Message for Brian Coleman from the real world

Here is a recent report from PATAS.

The Appellant attended in person together with a witness Mr B. Also in attendance was Ms. S, a BSL/English interpreter who interpreted for the Appellant and Mr B. The Authority did not attend and it was not represented.

The Appellant showed me her mobile phone which showed that on 28 October 2013, at around 11:59, she sought to register for payment by text. She received a text to say that she should send register by calling, going on line, or by texting her registration number to 65565. The Appellant used text. The next thing that happened was that a call was received. The Appellant has recorded an incomplete number +44330400.... The Appellant presumed that this was from Pay by Phone but as she could not conduct a transaction by phone she went to seek help and the PCN was issued during that time.

The Authority said that payment being made by text would never trigger a voice call. It drew my attention to the published pay by phone document. The Appellant did not say that she started to pay by text, nor had I suggested that she said that. I told the Authority that the Appellant said that she was trying to register by text so that she could make a payment by text. There is no information from the Pay and phone document to confirm that no voice calls would be sent under these circumstances, and the evidence tended to suggest that a voice call from a pay by phone number was registered on the Appellant's phone.

The Authority re-iterated that the Appellant should not have left her vehicle until she got a confirmation message. The Appellant and Mr B. cannot communicate by voice. They must therefore seek help if a voice call reaches her phone and that was what she did.

The Authority had taken the trouble to understand what I tried to ascertain from them. I am giving the Appellant the benefit of the doubt. I am allowing the appeal.

What a catalogue of errors.

Error 1 - removing cash parking meters

Brian's decision (Mr Mustard may refer to Councillor Brian Coleman as Brian but has never been introduced, oh how you now envy Mr Mustard!, but has merely nodded at him once when he was also in the public gallery at a committee meeting and some problem with parking got a mention, and he has of course seen the back of him, the one thing everyone wants? through the glass of the public gallery at Uxbridge Magistrates Court) to remove cash parking meters has evidently caused problems for the deaf. What Brian did was to make a decision that put administrative simplicity and expense before the needs of some of the disadvantaged in society, whose real world is much harder to cope with than his.

Error 2 - over zealous enforcement

If there was a longer period of observation (it doesn't have to be continuous, the traffic warden jots your details down and comes back later), of say 15 minutes, then the time it takes for anyone to go to a Paypoint shop (Mr Mustard was 6th in the queue at one in N Finchley this weekend and the first person seemed to be buying 1000 lottery tickets) or to a trader for a voucher or to find someone to help a deaf person, would reduce the number of tickets given out during the time it sometimes takes to pay or to get a visitor voucher from a resident.

Error 3 - NSL handling appeals badly

NSL have evidently failed to consider whether the motorist was actually deaf or not (and for PATAS it was easier because the deaf lady chose to attend in person) and they probably distrust ever letter they receive and, if so, are not properly considering representations as the legislation requires. They have relied upon a printed guide to PayByPhone which motorists don't carry about with them. NSL keep putting 50 page prints of the guide (android and iphone) into Evidence Packs they send to Mr Mustard which part he throws straight into the recycling because they are an irrelevance. They also signally failed to answer the actual question that the Adjudicator, always a lawyer who has done thousands of parking tickets Appeals, asked them. A schoolboy error.

It would be hard to find a worse combination than One Barnet outsourcing and Brian's historic unilateral money centred decision making.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Golden Bull Awards - NSL nominated

Plain English Campaign

It was back in March 2011 that Mr Mustard suggested to Barnet Council that they use Plain English in everything they do, he having ploughed through one tortuous committee report too many. This is the reply he received on 23 July 2011:

Apologies for the lack of a response, not least as I am broadly supportive of your suggestion.

I have discussed this matter with the Leader of the Council and intend to bring forward proposals as to how the Council will work to meet Plain English standards.

I note there is a cost of becoming a corporate member of the Plain English campaign and the Council will therefore need to consider the most cost effective way of achieving the standard.

Which Mr Mustard rightly guessed meant:

"Here, have a reply although we aren't going to do anything"

as nothing has happened since. Mr Mustard did respond at the time saying that the money saved in paper alone by writing more concise reports would fund the annual fee but that email hasn't been responded to yet (give it time, it is only 2 and a half years old).

Clearly NSL don't subscribe to the campaign on their own account as here is one paragraph he has received in a Notice of Rejection of Representations:

"You in your correspondence that paragraph sent to you were not correct. However, I can confirm the paragraph sent to you regarding the above contravention is correct."

Can anyone enlighten Mr Mustard as to what NSL are trying to say?

That wasn't the only error in the letter. NSL, on behalf of the council, wrote that due to the Data Protection Act of 1998 they could only reply to the registered keeper and this is in a letter they wrote to Mr Mustard who isn't the registered keeper. They do, however, have the right to write to him because he has supplied a signed authority from the registered keeper, as he always does. The Data Protection Act is probably the most misunderstood law in England. Here is another cracking line with punctuation that may make you weep:

You also, mentioned that the signage at the location does not state a time and that the Traffic Management Order, do not agree. I will state the signage meets the regulations set out under the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directives* 2002. (TSRGD)

Mr Mustard never said the sign doesn't meet the TSRGD. He wrote:

The restricted hours of the Residents Bays in Redacted Rd are 8am to 6.30pm. The sign bears no times so is to be read as a 24 hour restriction. Thus the time plate and the Traffic Management Order ("TMO") do not agree and the alleged contravention is not enforceable. If you wish to maintain that the bays are 24 hour bays please provide the TMO with your Notice of Rejection.

Needless to say the TMO was not provided and a different question was answered (a common ploy that doesn't work on Mr Mustard) and in fact answering a different question to the one asked has been found at PATAS to be a failure to properly consider representations and led to the PCN being cancelled.

Now the council have a duty to properly consider representations made as to why a particular parking ticket should be cancelled. Given the nonsense of their reply Mr Mustard will be completing the PATAS form later today, which will cost the council a £40 non-refundable PATAS fee, and Mr Mustard can't see himself losing at PATAS on this case. He is on 15 wins out of 15 appearances so far in 2014 and it is often the parlous performance of NSL that causes the council to lose.

This is one of the troubles with the One Barnet outsourcing, and this parking enforcement contract was one of the first such contracts, that you have to trust the abilities of the contractor, who might not turn out to be all they were cracked up to be (by themselves, natch) and who cannot properly be supervised when they are in, say, Croydon and the thin client side are in Barnet. So it is the council's reputation that suffers, and one day councillors will wake up and realise it and negotiate their way out of the NSL contract (which otherwise will run until 30 April 2017). It also shows the danger of thin client sides; they need to be beefier and then some cost savings go out of the window and mean that outsourcing perhaps couldn't be justified in the first place.

Have you got any nonsense letters from the council? Do send them to Mr Mustard or to the Plain English Campaign

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

* - should read directions not directives.

Friday 7 March at 10.42 

As ever Mr Mustard brought this NSL issued letter directly to the attention of the parking client side with whom he has a good relationship as they realise that he helps them do their job better. They are as unimpressed as Mr Mustard was with NSL and will be discussing the letter with them. Oh to be a fly on the wall.

Update Monday 10 March 14.

The PCN has been cancelled by a parking manager who is directly employed by the council.

Barnet residents - champion appealers to PATAS

Mr Mustard wrote about the high number of Appeals registered at PATAS in the week of 17 February. He thought he would check the following week to make sure it wasn't a fluke. He hasn't distorted the figures as Mr Mustard only files about two Appeals a week to PATAS. Here are the daily numbers for the week of 24 February 14:

PATAS	Barnet	Londonwide
	Appeals	Appeals	%
Mon	23	271	8
Tues	18	282	6
Weds	30	358	8
Thurs	27	284	10
Fri	20	325	6
Sat	-	-
Total	118	1,520	8
PCN issued	Barnet	London	%
Year to March 13	165,569	4,283,964	4

The previous week saw 125 Barnet Appeals logged so if this rate of Appealing keeps up (and 21 were filed yesterday) there will be over 6,000 in a full year or about 3.7% of all PCN being appealed, a rate which will be 2 or 3 times the average across London.

If these statistics aren't proof that Barnet Council's agent NSL are doling out more doubtful tickets than is the case in other London boroughs, then what is?

Well done with all your appeals. Keep them coming.

Remember that there is a quick guide to appealing at the top left of this blog.

Remember that once you have the Notice to Owner your chance of a 50% discount has gone so you might as well appeal the Notice to Owner. If you then receive a Notice of Rejection you might as well complete the PATAS form as it costs you nothing, except 5 minutes of your time, and it costs the council the thick end of £40 in fees to fund PATAS which they never see again and are not added to the sum you have to pay. Costs only apply once in a blue moon if you have been wholly unreasonable, frivolous or vexatious which, if you have any sort of argument at all, you will not have been. Costs are only ever likely to be awarded against someone who has abused the TE9 procedure by making a false declaration to the TEC at Northampton.

Remember that the more PATAS Appeals go in the more likely it is that the council will decide not to contest even after having already refused you twice. It happened to Mr Mustard this week. He had what he thought was a quite tricky appeal about a person having paid by phone for the wrong vehicle registration and the council decided not to contest as soon as he filed the PATAS form. He did of course have his usual menu of arguments so he doesn't know which one hit the council for six, but one of them did. They said there was a BPO error (a processing error Mr Mustard thinks that means but he can't see one and it may not exist. The council/NSL don't like losing face so make up imaginary errors sometimes, Mr Mustard thinks).

Remember to appeal every Saracens Zone PCN as the signage is not good enough.

Remember to always stick to timetable so that you can avoid the TEC route.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard