PATAS - w/c 18 May 15 - Gervase Rd again

Gervase Road & one of its notorious pavement parking bays

Here are the statistics for this short week due to the end of May bank holiday.

There were 4 PCN cancelled which are worth a mention.

The pavement parking bays are badly laid out in Gervase Rd. Scooter based traffic wardens know that and often pop there as they are certain to be able to issue to some poor soul who has parked in the "wrong" place. Your defence is to attack lines and signs as being inadequate and then the council have to prove them and the staff who make up the Evidence Packs will struggle to do so.

The loading bay in High Rd N12 (outside HSBC) was not well enough signed as the sign for it was hidden behind a tree whilst the one for the paybyphone bay was much more visible.

It was uncertain that a car was over 50cm from the edge of the carriageway. Make sure that at least one piece of your car is within that reasonable tolerance.

The notes of the traffic warden were unsatisfactory. You don't normally see them until the Evidence Pack stage (i.e. you have made an Appeal to PATAS) but they are worth taking a look at. If you can't make sense of the abbreviations tell the Adjudicator that at the personal hearing (you should always request a personal hearing and treat the day as a day out in London, have your hearing and then lunch or a visit to the Tate Modern or something like that so that win or lose you have a nice day out).

So in this particular week the number of Appeals stayed high (the parking manager must wonder when they are going to settle down and that will be when PCN are no longer used to fill budget shortfalls) and the success rate was higher than the usual 50%. Well done everyone.

Keep those Appeals coming.

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance.

PATAS - week of 14 April 14

It was a slow week at PATAS and I think that has been caused by the changeover of parking enforcement software by NSL on behalf of Barnet Council. So slow that only 28 news cases lodged at PATAS in the week out of 926 related to Barnet. So slow that I am not even going to illustrate the story with a picture this week; please simply imagine "slow" painted on the road in big white capitals.

For a while the number of appeal hearings at PATAS was running at about 100. Last week it was 55 of which 32 led to the PCN being cancelled so that was a 58% success rate.

There were 6 cases which you need to know about.

A gas fitter attending an emergency had his PCN cancelled for obvious reasons. Whilst trying to make a property safe you haven't got time to stop and do anything else.

NSL, on behalf of the council, were unable to produce a copy of the PCN even after an adjournment of 2 weeks. Bye bye PCN.

A person is allowed to alight (get out of) a car that is stopped on double yellow lines. Stopping for up to 2 minutes for the able bodied would be perfectly permissible and longer for your children, the elderly and disabled.

The council produced their evidence at the last minute. it should be with you 4 days (excluding Sundays) before the hearing. If not, your Human Right to a fair trial has been breached as the Evidence pack may contain some evidence that you then don't have the time to investigate. The PCN was duly cancelled.

There were two cases of alleged prevention of service of PCN. Unless you have physically restrained the traffic warden by force there has not been any prevention.

Some kerb flashes (blips or marks, call them what you will) which are painted across the kerb and are about 300cm long were not sufficiently clear so the PCN was cancelled. these flashes mean both no loading / unloading and no parking for blue badge holders. Please take care.

Now the software is up and running again I expect the appeal numbers will rapidly go back up to the usual levels.

Yours appealingly

Miss feezance