Tribunal Appeals - school report 2016 - Barnet Council

The chart above shows the fluctuations in the number of Appeals being decided each month. Generally the Appeal is heard one month after it is lodged. Looking at the last 4 months alone is interesting. Since moving traffic contraventions started in earnest in the summer the number of Appeals has surged forward (January 17 sees a slight drop but probably as the tribunal was closed for 10 days for Xmas & New Year holidays).

Overall PCN issue figures are in the chart below, with comparatives for 2015.

Type	2015	2016
Bus lane	11,601	6,642
Moving traffic	-	39,150
Parking	141,114	149,168
Totals	154,730	196,976

It is very pleasing to see bus lane figures coming down despite the introduction of automatic cameras which miss almost nothing. Motorists have perhaps finally realised that they will be caught so had best stay out of the bus lane. Some people never enter a bus lane as a matter of policy and that may not be a bad policy. If the bus lane is not in operation there probably won't be a queue in the all traffic lane in any event so there is nothing to gain by using the bus lane.

 

Moving traffic (yellow box junctions, banned turns, school zig-zags etc) are the new real money spinner for Barnet Council. The figures are for less than a full year.

It will take a while for the penny to drop that a banned turn, like at Tilling Rd near Brent Cross, which you have been wrongly doing for 20 years, will now cost you £130 a time. Once people realise the numbers will fall a little. New cameras are springing up at every possible location though, as this cash cow is one to be milked, so the numbers may rise before they fall.

 

The biggest problem (success in the eyes of the council) is with yellow box junctions.

 

There needs to be a wholesale change with the way that people drive, so as to avoid PCN, and it will lead to slower journey times across the borough if everyone takes the cautious and correct approach of waiting until the box is clear before they enter it. How to do it is explained on the TfL page here. Note the sparse London traffic a la 1950.

 

School zig zag PCN's are remarkably low. 

 

 

 

24 locations are monitored, so ignoring August (one unlucky person when the school was closed and so Barnet choose not to enforce as no harm is being done) and April as that was when the scheme was just warming up, we have 7 month's data and this equates to a single contravention every 2 days per school. This is hardly a rate of contravention that calls for a six figure sum to be spent on cameras. Those stories of carmaggedon at school drop off and pick up time look likely to have been false news.

 

Remember that a PCN is not a personal attack on you, it is simply an attempt to open your wallet or purse. Officially these are all issued for traffic management purposes. Poppycock.

Appeal results

I nearly forgot.

Of the 2,202 Appeal heard in the year, the motorist won 1,193 of them which is 54% of them against a norm of 48% across London.

966 went the way of the council and 41 were the subject of a request by the adjudicator to just drop it even though the council was legally correct but there was compelling mitigation which an adjudicator cannot allow an Appeal on the basis of, only the council can.

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance