End of bus lane - a sign

 

The above is a stretch of bus lane just north of Deansbrook Road but facing south. It was the suject of an Appeal to an independent adjudicator at London Tribunals, not one of Mr Mustard's but he hopes if it had been he would have seen the signage error before the adjudicator who was bang on the money.

 

The penultimate paragraph is a cut and paste error. It should say 'a contravention did not occur'.

 

This is an interesting decision. The motorist believed the 'end of bus lane' sign and moved to the left. They were absolutely entitled to rely on the sign.

 

The council try and wiggle out of the mess they have got themselves in by writing some mumbo jumbo about bus stops but this adjudicator has vast experience and takes no nonsense, he applies the law.

 

Councils will sometimes write anything to get you to pay. If you think they are wrong forget about the discount and go to the independent tribunal where you will find an impartial solution.

 

Would a reader please tell us if the end of bus lane sign has been moved to the end of the bus lane as marked?

The end.

Havering Council - 3 errors in one PCN file

 Here is a brain teaser Mr Mustard found on the internet.

The answer is at the end of this blog.

He did find three errors in Havering's PCN processing without too much effort and there may have been more that it would have been otiose to mention.

You may not have thought about this much but here are two tips from Mr Mustard.

Tip 1: If you move home you have to tell DVLA twice about your move, once for your driving licence and again for your vehicle (more than once if you have more than one vehicle).

Mr Mustard thinks that the DVLA website does now nudge you to do both and you can create an account which puts everything together. 

Tip 2: If you move home you need to tell every enforcement authority which has a live PCN file as DVLA do not tell them of any change of address.

This blog concerns a PCN issue in October 2022 and Mr Mustard had to be as sticky as ever in order to finally see the PCN completed in May 2024. His client had moved at least twice in that time which never helps one to keep on top of paperwork.

Havering Council made three absolutely schoolboy errors (presumably schoolgirls are perfect?) which Mr Mustard laid out for them in his email of 29 April 2024

Mr Mustard made his own error hitting the m key instead of the adjacent comma

It only took two weeks and Havering quietly threw in the towel:

Readers will note the complete absence of any apology. 

Manners! 

Non-existent a lot of the time in parking departments.

Now, the answer to the little teaser:

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.

 

Southwark Council - would you belief it?

 

In order to send a PCN a council, Southwark in this case, must have a belief that a contravention has occurred.

 

The modern day method of recording possible contraventions is that a computer does it, it then extracts a few seconds of footage, sends off to DVLA for keeper details and then prints out and posts out a PCN.

 

In this big brother system a human being is meant, on behalf of the council, to watch the footage and confirm that a contravention occurred.

As Southwark issued 16,983 bus lane PCNs in the year to 31 March 24 that is an awful lot of tediously boring clips to watch but none should have been issued in Denmark Hill once the markings were eroded to the extent above. Whoever approved this PCN should be sacked but as lease companies will have been paying these on receipt, because the law to transfer is not available for hires of up to 6 months (and transfer for longer agreements requires a degree of permanence in the lease) without looking at them in any detail and gleefully making a load of administrative charges for doing not much, the council cash cow will keep on milking the public.

The operators who are meant to check these clips also should be watching 139,526 moving traffic contraventions (banned turns, yellow box junctions & no motor vehicles low traffic neighbourhoods etc) and must fairly be in a trance by the end of the day if that is all they do.

As Mr Mustard has said before, if patently unlawful PCNs are issued the council should have to give you £130 for each one. A level playing field.

The keeper was in a panic about the PCN and discount as honest people often are. Mr Mustard offered to pay the PCN if it all went wrong in order to bring calm to the situation.

Southwark were quick to see the problem and cancelled at the first time of asking.

 The end.

Haringey Council - a triumph for common sense

The rather long and complicated sign - who has time to read a novella upon parking:

The PCN informal challenge:

There were obvious typing and grammar errors in Mr Mustard's submission but they didn't dilute the thrust of the challenges. Of course the sign was in two dimensions! Mr Mustard meant one sided.

There was no error in Haringey's response. They saw that they had got themselves into very hot water and would, if they denied this challenge and the next one, inevitably end up at the tribunal where they would receive six of the best.

A very nice acceptance letter followed:

So often cancellation letters are mealy mouthed and say things such as the same outcome won't necessarily be the case if the same situation occurs when it patently will so well done Haringey for owning your errors. Let's hope the sign department learn from this.

In Mr Mustard's opinion any suspension of this type in Haringey is susceptible to challenge.

The end.

Tower Hamlets play fair

Mr Mustard's friend had a blue badge passenger in the car. He knew that was OK in Barnet and Enfield* to park in a residents bay and therefore assumed it would be ok in Tower Hamlets. It wasn't. Mr Mustard thought about the matter and sent in the following informal challenge. (* do put Mr Mustard right if he is wrong about this).

Tower Hamlets were quite quick and replied after 2 weeks.

The content of the letter, which was sent attached to an email, was somewhat contradicted by the covering email.

If there was a scoring system for this PCN Tower Hamlets would get a 9 out of 10, so well done them for cancelling for a first error which should not get repeated. This is how it should be.

This does highlight though the problem for a blue badge driver who really needs to research where he/she can stop for free before he/she makes a journey across London. It wouldn't need much, a blue badge logo on all bays where blue badges could be used would be a simple addition and bring clarity to all. Tower Hamlets sadly didn't answer the simple question posed by Mr Mustard, once they have cancelled a PCN they don't want to spend more time on it.

The end.

M1 and M mashup

 

Another random decision which Mr Mustard found on the tribunal register.

 

This is typical behaviour in parking departments all over London. You make a mistake and you will be pilloried for £80 (or £130). If Barnet Council make a mistake they also want £80 from you.

The resident has no control over the permit application system which is managed (badly you might say) by NSL. Therefore unless the zone code is clearly wrong, you are offered Q instead of A for example, then why would the resident query it?

The resident had a second defence which the adjudicator alluded to, the doctrine of  'legitimate expectation' about which you can read further here.

Well done Mr Swales for standing up for yourself and risking £80, justice was served, to Barnet Council. Will this change how they behave? Mr Mustard doubts it.

The end.