Barnet put a PCN camera at a goldmine

Mr Mustard recently read his first tribunal decision at a new location 'Ballards Lane Junction With Nether Street And Chaville' which is the crossroads adjacent to Finchley Central tube station. Whilst there is an exemption for turning right and being prevented by other vehicles waiting to turn right, he can see this is going to be problematic as the road is painted to allow a right turn from the middle lane and it is easy for the car in the right hand lane to block your exit because it is has to swing and is accordingly much wider that when alongside. People are going to get stuck as they can't see what their exit is like and the merciless cctv computer will be churning PCNs out by the thousand.

Mr Mustard will avoid turning right from Nether Street into Regents Park Road (i.e. over the tube bridge). If you look like you might get stuck, just go straight on, turn around in front of the tube station and then come back up to the lights and turn left. You will save yourself £130.

The turn right markings should be changed to remove the right turn advice from the middle lane.

The end.

Hackney Council are hilarious

Whilst looking for something else Mr Mustard fell over this decision (2210093938) and then fell about laughing at the pathetic defence Hackney mounted, which they would have instantly rejected if made against one of their PCNs.

Hackney Council - do they or don't they like PCNs?

Mr Mustard had long harboured the idea to publish an evidence pack in relation to a hearing to take place about a Penalty Charge Notice. This was to help people udnerstand the process.

It is hard to know what Hackney Council really think when they waste time taking themselves to the tribunal? with a win or a loss both being equally futile.

Thus when Mr Mustard saw that the London Borough of Hackney were defending a PCN issued by London Councils (the umbrella body for all councils in London including Hackney) he thought he really ought to see what it was all about.

It was a simple matter to send an information request to the London Borough of Hackney and was done on 18 February, just 2 days after the hearing, when the matter would be fresh in the mind of the relevant council officer.

One expects a request to be answered within 28 days (Hackney only manage that 72% of the time) and they failed in this case, only responding on 26 April (they did apologise). However, the response was unexpected.


Mr Mustard doesn't stand any nonsense. He followed up the following day.

The sample evidence pack Mr Mustard provided was for a case in which Hackney Council were opposing Mr Mustard at the tribunal that very day - they lost, the main part of the decision simply saying 'I am not satisfied that the Enforcement Authority have rebutted the fact that the Appellant was actively unloading for the time in which he was observed.'

Mr Mustard is looking forward to seeing all the internal documents about his information request to see who doesn't know what an evidence pack is when the council produce between 500 & 1000 of them a year.

Mr Mustard doesn't let the grass grow under his feet so decided to request a copy of the evidence pack from the body which produced it, London Councils. They also made a bit of a mess of his request and passed it on to London Tribunals, a body not subject to FOI law. Mr Mustard asked them to withdraw their request and happened to see a member of the administration staff whilst at the tribunal hearing centre and point out that he had not made a request and it should be ignored.

That problem pushed aside London Councils responded well within deadline, although they did carry out some pointless redactions, such as the PCN reference and vehicle registration, both of which are published in the tribunal register.

When Mr Mustard studies an evidence pack he leaves sections E and B to last.

The cover sheet A lets you see what sections you have.

Section C gives you a copy of what the contravention is all about although you have to put it together from the heading 'London Lorry Control scheme', the alleged contravention, 'restricted street during prescribed hours without a permit' and 'exceeding 18 tonnes MGW'.

Section D didn't contain what it should have done, the DVLA record, but ownership was not disputed.

Section E is where we find out what fabulous argument Hackney were deploying in order to try and escape from liability for £550 (ouch). The argument was that the refuse lorry was being used to remove refuse. All well and good but why didn't it have a permit? no mention of that and thus not actually a challenge which fell within any of the categories on which challenge is specified as allowed on the PCN (which follows the stipulations of the law). It was a request for a goodwill cancellation. Do Hackney themselves show much latitude when you the motorist makes a mistake, not in Mr Mustard's experience with them sending PCNs, which they have illegally issued, to bailiffs (a story for another day).

London Councils flatly rejected the challenge on the grounds of a lack of a permit. They offered to accept 50%, being £275.

Hackney decided to chance their arm at the tribunal. Their Grounds of Appeal are set out in the final 3 paragraphs of the case summary at B. They are, in essence, a request for mitigation (mitigation which London Councils should have really granted as this is a highly technical error, a simple permit oversight, but them's the rules). The problem for Hackney is the law which says that adjudicators cannot take mitigating circumstances into account, they have to consider if the contravention occurred and it certainly did (if you accept that there is a control on lorry weight).

As it happens the decision shows us that the adjudicator also thought the PCN shouldn't be pursued as he invited London Councils to walk away.


When they didn't he had no choice but to uphold the PCN. Mr Mustard notices that the relevant Traffic Management Order wasn't in evidence and that is the defence he would have run in a skeleton argument filed with 3 days to go (although London Councils are more nimble than their members and would probably have made good the lacuna in their evidence) as before advancing your defence the enforcement authority have to prove their case.

None of this administrative waste of time made London a better place. All council tax payers have been badly served by this nonsense.

The end (until the further information arrives).

Blue badge misuse - please don't do it

Auditors at Barnet Council looked at PCN cancellation processes last year. Here are some of the points they were concerned about:

Best not to cheat by using a blue badge when you shouldn't or use the same untrue excuse time after time as you'll put yourself under the microscope. In addition, Mr Mustard will not assist you if he thinks that you may well have cheated.

If you are a cheat, take the hint and stop now.

End.

N.B. CAFT = Corporate Anti-Fraud Team.

Bingate

It is alleged that voters aren’t bothered about Partygate but Mr Mustard begs to differ. The Prime Minister of a Country should be of unimpeachable character and the voters who went through so much suffering when losing loved ones to covid are not going to let this go lightly. More lightly, bins themselves are actually a problem in Barnet.

Given that Mr Mustard can fix PCN problems he often gets asked to help in other areas, if he knows anything at all he will signpost the suggested solution. If he doesn’t, and he often gets asked to help with speeding offences, he just says sorry, no can do.

He got asked about a missing bin. Here is the relevant website information:

 

 

Here is the request for help:

I hope this finds you doing well. You have helped me out with PCN notices in the past! Might you perhaps have any ideas about to deal with this? I returned home from being on holiday for two weeks to find that both my black rubbish bins have disappeared-- perhaps someone made off with them. Barnet council tells me (1) they want £58 to provide a replacement bin and (2) they will not collect rubbish from a non-council issued bin (even one of the same design) This strikes me as completely unreasonable and a rip-off!! When I lived in Camden, they just replaced disappeared bins. I would very much appreciate your thoughts on how to deal with this. Thank you very much for your help Be well Donald

Mr Mustard replied quite quickly. 

Dear Donald I think that the council own the wheelie bins, they are not your property so why are you liable if they disappear? You might want to ask a freedom of information question about ownership?* I think the council has a statutory duty to remove your rubbish so I would demand that they do so. You might want to go to your local councillor for help especially as they want your vote at this very moment. 

(*Mr Mustard hadn’t looked at the council website when he wrote.) 

Quick as a flash, Donald contacted Mr Mustard again. 

Three councillors emailed and FoI request sent off. One Councillor already replied! Thank you for your help.

Later the same day, Donald was again in touch (a real page turner this story) 

Even more amazing: Councillor Redacted asked for my number and phoned to say that there is a person around the corner who essentially likes to nick bins. Councillor Redacted (who evidently lives nearby) walked past that person's house this morning and noticed two extra black bins there (which match the description of my missing bins). He said he wanted to explain what was going on. He confirmed that Barnet do own the bins. When pressed to justify the propriety of charging me £58.5 for a new bin, he said they are short of money, that the council want to motivate people to take care of their bins, and that I should think of it as a lease payment! I asked whether I should lock the bins up between collections. He eventually agreed that if the bins were on my property and not on the street, then their disappearance was 'a theft' and that I should not be liable for their loss.

Mr Mustard doesn’t see how the householder can be liable wherever the bins are stolen from, half a metre inside your boundary or five metres outside it having been left that close by the binman, if you are lucky. 

What can you learn from this story?

1 Coming up to an election is a good time to ask your local councillors for help, parties knowing that your vote counts, the only time when it does.

2 You don’t have to pay the council to replace their own property.

3 The council are short of money.

4 You can’t trust the council, they demand you pay to replace a bin which doesn’t belong to you.

End.

Brent Council - continuous ignorance

Back in June 21 Mr Mustard wrote a blog about Brent Council trying to obtain more than one penalty charge when only one was due. They are at it again and trying for the double whammy of penalising a party who was not the vehicle owner at the relevant time. An independent adjudicator stopped their cunning game.

 

One of the 4 listed dates is incorrect, it should be the 7th according to the data above the text but that isn't important. We know there were 4 PCNs.

The adjudicator hasn't bothered to mention it as she found Ms Parkinson wasn't liable, but only one PCN can be given out for parking on a double yellow. Should the car remain there for days it can be taken to the car pound.

It is a mystery as to why DVLA reported a future keeper as the keeper prior to purchase. Not a usual error from DVLA.

The adjudicator has gently rebuked Brent Council for not allowing time to respond and given that in law they are allowed 56 days i.e. 8 weeks, they could afford to allow 6 weeks for the matter to be clarified by the DVLA although in the event they didn't do so.

There was clearly bags of evidence about the purchase which couldn't all have been invented for the purpose of avoiding 4 PCNs.

Brent lost over £100 in tribunal fees and wasted the motorist's time.

The PCNs themselves can still be chased as against the true owner as the adjudicator did not cancel them, only the Notices to Owner. Mr Mustard expects though that Brent will have given up now.

End.

Hillingdon post PCNs to safe drivers

Here is a decision by an independent adjudicator at the tribunal who has used his common sense and applied the law to a common situation, one Mr Mustard has often seen in Barnet. There is often congestion outside schools and unless the cameras are set up to show what is ahead of the driver the council should give the benefit of the doubt to the motorist but by doing that they don't rake in any money.

 

If you are innocent, don't pay at a discount but go to the tribunal. If you are consistent and credible you should win. Even better if you have dashcam footage.

It would be better if your passenger did not alight but that was found not to be the primary reason for stopping in this case, another adjudicator may view things differently.

End.