Blue badge clock up

It is in the nature of the elderly and/or disabled to forget, sometimes, to put their blue badge clock out when they park on single or double yellow lines (which they are allowed to do for up to 3 hours as long as there aren't any restrictions on loading, which are usually indicated by kerb flashes and a sign).

The mother of a friend put her badge out, but forgot the clock, when she recently parked in High Barnet at 10:38 in the morning. She got a parking ticket.

Mr Mustard appealed on the grounds that although the clock was not on display a contravention could not have taken place as the yellow line is only operative from 08:00 so parking tickets for this offence should not be issued before 11:00

The council didn't accept that argument but did cancel the ticket because of an unspecified "technical error". It would have been nice to know what it was but the main thing is that the parking ticket was cancelled.

Mr Mustard is inclined to think that the argument is a good one. It has been used to good effect in PATAS case 2080110323. Mr Mustard recommends that if you find yourself in similar circumstances that you trot out the same argument.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Incredible (but true - only the fact of writing it)

The City Hall of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

Mr Mustard has read numerous Case Summaries in Evidence Packs sent to PATAS and copied to the people who are appealing their parking tickets. They often contain the phrase "The Civil Enforcement Officer is a credible witness" which usually gets a hollow laugh from Mr Mustard who has found some cheating by CEOs in his time. Everything written in the case summary must be borne out by actual supporting evidence and it would be quite difficult to prove a CEO was credible without him or her turning up at PATAS and proving it, which never happens. It is a waste of ink to write it.

Unfortunately for Barnet Council, NSL, who write these works of fiction Case Summaries went one further recently when they made the unsubstantiated suggestion that the motorist was not to be believed, which is more or less the same as saying he is a liar. Unfortunately, and rather stupidly, they chose to try this new line out on a man of the cloth with disastrous consequences. Here is what the PATAS adjudicator, Mamta Parekh said (Mr Mustard has not had the pleasure of appearing in front of this adjudicator and looks forward to it happening one day):

Rabbi L. attended the personal hearing listed for today. I found him to be a very honest and credible witness.

He said that it was a very dark and rainy night and he and his passengers parked in Brent Street where he was aware that there were no restrictions on a Saturday evening. He stated that he had not noticed any suspension signs but had nevertheless been willing to pay at the discounted rate, but was unable to do so as he had not received the original penalty charge notice. It must have blown / been washed away in the heavy downpour which may not have happened had the CEO placed the same under the windscreen (wiper?)

He was therefore very aggrieved at the manner in which the local authority failed to take into account his representations and the insulting tone of their correspondence, and which I will refer to further below.

I accept the appellant's evidence that he had not received the original penalty charge notice and that it must have somehow become removed from the vehicle. However this would not affect the appellant's liability for the penalty charge if found to be validly issued.

I have considered the evidence carefully. I am not satisfied that the suspension sign was adequate. It would appear that the contents of the suspension sign were written in pen which writing also appears to have washed away in the rain so that the contents are no longer legible. I am therefore not satisfied that the contravention did occur and allow this appeal.

I would add that I am somewhat shocked at the local authority's correspondence where they say that the appellant is not a credible witness without any foundation whatsoever to make such a comment, and which has caused considerable offense (sic) to the appellant who is a Minister of Religion. The Adjudicator has the opportunity to hear live evidence upon which to make judgments as to credibility. It is not for the local authority to make such comments and I do not expect to see such language or conduct from the local authority again.

This is a sign of desperation creeping in. Barnet Council (NSL) are obliged to consider your representations fully & fairly, with an open mind, even handedly and without thinking about the money they won't collect if they cancel. Instead they write letters which are designed to put you off from appealing.

Let's hope that the above Barnet Council / NSL letter was indeed a one-off. If however you, dear reader, have such a letter then Mr Mustard would be pleased to see it and to assist you with your appeal to PATAS and he would suggest that we specifically ask for the case to be listed in front of the same adjudicator. Won't that be fun apart from the fact that you have been called a liar and a cheat. Together, we can make the council eat their words and some humble pie.

That washed away suspension sign argument might be one you could use as well, if it happens to you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Wanted - human beings to respond to PCN appeals

Although Mr Mustard suspects that NSL are 90% to blame for a recently bereaved widow having to spend her time going to PATAS at Angel Islington, Barnet Council cannot escape their share of the blame as they are meant to monitor what NSL get up to, make the decision on any formal appeal and approve the Evidence Pack before it is submitted.

One problem in organisations handling large amounts of data is that they are sometimes organised so that many different people touch a file rather than one person handling the whole thing from start to finish. This is more efficient in that productivity is maximised but less efficacious in that there is no one person with an overview of, and responsibility for, individual PCNs and thus there is no accountability.

Who is responsible for this sad and disgusting state of affairs? Here is a recent PATAS adjudication decision by the excellent adjudicator Mr Anthony Chan:

The Appellant Mrs Q. explained that the registered keeper was her husband who has passed away. She was driving the vehicle and she is now dealing with the matter.

The issue is whether the Appellant has paid for the parking. On the one hand, the Appellant has produced mobile phone records and credit card records showing that not only had she paid, had had extended the parking. On the other hand, the evidence produced by the Authority consisted of the screenshot of the front two pages of the search, which did not give the results of the search. It had not sought to ascertain from its records what the Appellant had paid for.

The Appellant has produced prima facie evidence that she has paid for her parking. The Authority has offered no probative evidence to discount it. I am not satisfied that the contravention occurred. I am allowing the appeal.

Now it would be the case that if the PCN had reached the point of registration as a debt at the Traffic Enforcement centre then it would properly be payable out of the deceased's estate but Mr Mustard hopes that no local authority bothers to follow up such a claim and simply lets the matter die along with the deceased.

If however, the PCN is still progressing, as this one was allowed to, there is no case to answer as the deceased simply cannot give first hand evidence or get a fair trial. Mr Chan could have simply thrown this case out but as he had other simple grounds for allowing the appeal he may have thought that the easiest way to deal with the matter which would cause least distress to the widow. Mr Mustard had a case in front of Mr Chan last Saturday and when next in front of him will, if time permits, ask him if the principle of a PCN being a nullity on death is a correct one.

Mr Mustard notes that this alleged contravention took place in the Lodge Lane Car Park. That is the fourth case of payment not being noted before a PCN is issued that he has seen this year. There is something wrong at location 7521 (the council might like to check its income for that location from PayByPhone to see if it is sufficient).

The alleged contravention was in August. There is usually a 4 week listing period at PATAS so in early November someone at NSL decided that it was OK to contest the appeal of a lady who had been widowed for 3 months.

Here is some advice for any employee at NSL or Barnet Council who has to handle PCN appeals:

1. Think about the way Nelson Mandela behaved.

2. Think about the way that you yourself behave.

3. Think about the widow's feelings.

4. Think about what the customer is going through.

5. Change your behaviour for the better.

Yours in sadness

Mr Mustard  

Barnet Council just take your breath away

Mr Mustard never ceases to be amazed and saddened at the completely heartless people who act as Notice Processing Officers and who evidently treat people who have had a poor deal in life without any human consideration (he doesn't of course see cases where discretion has been sensibly exercised but does see plenty like this one where it hasn't and should have been)

Here are the notes of the independent adjudicator at PATAS on a recent case (they have their faults at PATAS, in Mr Mustard's humble opinion, mostly inconsistency brought about by the very fact of their independence but they are adjudicators who try to do the right thing by people, as human beings, if they can, within the confines of the law):

This PCN was issued for the alleged contravention of being parked in a restricted street during prescribed hours (this means being on a single or double yellow, single in this case).

According to the Council's case summary, Mrs G's car was parked on a single yellow line during restricted hours and a PCN was served by post because the CEO was prevented from handing it to the driver or from affixing it to the vehicle.

Mrs G. says that she is 70 years old and that she suffers from emphysema. She says that she was not aware of the PCN and that no PCN was attached to her car.

I find it highly improbable that the CEO was prevented from giving the CEO to Mrs G. or from attaching it to the car. There were no photographs taken by the CEO and there is therefore no image of the vehicle parked on a single yellow line.

The most likely explanation for the PCN not being served at the time and for the absence of any photographic evidence is that the CEO issued the PCN after the vehicle had been driven away and without the driver's knowledge. I find that the PCN was not correctly issued and I am also not satisfied that the alleged contravention occurred.

Barnet Council / NSL have the discretion to cancel any PCN at any time. Why they don't and instead force 70 year olds who are short of breath to go to Angel, Islington is a question that Mr Mustard would like to know the answer to.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

This blog should not be necessary (see update at end)

http://theonlygreenroom.blogspot.co.uk

This blog post really shouldn't be necessary.

It concerns a businessman in North Finchley who regularly parks in the Lodge Lane Car Park and PaysByPhone. He has the code to use, 7521, imprinted on his brain. You can see it in the above photo (if you find it in google images).

On 11 September 13 he arrived in the car park and PaidByPhone the sum of £3.25 (which for businesspeople includes vat which you might be able to reclaim, you can get receipts online from your PayByPhone account - they arrive as an email from support). The receipt number (Txn ID) is 97099284 and clearly covers from 8:11 until 8am the next day. It is for the correct day and the correct registration.

At 9.20am he got a £60 parking ticket (AG25051099). No worries, thought the businessman, he scrawled the fact of his payment across the PCN and sent it back to the council. He didn't hear anything more and thought that the obvious administrative blunder had been corrected (we don't know if the traffic warden made an error or if the payment wasn't showing on his handheld equipment).

On about 19 November he received a Charge Certificate putting the bill up to £90. His thoughts were probably not printable in a family blog. Anyway, he wrote in to the council to point out the blunder they had made and this PCN is unlawful after all but has, in the council's mind, been made lawful by his failure to respond to a Notice to Owner issued on 14 October 13 which he doesn't seem to have.

Shockingly, despite pointing out that payment has been correctly made the council's response (written by an employee of NSL naturally) is tough luck mate, you are out of time, you only had 28 days from the date of service of the Notice to Owner (approx 13 November 13 - except that it wasn't served because it didn't arrive for some reason). Technically the council are correct, they can disregard any formal representations outside of the 28+2 day period. However some commonsense should be applied. That rule does not exist so that the council can gain an unfair advantage over a motorist to collect payment for a contravention that clearly hasn't occurred.

Luckily this businessman had met Mr Mustard at a dinner party held by a long time friend of his who just happened to be the computer boffin of Mr Mustard since the time of the IBM PC AT (gosh Mr Mustard is getting old - a 10mb Hard Disk Drive remember those?) and so knew of Mr M's expertise in the parking ticket arena. Rather than pay up for a quiet life, he made a phone call and here we are now.

Mr Mustard has the advantage of a direct line to the council client side parking managers and really he only wants to bother them with important matters of state but if NSL can't sort out a simple query, or are deliberately abusing the power invested in them, then he has to spend his time blogging about small matters (this might be symptomatic of a wider problem in Lodge Lane, see this blog as he has seen that time paid for problem occur twice) and bothering a parking manager who should be managing the bigger picture. Mr Mustard would also like to be blogging about some of the other bigger issues that abound in Barnet, as he is letting the blogger side down, and he can't because PCN wait for no man.

Mr Mustard predicts that this PCN will be cancelled by Friday. If it isn't he will have to follow the procedure that allows him to file a form TE9 at the TEC (a blank is being signed and sent to Mr Mustard so that he is ready to act) and then the PCN will go back to the beginning and appeals can be made on the regular timetable. It is all such a waste of time. Businesspeople want to run their businesses, not faff about with correspondence with should not have been necessary.

Anyone would think that the council were desperate for money at any cost, even at the cost of honesty?

One final thought: the council have a duty at law to be fair. Are they being?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

At 9:43 Mr Mustard emailed a parking manager. 
At 10:07 he got this reply. The parking manager knows a PR disaster when he sees one.

Dear Mr Mustard,

Thank you for drawing this to my attention. The Penalty Charge Notice has been cancelled.

I do not know why the CEO issued the PCN, as payment was made, I will be asking the CEO supervisors about this. With regard to the Notice Processing Officer disregarding the late challenge, I will be raising this with the manager of the Notice Processing Team when I next see him, I am not pleased with the response given in this instance.

I apologise to Mr X.

Kind regards

So all ends well for Mr X but what about everyone else in the same boat who have to deal with NSL by post or email, you can't phone them directly. They would have to go through the TE9 procedure if they even know of it andmight pay up rather than be bothered. Outsourcing certainly has its problems.

Is "confirmation" past or future tense?

The above page, on which Mr Mustard has cancelled his £55 payment, confused Mr L., as the following adjudicator's decision shows:

Mr L. attended the hearing. The Enforcement Authority was not represented.

Mr L. accepts that the contravention occurred. He believes he made payment of £55 the following day via the council's website. He produced a confirmation printed on 15 May 2013. The authority's position is that they did not receive any payment. Mr L. accepts his account was not debited.

The Authority is only obliged to accept payment of the discounted penalty if payment is made within 14 days of service of the Penalty Charge Notice. The amount is paid when it is received. The full amount becomes payable thereafter. That is the legal position. The authority does have discretion to extend that period.

In this case, payment was not taken because Mr L. had to press the "confirm" button before the transaction could be authorised. The heading on the form stating "Payment Confirmation" is confusing and does lead users to believe that payment has in fact gone through. The authority would be well advised to change this heading to avoid such situations arising in future. Mr L. was clearly not intending to avoid payment and the wording is not helpful. I would therefore strongly recommend that the authority now accept payment of £55 for this Penalty Charge Notice.

 

What did the council do? they rejected the recommendation within days (don't think too hard about it, will you?)

Should they have? Well, arguing their case as devil's advocate they will say it does say confirm at the bottom but it doesn't exactly leap off the page at you, does it? The largest print is "Payment Confirmation" which could easily lead you to think that payment has been made. On the previous page you had entered your name and address and credit card details including the cvv code so no extra data was required to process the payment, thus Mr L's mistake can be understood.

What should the council do now? Stop being so mean to a person who made an innocent error would be a good start and then change the colour of the confirm box to another colour, perhaps red so that it stands out and change the heading to "Please confirm your payment" as suggested by the adjudicator.

Mr Mustard predicts that these changes will be made before Christmas as they are easy to do and as the council read his blog and his tweets.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

 

 

Now you see it, now you don't

On one previous occasion a traffic warden has been seen removing a PCN from a car in Finchley but whether that was nefarious behaviour or not was not proven as the car owner was unknown to those observing. Given that so many cases end up at PATAS where the motorist complains that the PCN was not on the windscreen Mr Mustard has long held the view that some traffic wardens are probably behaving wrongly. By such behaviour the opportunity to pay at 50% is lost. Any motorist who comes to Mr Mustard in such circumstances always appeals to PATAS as that costs the council £40 in PATAS fees and might eventually teach them to behave. Here is a recent adjudication which proves the point as no naughty schoolboy or other prankster could remove the PCN whilst the traffic warden is still there. The possibility occurs to Mr Mustard that in the below case the traffic warden photographed an empty yellow plastic wallet and then removed it.

The Appellant attended in person. The Authority did not attend and it was not represented.

The Appellant said that he saw the enforcement officer as he was returning to his vehicle. The officer was taking photographs of the vehicle at that time. The Appellant activated his central locking system so that his lights came on, to alert the CEO that he was returning. They walked past each other and the CEO told the Appellant that it was alright.

The Appellant said that he did not see a PCN on the vehicle. He checked the sign and realised that he had made a mistake. When he went home, he announced to his wife that he had been fortunate not to have received a PCN. Mrs M. who attended the hearing confirmed this part of the Appellant's evidence.

The CEO's photographs showed that the PCN had in deed been placed on the vehicle. A PCN is enforceable and the full amount is payable once it is served, even if it is removed by a third party before the driver returns. In this case, the likelihood of third party intervention is remote. The inference is that the CEO had removed it for one reason or another.

This is not something that is likely but having heard from the Appellant and his wife, I have concluded that it was the case. If a CEO removes a ticket after it has been placed on the vehicle, it has not been served. I do not accept that the PCN had been served on this occasion and I am allowing the appeal.

Mr Mustard notes the use of careful language by the adjudicator, a solicitor or barrister, & who is always mindful of an appeal, is speaking volumes with his choices of words, "remote" means about a zero chance and "for one reason or another" is left for the world to interpret as without the traffic warden there to cross-examine, we will never know. Mr Mustard might think this traffic warden is deliberately making life difficult for motorists but he can't prove it (yet, watch this space).

So remember, if you are scammed by the local authority in this way you can put in your representations to Barnet Council (by email to barnet@nslservices.co.uk ) and if they are rejected you will be sent the PATAS form. Fill out a few simple details (consult mrmustard@zoho.com for guidance if you so desire) and if you lose you still pay the full PCN price (£110 or £60 as the case may be, the chance to pay £55 or £30 having been denied to you) and if you win you pay £nil. Either way the council have to pay a £40 fee to PATAS.

Hit the council where it hurts them, in the pocket.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard