Happy & sad.

Even with Mr Mustard on their side some people still find the pressure of an unresolved PCN too much to bear, and they may well have other more important matters in their life.

A recent case started with this email:

Hi Mr Mustard

I hope you can help me!

I received a parking ticket at 19.50 on a Sunday night as I had parked in an acceptable bay but my back wheel was parked on a double yellow line. I am 8 months pregnant and I parked there as I was desperate for the toilet so I ran into a restaurant!

When I came out I had a ticket which said my car was observed from 19.50 to 19.50

I explained in my challenge that I am pregnant, I needed to find a toilet and I am finding it hard to walk (SPD) and that had the warden waited five minutes I would have been back at my car. (Find out about SPD here)

Barnet council have ignored every aspect of my argument except they want medical notes regarding the SPD! I haven't been to my doctor has it is a common pregnancy symptom which a lot of women suffer from and there is nothing doctors can do!

Mr Mustard expected that a PATAS adjudicator would see this as a medically related emergency but that is always a hard question to decide the answer to in advance.

Mr Mustard put the lady's chances at 60/40 in her favour. He checked up on the PCN a bit later and found it was at zero value so enquired as to what had happened:

Hi Mr Mustard

Unfortunately I paid it, I've just had my baby and I am exhausted and couldn't face going to a hearing. I replied to the council's letter regarding my medical evidence explaining that the hospital now have that information but they still said I had to pay. I guess that is what they hope will happen!

Thank you so much for your help though!

Now, the good news. Mr Mustard enquired about the baby.

"He is lovely"

So the motorist was out of pocket and the council won an arguable case by being unsympathetic (in the opinion of Mr Mustard) and thus gathered in some of the expected annual income form this source but joy was brought into the world well away from the council. Have they "put the community first" though? Most definitely not.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Hospital Parking - Pay & Dismay (Credit: Andrew Boff AM)

Pay and Dismay

What a pleasant surprise for Mr Mustard to stumble over. A well written short report on hospital parking which Mr Mustard is pleased to reproduce, with due credit to Andrew Boff AM, to a slightly wider audience.

Mr Mustard completely agrees that pay on exit is the fairest method of payment and that reliance on pay-by-phone excludes certain sections of society.

Barnet Hospital doesn't come out very well in this report and Mr Mustard ponders as to what the GLA can actually do to improve the situation (and they might as well bear down on Local Authority parking at the same time as Barnet Council subsidise council tax by issuing tens of thousands of PCN).

The perennial problem is that hospitals usually want more money and parking is an easy source to tap.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Merry Christmas everybody

There are always at least a couple of parking messages to Mr Mustard on bank holidays from the unsure so to save a call or txt here are the rules.

The rules for today are the most liberal of any day in the year.

So today you can park on double yellow lines but don't stay on them beyond midnight and don't park on a blind bend etc.

Today you can drive in the bus lanes even though you don't need to as the roads won't be like a normal Thursday. Tomorrow you will be posted a PCN if you drive in a bus lane at the wrong time even if there isn't a bus in sight for miles and miles.

Double parking means that the whole car is more than 50cm from the kerb (and not in a marked bay) which is lazy & untidy parking at the very least. Please be neat & tidy.

Here's to 2015. If you are a member of a residents group, the WI, a motoring group etc. think about booking a 20 minute talk now from Mr Mustard on the subject of:

- How to park so that you don't ever get a PCN (covers the main failings)

- How to read signs & lines

- How to fight your PCN all the way to PATAS

Yours festively

Mr Mustard

Disabled parking spaces are not needed, use the free parking spaces!

Mr Mustard has read some stupid letters in his time (and written a few, Ed) and just when he thinks NSL in Croydon have been bashed into shape by the council's parking manager the staff go all native again and let him down.

Here is an extract from a letter which Mr Mustard received today:

Mr Mustard was of the opinion that blue badge parking spaces were put in town centres for the benefit of the disabled, as they can't walk very far (or are blind - and have a driver) and apart from a very small number of confusing time limited loading bay / free parking spots (max 15 mins) there isn't any free parking in town centres, including North Finchley where this PCN was dished out.

The council letter is unsympathetic and unrealistic. Mr Mustard doesn't know if they, or the council, employ any disabled people to consider representations but he thinks they should and that all representations regarding blue badges should be handled by a disabled person.

The council are, Mr Mustard hears, about to employ more staff in house to handle representations as a recent decision at the Traffic Penalty Tribunal went against Gloucester County Council and the council are going to jump in this regard before they are pushed. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to increase the number of disabled employees.

Mr Mustard thought that twas the season of goodwill but he forgot that this is a parking matter, so there isn't any. Bah humbug from NSL at Croydon.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

No marks for not answering the question on the paper

What is the point of a council meeting? Isn't it to consider important local matters?

What is the point of questions to the Leader of the Council?

To hold him to account for his team's actions and to inform the public by publishing them.

This all seems to have been forgotten in tonight's full Council meeting. Here, read the questions and mostly non-answers for yourselves.

Questions to the Leader and Committee Chairman if He Has Delegated 16122014 190 by MisterMustard

Mr Mustard started reading.

Q1. A sucking up type question by a new councillor. (The park have had to go to charity for funds which it is the duty of the council to provide). No need as the council will shout about this from the rooftops on twitter, in the local papers etc.

Q2. Not an answer. A standard diversionary tactic in the second sentence. What Labour would do we'll only find out should they come to power. Rather petty by Richard, Mr Mustard thought.

Q3. But what will Richard actually do about the Open Space. Nothing informative here.

Q4. The question simply hasn't been answered. Mr Mustard doesn't think there have been any prosecutions for fly-tipping in recent years otherwise the council would have done a press release saying how marvellous they were.

Q5 &Q6. Properly answered.

Q7. What was the point in this question?

Q8. Not answered.

Q9. So if it always dealt with swiftly why do we need to step up efforts? Some figures about the number of incidents by month might have been more informative as well as doing something about catching the perpetrators.

Q10. You might eventually see an answer. It should have been here.

Q11. Pavement parking is already banned across the whole of London. Does Cllr Gordon not know this?

As there are 143 questions (more than usual) let's just consider the poorer ones.

Q13. Cllr Gordon again shows he doesn't know enough about the Council.

Q14. Not answered the size questions as the responses would be too embarrassing. Appropriate is in the eye of the beholder.

Q15. Should a routine council service really be the subject of a question to full council.

Q16. In which case Richard you should have asked Cllr Rawlings to clarify his question so that you could do him the courtesy of a proper answer.

Q17. Ah, a question from the councillor who voted to move a meeting to clash with the Labour Party Conference. This looks like another politically inspired act of no use to residents.

Q19. More petty politics.

Q20. Mr Mustard has his money on the overall take being higher.

Q21. More petty politics. It can't be irresponsible to follow the council constitution unless the constitution itself is irresponsible.

more later but read the rest and see how appalling it is.

Residents have been badly served by these partial answers.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

.

Bizarre PCN of the year

Mr Mustard has been consulted about the above PCN issued by Harrow Council.

The PCN is for contravention 26 "parked in a Special Enforcement Area more than 50cm from the edge of the carriageway and not within a designated parking place". Clearly the single yellow line was not operative at 12:58

Things you need to know:

1. The whole of Greater London is a Special Enforcement Area.

2. The contravention was designed to stop double parking.

3. If a bay for parking was painted in the middle of the road and you parked in it you couldn't be guilty of parking a long way from the kerb as you were in a Designated Parking Place.

4. The whole of the car, including the wing mirror, has to be more than 50cm from the kerb. This car clearly isn't. A PCN for parking across a dropped kerb might have been justified but a PCN cannot be issued for that now.

The informal challenge has been rejected.

Mr Mustard has now drafted the formal representations which consist of one line to the effect that the car was not 50cm from the kerb. If it is rejected then it is off to PATAS we go.

If & when this PCN reaches PATAS the Adjudicator should dismiss it in a minute or less and Mr Mustard would suggest that costs would be payable by the council for being "wholly unreasonable".

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard