustard made was back in February 2024 and he is only just catching up with an excessive workload (both in his day job and PCNs) and giving you the public the information. Here is the response.

Mr Mustard was satisfied with the answers, except for 'k' as the written procedure was not supplied but as he didn't follow it up at the time he isn't inclined to do so now. He might ask to see various procedures another day. Clearly the existing process was inadequate.

 

The answer about overpayments at 'i' makes sense, as there was only one PCN per number in the database although Mr Mustard has seen credits within PCN databases before which may be overpayments. It is probably only by cheque that overpayment might occur.

 

Legal advice at 'l' is interesting. The question was probably as to whether the PCNs should be cancelled entirely. Mr Mustard should have asked if a letter was sent to all recipients of two PCNs explaining what had happened and for a copy of it. Certainly the second PCN was unlawful but did it render the first one unlawful? Mr Mustard is inclined to agree with the legal advice given but suspects that if any of these PCNs had reached an adjudicator some would have cancelled.

 

A pound to a penny, this will happen again one day in Haringey or to another authority which hasn't made its procedures bullet proof.

The end.

Non-existent rules in 'Haringey'

 

The story starts on 20 October 2023. Here are the words of the psv driver, who we will call Brian:

Generally Mr Mustard would rather be instructed from the off but in this case what Brian had written was perfect and a smart council would have cancelled the PCN there and then. However, this was Haringey who are not the best at PCNs. Their initial rejection letter contained some whoppers:

The first whopper:

The council carefully ignored the law.

The second whopper:

The offending words, as well as the terrible idea of starting a sentence with 'And' were:

'And you must stay with your vehicle'

Mr Mustard waited for the Notice to Owner to be issued and then took over. He wrote this as the formal representations:

This time, the second one of asking, the council decided it was wise to cancel the PCN and duly did so as they were well and truly speared by the law and their blatant lie in the earlier informal rejection.

What motorists should learn from this is twofold, that time spent studying parking rules is not wasted and persistence is key. Councils will reject any number of perfect informal challenges (those made when you initially get the PCN) and only think more carefully when the formal representations are made and thus there is the risk that if the council reject again the motorist will go to the independent tribunal and the council have to pay a c.£30 fee which they don't see again.

The end.

The challenge that never was in Tower Hamlets

Mr Mustard helps a skip hire company who inevitably incur PCNs whilst collecting or delivering a skip other than on a main road as they have to breach the weight limit but are exempt provided they take the shortest route. They don't get many jobs in Tower Hamlets but did have one in Tredegar Square and accessed it via Tredegar Road which sounds OK but possibly wasn't. Anyway, the PCN which arrived was deficient. Here is an extract:

 

 

The PCN was deficient for not stating the weight which was allegedly exceeded. This is usually enough at the tribunal for a win. The PCN must state the contravention which is believed to have been exceeded and we don't know if the weight was 5T, 7.5T etc.
Sometimes the sign will be within the images provided but not in this case.

The PCN was dated 1 March 2024.

Representations were made against it online on 11 March 2024. Following his usual practice Mr Mustard embedded a copy of the authority letter within the representations so that he doesn't forget to prove his right to act.

On 10 April Tower Hamlets Council sent a nonsense letter:

 

 

Mr Mustard duly arranged for a representation to be sent in by the company on 18 April which included a waste transfer note.

 

All was then quiet until 30 May when the council accepted the waste transfer note as genuine (it was) and cancelled the PCN.

 

Mr Mustard suspects that the failure to consider the representations the first time around would have counted against the council at the tribunal and the failure to state a weight almost certainly would have, there being a number of decisions in favour of motorists on this point. Do use this ground if you receive a similar PCN.

The cctv isn't all that near the sign in question either so the time of the alleged contravention might also have been wrong so that is a fight for another day or may help you if you receive a PCN relating to Tredegar Road.

The end.

 

Waltham Forest make the same error as Westminster

Readers with better memories than Mr Mustard will recall he recently wrote about a timing error made by the City of Westminster in their own favour, here.

It is a common error, Mr Mustard expects to write about it at least once again in the future, and today it is Waltham Forest Council in his sights. Let's go back to early May when Bobby (not his real name) received his Notice to Owner which was dated 1 May. Always prompt Bobby sent a copy to Mr Mustard who at that time was up to date so he made the formal representations on 4 May. Representations made by Mr Mustard follow a common layout with the signed authority to act embedded as an image, so it doesn't get forgotten.

Time passed, as it does, and Mr Mustard kept an eye on the balance on line and it was £80 on 10, 17, 23 and 31 May.

An email landed in Mr Mustard's inbox on 31 May with an attached letter. Here is the relevant part.

Mr Mustard decided to play for time, predicting a cock-up. He sent a whatsapp message to Bobby.

Not long later, another emailed letter landed in his inbox.

 Mr Mustard again updated his client.

Following that letter Mr Mustard expected that the Notice of Rejection would shortly arrive. It didn't. The balance did change to £40 on 11 June rather suggesting that the representations had been rejected and the 50% discount offered again, even though it doesn't need to be and many authorities are now playing hardball and not offering it, and it stayed at £40 on 16, 20 and 29 June and on 9 July. 

On 11 July Bobby sent a copy of the Notice of Rejection dated 8 July. Mr Mustard smiled, he knew the Notice was a procedural impropriety as it was unlawful. He started an Appeal to the independent tribunal on 19 July.

The Notice to Owner is defined as the Enforcement Notice. Strictly the PCN was still alive but there were no legal steps which could be taken to enforce it as it was over 6 months old.

Mr Mustard waited for the expected 'DNC' document (Do Not Contest) and on 5 August it reached the tribunal. The council sensibly threw in the towel rather than fight on and risk an application for costs for unreasonable behaviour. It was unreasonable but Mr Mustard had hardly incurred any costs in starting the Appeal and only qualifies as a lay person for £19 per hour when his time is far more valuable.

So this is the second enforcement authority in a month to have broken the law. Many processes within parking are automated with PCNs moving relentlessly forward through a series of steps. The one which should be automated to stop a council from breaking the law isn't automated. This is because most motorists wouldn't know, wouldn't dream even, that a council would break the law. The second is that it is assumed councils will be honest and follow the law, maybe that was the case decades ago when PCNs were decriminalised, not now they are a £multi million enterprise. The third is that there is no sanction from an outside supervisory body for the simple reason that there isn't an all powerful overseer.

Mr Mustard will have to fulfil part of that role.

The end, for now.