PATAS tighten the screw?

PATAS is the acronym of the Parking And Traffic Appeals Service and is the administrative support centre which assists the independent adjudicators to efficiently make their decisions. I noticed that the number of appeals in Barnet was down on the expected number in 2014 and that the success rate of Barnet Council was up and so I wondered if that was a Barnet thing or if it reflected some sort of change in view by the adjudicators at PATAS (although they are of course independent and must decide each case upon its merits the adjudicators will be bound to take account of any advice from the Chief Adjudicator). For convenience I will refer to the body of independent adjudicators as PATAS.

In Barnet's case it may be that the council have decided to accept a greater number of formal representations because the fees they have to pay to PATAS are hurting the budget too much, or that residents are getting better at lodging representations and so are less likely to end up at PATAS, except for those people who don't mount a robust defence and nothing takes the place of effort when it comes to challenging a parking ticket.

Anyway, I decided to look at the outcome of PCN appeals at PATAS from Tuesday and for the same Tuesday last year, for all London authorities for parking, moving traffic and bus lane contraventions and here are the figures:

PATAS	19/02/13	18/02/14
Allowed	74	74
Refused	99	112
Refused with recommendation	4	6
Withdrawn	6	2
Closed (witness statement cases)	27	51

At first blush it looks like PATAS have tightened up as 13 extra cases were refused. The picture, however, isn't that simple as I would have to go individually through all of the closed cases (those in which a witness statement was sent to the Traffic Enforcement Centre) to see if they were allowed or refused in order to get complete allowed or refused figures and I am not sure the light is worth the candle. It is interesting though to see a huge increase in the number of people resorting to the TEC (not always when they have any right to do so which is not an action to be advised).

It is also heartening to see an increased number of cases where the adjudicator has legally to find against the motorist but he recommends to the local authority that they don't collect the PCN. What the authority decided to do is only recorded on one of the four such cases from 2013 (too soon to know for 2014) and they did agree to forego the PCN.

Overall cases were up 15% but nothing much can be read into that. Best to look at annual PATAS figures for overall trends.

I will do this exercise again for another day on another day.

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance