PATAS - w/c 28 April - A PCN is bad for your health

Last week at PATAS was another quiet affair in so far as Barnet were concerned. There were only 27 new Barnet cases out of 915 for London as a whole because of the parking enforcement software changeover.

The number of Barnet Appeals heard was up from the recent lows with 75 Appeals heard of which 55 (73%) were decided in favour of the motorist. there were also 7 witness statements which merely delayed the inevitable and 1 recommendation to cancel.

The cases were largely routine and four of them suffered from the same fault, Barnet Council, acting by its agent NSL, failed to get the evidence in on time with some of it arriving the day before and in one case on the day. A clearer breach of your human right to a fair trial (flicking through the papers on the tube on the way to an Appeal hearing doesn't enable you to finely study the arguments and evidence) is hard to find and those four PCN were cancelled.

Suspended bay signs are always worth a look to see if you were actually parked in the suspended section of road. Someone parked outside number 10 (no, not Downing St) and the part of the road that was suspended was number 9 so the PCN should never have been issued and is no more.

A lady had her 95 year old mother with her who was suddenly taken ill. She took her to the health centre and left a note in the windscreen. She came back to another sort of notice, a Penalty Charge Notice. It is now cancelled but she had to shell out £15 for a letter from the doctor to evidence her case. It is pretty mean of NSL, who handle challenges, not to have cancelled this PCN at an earlier stage.

A permit which was displayed was not visible to the traffic warden as it was dark. Again, once it is produced the challenge should be allowed rather than making people flog to Angel, Islington to obtain the fair result, a cancellation.

One ticket that was upheld related to passengers being dropped off in a residents bay. It might seem perverse but it is better to drop them off on a single or double yellow (don't leave the car unless you have to escort a pet, an old or disabled person or young children to safety) as that is what the rules say.

I anticipate a surge in appeals quite soon when all of the pent up Notices of Rejection (with PATAS forms) start to land on your doormat. It costs you nothing to Appeal to PATAS and you don't even have to go there if you don't want to.

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance

PATAS - week of 7 April 14 - no free transfer

your bus lane ticket is not transferable

It has been quiet at PATAS with the number of Barnet cases dropping. This is probably because the council has been busy changing its parking ticket processing software and so haven't been sending out any Notices of Rejection which are accompanied by the PATAS appeal form. This hiatus period might mean that the council have taken longer than 56 days to reject your representations (the challenge you made once you had a Notice to Owner) and if that is the case they have no right to reject you, they have accepted the challenge by default. Do make sure you use this as one of your Grounds of Appeal on the PATAS form (the council will have committed a procedural impropriety so you can tick that box) as well as all the other points you have found. When you sit down at PATAS and the Adjudicator has introduced themselves, and told you in brief how your hearing will proceed, you should raise the delay as a preliminary point and you'll probably find yourself having hardly warmed the seat and on your way back out of the Appeal centre with a grin on your face. You could then apply for costs as the council could be considered to have been wholly unreasonable in not following a law that they know very well.

Anyway, there were 33 PCN cancelled and 23 upheld in the week which is 59% of them won by the motorist.

One case that was lost was a bus lane PCN which was given to a car hire company. They tried to have liability transferred to the driver. They cannot do so, it is in the legislation. It seems like an anomaly as parking tickets can be transferred but the law is the law.

Some of the features of winning cases were:

The council denied receiving an informal challenge when they clearly had and the Adjudicator was unimpressed with a failure of a local authority to tell the truth (as they equally are when a member of the public tries to pull the wool over their eyes).

Not seen very often now in the light of the hammering they were taking but an old PCN slipped through the net from 20 July 12 and won't now see its second birthday as it is cancelled.

A sign was facing the wrong way. You have to be able to see CPZ entry signs as you drive along the road and signs next to a parking bay have to face the road.

More woes in the Saracens zone. This time someone trying to get a permit getting the answerphone machine and didn't get called back. Not just the once either. The PCN has been converted into a meaningless piece of paper now.

The photos taken at night time weren't good enough to show the contravention. A traffic warden could make enough notes to otherwise prove such a case, but they didn't.

In Armitage Road a line painted on the road was found not to be substantially compliant. Lines don't have to be perfect but they should be clear as to the restriction they convey.

I know next week isn't much busier at PATAS but expect numbers to keep rising as you all start to get those latent Notices of Rejection. You know what to do, appeal!

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance