PCNs - pragmatic advice - Covid-19

The above is advice, each local authority will make its own decisions about what to enforce and when. When he has a moment, Mr Mustard will start asking all local authorities in London what changes they have actually made & shame those who have not changed a thing. TfL have reacted quickly so fair play to them.

Do not enter a yellow box unless the box and your exit is clear.

Do not park on the pavement except where marked out for it.

Do not park across a dropped kerb on the corner of a road our outside a stranger's property.

Do not park on zebra crossing zig-zgas for safety's sake

Do not turn left or right where it is prohibited.

CCTV enforcement systems won't catch the virus but will catch you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet Council - virus parking concessions

The above message was sent to Mr Mustard by a Barnet Councillor.

If you are out normally in the day you perhaps don't need a resident permit and these being unusual times you may be working at home and you have to put your car somewhere and you are now safe to park it within a residents bay without using a daily visitor voucher.

By a single yellow for one hour that means that if the single yellow only operates from say 10-11am you can park on it. It doesn't mean you can park for one hour on a single yellow line that operates from 10am to 5pm.

Please park sensibly and don't use more than your necessary and fair share of the available bays, you aren't going to have a party at home at this time so you shouldn't be inviting three friends round for a game of poker and annoying the people who normally park at home by taking all of the spare spaces. If the concession is abused it will doubtless be withdrawn. Please only park within the bays of the residential area in which you live, you shouldn't be making journeys to other areas unless you are an essential worker.

Please don't park on the school zig zags as schools may still be operating, stay well away from zebra crossing markings, don't block dropped kerbs or park on double yellow lines or in bus stops as PCNs are still being issued at those locations.

Please park sensibly, don't obstruct the road as ambulances need to get through nor park partially or fully on the pavement unless there is a marked bay.

When necessary Mr Mustard has in the past visited motorists at home in order to assist them. He isn't going anywhere for now so we'll have to communicate by post or electronically for at least a few weeks.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Task tsk tsk

The above isn't one of the cases represented by Mr Mustard at the tribunal, the decision simply coming to his attention on his daily reading of the register.

Never before has Mr Mustard seen such a decision, one that is directed to be placed before the parking manager so he knows what has been going on in his department (he should in any event).

The failure to attend when so directed is disrespectful to the adjuidcator and not a course of action that Mr Mustard would recommend. It is set down in law with a penal notice.

Council parking departments are not above the law. They should tread carefully and politely.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Moving traffic contraventions - invalid PCNs

History has a habit of repeating itself. In 2006 the parking PCN of Barnet Council was found in Court to be invalid as a vital date was missing.

Here we are in 2020 and Mr Mustard keeps winning at the tribunal on the grounds that a time period is wrongly stated on the moving traffic PCN.

Moving traffic PCNs are the ones issued for

- stopping in a box junction 
- turning where you shouldn't (Tilling Road being a favourite error spot)
- stopping on school entrance markings (cctv issued PCN only affected)

On 27 February after a barrage of tribunal Appeals won by Mr Mustard and with two Review requests (like a second opinion) refused without a hearing, the council amended its moving traffic PCN to read like this on the first page. He has however seen a later PCN which still has the old wording, all very odd.

It is the third paragraph which used to be wrong, as it read like this

You can see the difference, 'date of service' = good, 'date of this notice' = bad.

If you have a PCN which contains the 'date of this notice' wording you should win any appeal to the tribunal as Mr Mustard has won 11 times, especially if you ask him to act for you (which only requires that you agree to donate to the North London Hospice as a thank you for his help). Two motorists have lost but the two adjudicators concerned don't handle Mr Mustard's cases (he is reserved to be dealt with by a small coterie of experienced adjudicators) so he isn't likely to lose.

If your PCN has this wrong paragraph on the front it is beatable (no guarantees but very likely). You should write the following to the council, if you haven't yet made your formal representations:

I wish to challenge the PCN on the grounds that the wording is non-compliant as found in tribunal case no. 2190464396 and ten other decisions.

If you have a Notice of Rejection you should select the ground that 'The penalty exceeded the amount applicable in the circumstances of the case' and then write

The PCN has been found not to be compliant in the following cases:

2190464396, 219046955A, 2190517925, 2190550501, 2190550793, 2190555287, 2200024112, 2200017274, 2190521398, 2200046534 and 2200053766

and compliant in 2200041905 and 2200067454.

One must be even handed at the tribunal and not present one sided evidence.

If you want Mr Mustard to handle this for you then he will happily do so free of any charge save for a donation by you if he wins, directly to the North London Hospice.

This is a once in a lifetime chance (probably) so don't miss out.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Harrow Council - manifestly unfair

This was not a case dealt with by Mr Mustard

Luckily Mr Mustard keeps all of his files open for as long as it takes to reach a point of finality.

Harrow Council on the other hand put theirs away in a dusty cupboard for a year or two, or three, and then drag them out, dust them off and restart the process at the point where they previously stopped. Not many people would still have their paperwork for a 2016 PCN and if the motorist had moved in the meantime would find that a bailiff had been instructed unbeknownst to them and the bailiff traces a new address, has the address on the warrant changed (that strikes Mr Mustard as an abuse of process as the Order for Recovery has not been served) and then clamps the car leaving the motorist with little choice but to pay up.

There isn't a body which keeps an overarching critical friend eye on what local authorities are up to in their parking departments, as if there were, this sort of abuse of the system could be stopped in its tracks.

Mr Mustard has dealt with four such cases in the last few months and luckily none of the motorists he was helping had moved so the proper pieces of paper were dealt with in time. Instead of gaining the income from four PCNs Harrow Council are instead out of pocket for four wasted £8 court registration fees and four tribunal listing fees of c. £30 each and there is an application pending for costs, for wholly unreasonable behaviour, of just one hour at £19. This is because the council behaviour in letting a PCN go to sleep, waking it up, messing Mr Mustard about at the representations stage by saying what he wrote wasn't a representation when it patently was and then throwing in the towel as soon as the going got tough i.e. once a tribunal appeal was started. They have to learn that incompetence and ill-judged actions don't pay.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet Council traffic wardens give no quarter

This event happened in the Broadway, Mill Hill.

The reason that traffic wardens need body worn video to record 'code red' situations, i.e. when they are about to be thumped, is because they have been ridiculously unreasonable in the past, pouncing with indecent haste on motorists who are in the act of paying. Mr Mustard would hazard that the main reason the council did not produce the video recording is that it showed 100% that what the motorist was saying was true.

A clever motorist who screenshot his phone screen (on an Android phone hold power and volume down for a couple of seconds simultaneously or on an iPhone press the side button and volume up at the same time) and thus he had evidence of what he was doing. The council could also have obtained from PayByPhone evidence of what button presses were made using the App at the relevant time but mysteriously didn't produce that evidence either.

A smart motorist who saw the flaw in the council's argument that you can't leave your car; if the sign is 25m away and a box luton van is parked in front of you then there is zero choice, Adjudicators are sharp as tacks and apply common sense, a commodity which is severely lacking in many traffic wardens and in the council back office.

As well as not producing evidence which was in favour of the motorist the council also appear to have misrepresented his position in the case summary for the tribunal (or in the Notice of Rejection, Mr Mustard has not seen the case papers). The council often appears to be desperate when you look at the way in which they deal with tribunal cases. If they continue to be partial, adjudicators will notice and motorists will get the benefit of the doubt due to the poor reputation of Barnet Council for knowingly not being even-handed.

This action will not have endeared Barnet Council to the motorist in question. Councils have been given too much power which they use in an unfair fashion in order to raise funds to help plug the budget gap.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet Council Parking play ping pong and lose

Set out above are the legal requirements that must be adhered to before a council accepts a transfer of liability for a PCN for a vehicle on hire up to 6 months. For leases greater than 6 months the liability can be transferred to the effective keeper if there is a sufficient degree of permanence to the arrangement. Mr Mustard lost when he tried to get a lease of one year's duration accepted as valid for liability transfer. He has seen a transfer accepted for a 2 year agreement but not for anything in between. In leasing circles, a 3 year lease is common. The question though is a fact dependent one.

Whatever the claim, short term hire or long term lease, Barnet Council must be sent the paperwork to support the keeper's representations against the Notice to Owner. Studying that paperwork is a part of the process that Barnet Council decided not to bother with. The independent adjudicator did not like that. Will it change?

Before Mr Mustard shows you the chronology of documents and the adjudicator's decision he would just mention that this all came about because the resident's usual car needed some bodywork and so he had a courtesy car. The resident is Mr PP, for ping pong. A request to have a dispensation or temporary permit changeover, after all the car with a residents permit was in the garage, was refused, although it used to be normal 5 years ago. More work that the council cannot be bothered with. 'Putting the community first' is an empty worded mantra which still leaks onto council paperwork sometimes.

In the middle of all this Mr Mustard emailed a parking manager, as that often puts a stop to stupid nonsense, but the manager was happy with what the council was doing. One doubts he will be so happy after reading the tribunal decision which shines a spotlight on the council's way of (not) doing things.

Yes, you have read correctly, there were five, yes five, Notices to Owner.

Without the grit & certainty which Mr Mustard brings to the process most people would have given up way before the end of this saga.

In this case the most unattractive feature was that the council accepted a liability transfer when they shouldn't have and then wanted to ignore their own mistake (parking never ignore yours!) and have a second go at the resident due to their own error. What Mr Mustard didn't know at the time, although he had seen liability transferred without copy documents before, was the council's policy on just accepting the word of a 'reputable' company, ones who are members of the BVLRA (British Vehicle Leasing and Rental Association, a mere trade body) that a rental agreement or lease existed. Barnet Council had better start changing their process.

What happened in this case was that the garage, BHW trading as Veetec supplied a courtesy car to Mr PP.  He signed a hire agreement for it, for a few weeks, but it was a contract with Circle Leasing. Concurrent with that was a one lease agreement between Circle Leasing and BHW. Therefore, there were two lease/rent agreements in place at one and the same time.

Barnet Council should have rejected both of them but for different reasons, the one year one because it didn't have the necessary degree of permanence and the short term rental one because it omitted the driving licence details. They did neither.

When BHW said the car was on rental the council should have noticed that the car was not being rented from them and should have refused the liability transfer.

The other problem was that because Barnet Council sent two Notices to Owner to Circle Leasing they charged two administration fees of £25 each just for saying who was renting the car. These fees, and Mr Mustard has seen them as high as £48, are an absolute rip-off. Time the DVLA was changed to record both the beneficial owner and the day-to-day keeper so the PCNs can be straight to the person who, most likely, was driving.

This was a jolly fun battle which Mr Mustard was 99% sure he would win and so it turned out.

Mr Mustard's advice is to try and avoid any sort of lease arrangement for your own car if you can as that way you get your own PCNs far more quickly and don't have to pay an extra fee for them, even if you get the PCN cancelled.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard