new Haringey Council policy - mess Mr Mustard about

It is hard to write a parking story without Helen Michael of Cafe Buzz, N12 appearing somewhere. So the above PATAS decision about Helen's PCN was made on 6 May. The council wrongly posted the evidence to Mr Mustard's client i.e. Helen, instead of to him. Once could be an accident.

On 20 May 2015 Mr Mustard again appeared at PATAS for a Ms S. The evidence pack was dated 8 May but not posted until 11 May and also sent to his client and not to him. Twice is a coincidence.

Mr Mustard has an adjudication hearing on Wednesday at London Tribunals for a Haringey PCN. He has not yet received an Evidence Pack. Is this the third time it has been sent to the client? = enemy action (from Ian Fleming's novel Goldfinger).

On 25 June Mr Mustard sent in a page and a half of formal representations about 2 PCN for a Dr. T to Haringey Council by the Signed for Service (as he doesn't trust any council not to "lose" his correspondence). The letter was accompanied by a scanned copy of an authority letter of standard wording, viz:

I confirm that Mr Derek Dishman, of redacted address is authorised to represent me in respect of penalty charge notices issued by any council, to pursue complaints and to sign documents on my behalf as my representative.

What could be clearer? 

Barnet Council, who Mr Mustard writes to most often, accept that authority without hesitation as have the City, Camden, Enfield, Harrow, Hammersmith, Islington, Lambeth, Hounslow, Southwark and Haringey(!) in 2015.

On 6 July Haringey Council wrote back.

This was a postal PCN and so the first challenge made is the formal representation. The registered keeper has made them. Mr Mustard's letter started:

"I represent Dr. T ..............as enclosed authority."

Mr Mustard thought he had forgotten to enclose the authority so sent the letter back in again on 10 July. Perhaps he didn't forget the first time he sent the letter in.

Mr Mustard has today received a clear signal that Haringey don't want to answer the representations that he makes on behalf of his pro bono (Mr Mustard does not charge any fees) clients. This from a letter dated 9 July, regarding Mrs O..

Haringey mean 29 June not 29 April and that isn't their only sloppy error. It is the owner of a vehicle who is liable for a penalty charge, that may or may not be the registered keeper (otherwise the Motability scheme would be suffering as all the cars are registered in the name of Motability).

Mr Mustard has not made an appeal. For a start, he isn't "any other person", he has the right to sign letters as representative as if he is the vehicle owner. One does not make an "appeal" in response to a Notice to Owner, one makes formal representations. An "Appeal" is what is made to London Tribunals (formerly PATAS) after receiving a Notice of Rejection of Representations. Haringey are able to answer the formal representations; they have chosen not to. They did respond to Mr Mustard's informal challenge so aren't exactly being consistent (it was identically worded to the formal representations).

There is no legislation that supports this line:

"We are unable to accept authorisation for a third party to act on their behalf".

The Regulations about challenging, making representations to and Appealing PCN have very little to say on the question of representatives. The one line which puts Haringey into a spot of bother is this one:

from The Civil Enforcement of Parking Contraventions (England) Representations and Appeal Regulations 2007.

as clearly it is envisaged that a representative may appear on behalf of a vehicle owner (the appellant) and it would be a nonsense if they couldn't do anything about a PCN at earlier stages.

Of course it wouldn't be the case that Haringey Council are poor losers, would it?, given that Mr Mustard has contested 6 Haringey PCN in 2015 and the current score is

Haringey 0 - Mr Mustard 6

i.e. all 6 PCN have been cancelled, 4 of those by an adjudicator, so the council are down by c. £300 in PCN income and have paid out £160 in fees to PATAS (now called London Tribunals).

Throwing one's toys out of the pram is not the way to go. It might also be a breach of Human Rights law to deny a motorist representation by the representative of their choice. Barnet Council parking management don't behave childishly, they & Mr Mustard talk openly to each other (and sometimes politely agree to disagree), the council take all losses on the chin and try to improve their operations. Mr Mustard tries to stay one step ahead of them.

Come on Haringey Council, time to man up.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Parking in the Wild West (St Endellion, Cornwall)

News reaches Mr Mustard of dodgy goings on in the world of parking, especially in council car parks, from North, South, East & West and it is the Wild West that figures today.

Mr Mustard does have friends down in Cornwall, who are overdue a visit, but he certainly won't be going to St Endellion as it is just too wild a place for him to visit.

There is something called the Port Isaac council (in theory) Car Park and here are the signs for it

Mr Mustard isn't up with the Cornish language but feels sure that the top part is misspelt and that the first word on every Cornish car park sign should be "Argh".

The council website further defines times, but they are not on the sign, why not?

So there is an Off Street Parking Places Order 2013 that the local Parish Council have very unwisely entered into. It started on 1 December 2013. The Protections of Freedoms Act (which rather conversely lets private parking companies easily access your vehicle data from DVLA) came into force on 1 October 12 and was not intended for council use but for the private parking industry.

Mr Mustard hasn't heard any noises coming out of St Endellion that they have taken any serious notice of central government since then. It isn't all that far to the beach to stick your head into the sand.

So, central government warned local authorities about using private enforcement in council car parks. St Endellion is almost as far in England from Whitehall as you can get so presumably think they are safe. Not from Mr Mustard and the NotoMob they aren't.

St Endellion Parish Council have taken a most unusual step with a Freedom of information request for a copy of the enforcement contract with A S Parking Services (there is a dormant company of that Ltd name but enforcement is actually by Athens Security Services Ltd which has a common director) by getting some Solicitors to reply on their behalf and refused the entire request whereas they should simply have redacted the commercially sensitive parts if the appropriate test was satisfied. What are they afraid of the public seeing - what a hideously bad contract they have negotiated?

The council had a meeting on 20 May 15 - it seems they are waking up.

This clearly shows that the council borrowed money to buy the car park so clearly it is a council car park and not a private one.

Here is something the council might like to think about in respect of their Parking Places Order

It is probably/possibly invalid as there is no such Act as the Road Traffic Act 1984. Perhaps they meant the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984? but one shouldn't have to guess.

In June the Finance & Car Park Committee (see how close those two items always are) of the council again considered parking:

It looks like time for the Audit Committee, if there is such a thing, to take a close look at how their contractor is behaving. Why doesn't the council itself bank the money? Giving away control of a cash asset is risky.

Let's go back to the signs now.

The top left says the sign is a council car park. Thus motorists expect to be governed by the usual council rules and access to an independent adjudicator, the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, and if that were the case penalties would be £50 or £70 reduced by 50% for payment in the first 14 days rather than the rather excessive £100 reduced to £60. Also, the council would receive the money to plough back into further car park provision rather than let a private parking company have the benefit from any misuse of a public asset.

There is no adjustment for the disabled. That is a requirement of the Equality Act.

The tariff is bonkers. A 24 hour period from 00:01 to 23:59 is £5 whereas 7pm to 7am is £10. Both are 24 hour periods. From 23:59 to 09:00 is £7 which is £2 more than all day.

Nothing in the Order prohibits vehicles over 2.5 tonnes which could include a camper van. The Order does ban lorries (a rather loose term which is not defined in the Order).

The right hand sign says that the Car park is "private property". Tosh. It is council land.

"All vehicles must be parked within a single allocated parking bay". Which one? Should we stack the cars 50 high? Isn't the parking arrangement the same as cinema free seating, you park in an empty seat/space?

So, you can't occupy your vehicle after 9pm until 9am? What if you want to leave at 8am, how can you exit the car park without occupying your vehicle? Do you have to push it out of the car park. What if you want to sit in your vehicle watching the sunset at 10pm - you can't without paying a penalty of £100. The Order says no vehicle shall be used "for sleeping or camping purposes" - so if Mr Mustard has driven down from Barnet, leaving home at 5am and getting to St Endellion at 10am, prior to having lunch with friends, he can't take 40 winks until 12 noon? The signs are nonsense. Appeal against every parking charge notice. Mr Mustard's friends at Parking Cowboys will help you.

So the signs have supposedly been audited or approved by the Chocloate Teapot Society or is it the British Parking Association (a fat lot of use they appear to be).

Enough of St Endellion for today. Mr Mustard thinks that a local resident will be challenging their Accounts or asking difficult questions at the next meeting of the parish council or the entire council will be resigning as they aren't serving the needs of residents and visitors so why are they in office? Everyone else will be going somewhere else on holiday and keeping A S Parking rather busy at POPLA. Expect the parish council to ask the County Council to take over enforcement quite soon (they know on the QT that things aren't right).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

p.s. If Mr Mustard has missed some salient point in this debacle of parish council competence, more St Trinians than St Endellion, then do feel free to comment as Mr Mustard needs the help and a large glass of red.

Mr Mustard just found two more points.

VAT is included in the £100. He sincerely hopes that A S Parking are invoicing this to the parish council who are their client as they are not entitled to recover vat from the motorist.

There is a 3% surcharge for paying the penalty by credit card or by the Internet (which costs about zero to process) when for a local authority payment the surcharge couldn't be more than 1.8% for all payments except parking which has to be 0%.

St Endellion are managing to do the motorist over at every turn. Vote with your feet (wheels). Suffolk & Norfolk are both lovely.

Small profitable B&B for sale in the French Ardennes

The building in view behind the war memorial is the B&B

a view of the village, absolutely wonderful

Two single beds can make a double

Mr Mustard has looked at this view, beer in hand, of many an evening

An ideal opportunity to combine a business with lifestyle, which can easily be run by a couple. Well established, successful Bed and Breakfast Business in North East France, currently specialising in motor cycle touring. Ideal position for bikes travelling to and from ferry ports onwards to Europe.  Plenty of traffic free roads to explore while visiting the area including many World War sites. Five en-suite guest rooms plus owner’s accommodation. On site facilities are aimed at the biker market – garaging and secure parking for motorbikes, drying room, terrace overlooking river and canal to chill-out and socialise with fellow bikers.

The property consists of five en-suite Guest rooms, two further bedrooms with shared family bathroom, large lounge/dining room, fully fitted kitchen, office/reception area, ground floor toilet. The lounge has an impressive Lorraine stone fireplace with log burner. The dining room has table and chairs for 16. Below the house is a large cellar with vast amounts of storage space, the central heating boiler and oil storage tank. All the white goods - 4 fridges, 1 freezer, 2 washing machine, tumble drier and the dehumidifier from the drying room will be included in the sale. The 5 guest rooms (the maximum number allowed in France) can sleep up to 14 people with flexibility to be single, twin, double or triple rooms. The satellite dish and TV point, currently set up for UK TV, will also remain. Wi-fi is available throughout the house.

The Garage can easily accommodate 8 bikes on 2 levels (with hydraulic lift) and has an electric roller shutter door. There is additional space to park extra bikes securely. We currently rent an additional large garage, which it may be possible to negotiate for separately.

Everything needed to run the B&B on a daily basis will be included. This will include the website, domain names and telephone numbers - as these are all part of our presence on the net. All we would remove from the house are our personal belongings and a couple of pieces of family furniture.

The price is €290,000

The only possible drawback is that Mr Mustard and his motorcycling mates are regular visitors.

To express an interest

Contact:
Carol and Ian Moore
Two Wheel Moorings
2 Rue de l'Hotel de Ville,
55110 DUN SUR MEUSE
France
Tel 00 33 (0)3 29 83 50 61
Mobile 00 33 (0)6 33 57 86 50
Low Cost call from UK 0844 232 5548

Update 11 July 15:

The town is improving. The established mostly Pizza & Pasta restaurant La Sicilia has moved away 200m from the busy junction into a lovely light building and looks far better; prices remain moderate in this country area. 

A new small restaurant has been opened by a man from the Netherlands (or was it Belgium, Mr Mustard just forgets, probably because there was a long menu of beer choices, so probably Belgium then). Mr Mustard recently enjoyed a delicious prawn risotto which had clearly been home cooked just a minute before. The food was fab, the owner speaks at least 4 languages and can really cook.

Now that the pound is at 1.4 or so to the €, the sterling sale price is £210,000

Council vehicles are not exempt from parking rules

2 July 15 at 10:41am

This vehicle was not obviously engaged in parking enforcement or on highways business which would, if it was necessary to park in such a way (i.e. the driver could not easily park elsewhere such as the Lodge Lane Car Park which always seems to have an empty bay), exempt the vehicle owner from the parking restrictions.

The driver did get out and wander off down the High Road to pop to the shops, it appeared to Helen Michael of Cafe Buzz in the High Rd, N12.

Helen's view is that if you are going to ticket her customers with gay abandon for the merest infringement then the council need to show leadership and set a good example by themselves parking in accordance with the law at all times.

Mr Mustard's view is that council drivers should obey all parking rules  all over the borough and if the driver is going to take a chance and park illegally, not do it in Percy Rd N12 as Helen misses nothing.

Maybe the driver didn't have a mobile phone or credit card with them and so couldn't pay? In which case, as the council are fond of saying, they should park elsewhere. Enfield or Haringey maybe, where cash is still wisely accepted.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

(Mr Mustard has seen council vehicles given a PCN before now and all that does is cause administration and move money from one budget to a different one.)

Helen Michael silenced (not for long)

That pesky cafe owner, Helen Michael, of Cafe Buzz who has been vocal on the subject of the removal of cash parking meters, as they adversely affected her business, is still on the warpath. This time it is about traffic wardens being over zealous and giving out PCN like confetti on a suspended 15m stretch of parking bay opposite Cafe Buzz as it makes customers and potential customers nervous to even visit North Finchley. Helen's view is that traffic wardens were targeting the spot, which was ambiguously signed, just to raise revenue as she saw wardens down there on foot at 8pm when usually it is only the scooter riders passing by who stop and dole out PCN.

So, fed up with seeing traffic wardens take photographs and driving away her trade, Helen tweeted a picture of a traffic warden at work, like this one

You won't get such lovely food as at Helen's, in the above establishments

with the small difference that Helen left the traffic warden's face visible.

This led someone, whether the traffic warden, NSL or Barnet Council isn't known, to complain about Helen having breached twitter policy, or some such, and for now, until she sorts it out, Helen's account is suspended. Here is some legal advice I was given for free:

The general rule for street photography is that if you are taking a picture of a street scene, which happens to have lots of people in it, that is fine.

If you are taking a portrait of a particular person, as in this case, then you need them to sign a consent form.

Mr Mustard thinks it must be the traffic warden who complained as she is now, according to other local business owners (most of whom are very grateful to Helen and support her efforts to get the council to be sensible) going around making uninvited improper remarks about Helen to other business owners such as referring to her as "a bitch" and telling them (at least 3, statements are being written as we speak) she is "a horrible person" (she isn't; she is lovely) unless of course the definition of a horrible person is someone who prevents people from getting PCN in which case Mr Mustard will have to be renamed Mr Horrible.

The problem with the enforcement last week outside the premises of Tally Ho Discount (soon to be Tesco) is that the 15m stretch which was suspended was described as being outside 770-774. Now Tally Ho is number 770 and is about 13m wide so that left only an adjoining 2m elsewhere which was suspended. The other buildings are not numbered and so without making further enquiry, which should have been unnecessary, motorists didn't know if the other 2m were to the left or right of Tally Ho. Traffic wardens didn't care, they simply ticketed any vehicle outside any part of McDonald's and blithely told motorists that they could appeal (Mr Mustard doesn't expect to be summonsed for an offence that he hasn't committed, such as say burglary when his swag bag is clearly empty and be told that it's fine, you can appeal). Mr Mustard politely asked a different traffic warden how motorists could know where the 15m stretch started and ended and her answer was that it wasn't her job to put the signs up and that motorists could always appeal. She couldn't answer therefore how she decided whether to ticket or not (the answer of course is always to issue a ticket, to the innocent as well as the guilty). Mr Mustard hung around for a while to stop people getting tickets. He moved a fellow motorcyclist along 5m to be out of danger. The rider spoke to the traffic warden who told the rider not to listen to Mr Mustard (she clearly not knowing of his knowledge on the subject in hand). Mr Mustard doesn't think it is in the job description of traffic wardens to instruct the public to not have expert help in contesting PCN; they might just be an incy wincy bit biased?

Mr Mustard talks to most of the traffic wardens he meets (some though don't seem to have a tongue in their head and stupidly give residents the silent treatment which is enraging) and they are happy to explain anything he asks. Others just walk away. This is what the contract with NSL requires (try hard not to laugh so much that your feet fall off)

The atmosphere where traffic wardens are seen as Ambassadors for the council seems to Mr Mustard (and we are 3 years into this contract) to be like this

or maybe it was an auto-correct error and Ambushers was the word that was meant to be included in the contract?

It might be a good idea if parking management were to move the slandering traffic warden to another location well away from N12 and took a long hard look at how traffic wardens behave on the street by following them around and checking first hand what antics they get up to.

Do feel free to send your traffic warden stories to mrmustard@zoho.com or to the local Times newspaper

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bunn Fight at the car park in Mill Hill

3 hours free parking was recently agreed by councillors for Saturdays (not sure it is permanent but you can look at the sign before you park).

The message didn't properly filter through to the NSL traffic wardens nor to the PayByPhone people who carried on charging £5.10 for 3 hours of free parking and/or dishing out PCN if you didn't pay. The requirement to have a telephone to order 3 hours of something free was unreasonable and Mr Mustard would have beaten the PCN he heard about at PATAS. There is now no need as management have stepped in and out things right. It is doubtless only because of outsourcing parking in the first place that it all went wrong.

Pro-active refunds are to be made.

All PCN should also be cancelled but somehow Mr Mustard thinks that won't happen so make sure you challenge the PCN or wing a copy over to mrmustard@zoho.com and he will get it cancelled for you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Newham Council - a world record PCN demand?

You won't believe your eyes.

If you have a £130 PCN you can end up with the value being increased by 50% and you then receive a Charge Certificate.

Mr Mustard, who rather likes numbers, knows that if you add 50% to £130, the answer, using only his own brain power, is £195. Newham Council have huge computer systems which help them to make a packet out of PCN

which make £130 + 50% come to £8,795 which is a tad more than 50%, 500% or even 5,000% extra. Time to wind the elastic band up a little tighter in the council computer?

Mr Mustard thinks you might like to see the Charge Certificate, but not if you open an envelope over your cornflakes, having innocently forgotten to pay a PCN yourself?

apologies for the poor image quality

Can you imagine how the lady who opened the envelope to be confronted by this Charge Certificate felt? Even Mr Mustard would have been shaken to his very core. (He has virtually held the hand of the affected party and told them not to worry, which is easy for him as his name is not in the frame).

There has obviously been a diabolical error somewhere and the test now for Newham Council is what they do about this gargantuan error. The very least is a fulsome grovelling apology from the Parking Manager, the cancellation of any other PCN that happen to be knocking about for the same vehicle (only one as far as Mr Mustard is aware) a bunch of flowers (no, not for Mr Mustard, silly) and a lifetime's supply of free visitor vouchers.

Are Newham Council big enough or will they blame some faceless unnamed pen-pusher and quietly cancel this PCN and otherwise keep schtum? We are judged less by our mistakes than how we deal with them. Here is an opportunity to show the world what Newham Council are made of; sugar & spice?

Surely the PCN value field could have been set to trigger a warning if it exceeded a set maximum?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update 18 June 15: The Newham payment system is now showing £457 which is a vast improvement on the previous figure but is still wrong. A council can only issue one Charge Certificate and so having issued a defective one they have no action open to them other than hitting the cancel button (unless they want to explain themselves to the Ombudsman in due course).