3/5 still OK

Not as good a week as last week but still worth the time and trouble to fill out the simple form for PATAS. There were 47 appeals and 28 parking tickets were cancelled. Notable cases as follows:

 

Car supposedly next dropped kerb. The council evidence was described as "poor and uncertain", it is NSL who produce this evidence under a One Barnet contract. Parking ticket cancelled.

 

An unwell driver was not on the section of yellow line shown in the library photograph. If you are to be pursued for a parking ticket the least you would expect to see is an actual real photograph of where your car was. Ticket cancelled.

 

In a case where there was a single yellow line next to a zigzag the adjudicator suggested the council should put up a sign to make the position clear as the yellow line might operate for different times to the zigzags. Ticket cancelled.

 

Although the appeal was refused the adjudicator suggested to the council that they should cancel a parking ticket in respect of a now redundant dropped kerb in Leeside Crescent and consider removing the lowered kerb itself to prevent furrier confusion.

 

In Ambrose Avenue a CPZ sign was at 90degress to where it should have been and thus not visible when driving so the parking ticket was cancelled.

 

Will traffic wardens say anything to slap a ticket on your car? The traffic warden said the lady motorist returned with shopping and that he handed her the ticket. She said certainly not to both, she was trying to pay when the warden appeared. the lady was believed and her parking ticket was cancelled.

 

It was a wet day and the fuse for the windscreen wipers failed. The motorist went to a shop to buy another one and got a parking ticket. He didn't get a receipt as the item was only £1 and that didn't matter as the adjudicator believed him. If you are claiming breakdown a receipt is handy but the truth is just as good. Parking ticket cancelled.

 

There seems to have been a Data Protection failure as the evidence pack, which goes to PATAS and the motorist, contained evidence about another motorist. That was enough for the PCN to be cancelled.

 

A parking ticket for parking next to a dropped kerb in Oakleigh Road North (quite a long road) was cancelled because the location only said "outside Tesco express" and there were no photos. All too vague.

Keep those appeals going.

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance

All parking tickets are invalid?

A guest blog by my friend Mr Mustard:

Christmas has come early. 

 

Mr Mustard was alerted to a recent case at PATAS in which the independent Adjudicator had no hesitation in declaring the PCN / Penalty Charge Notice / parking ticket non-compliant with the relevant Regulations and thus not enforceable i.e. Barnet Council have to cancel it, they simply have no choice. If the council, acting by themselves or via their agent NSL Ltd, do not concede that the wrongly worded PCNs are indeed not compliant then they run the risk of a large number of appeals to PATAS which cost the motorist nothing save a little time and cost the council £46 each time and many man hours. Recent history is that NSL cannot cope with the need to prepare appeal files for PATAS, that many do not get filed, and that the PCN are then cancelled.

So if you have a parking ticket which, just has below the times during which your vehicle was observed, the words in blue, then you are home and dry for a cancellation.

Pcn Correct and Incorrect Wordings

Now Mr Mustard will save you some time. He has drafted a standard appeal letter which you can download, print out and send off to Worthing. It would be sensible to send this by the "Signed for" service (the former Recorded Delivery) so that no-one can deny that you sent in an appeal (as if a council or its agent would cheat or lie!).

You can use this letter if you have only just received the parking ticket as well as if you have received the Notice to Owner.

Pcn Appeal Letter 1g 1h Wording

Please do let Mr Mustard know if you Appeal is not accepted and he may well step in to assist as he is becoming well known in the thin client parking section and when Mr Mustard writes what the staff know to be the truth they simply cancel the parking ticket.

 

There are two questions which come to mind.

 

1. Having fallen foul of a date error in 2006 which was not in accordance with the then applicable Road Traffic Act 1991, in the infamous Moses case, how have Barnet Council managed to fail to comply with the legislation once again?

 

2. Given that the parking enforcement contract was awarded to NSL Ltd partly because of their supposed expertise in this area, why have they not noticed the incorrect wording and suggested it be corrected?

 

So much for One Barnet outsourcing being the end to Barnet Council's problems.

 

If Mr Mustard has already advised you on an appeal using different grounds, please also send one of these forms in to make sure that your parking ticket does get cancelled.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

If you need his help please email mrmustard@zoho.com

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance

PATAS - 23-28 July - still a car crash

this car was given a ticket!

Barnet Council / NSL are still failing to get the necessary paperwork to PATAS. The motorist gets their ticket cancelled but have had all of the stress.

	Appeal	Appeal
July	Allowed	Refused
23	2	1
24	2	1
25	3	2
26	3	0
27	1	0
28	0	0
Totals	11	4

Some notable cases from the week.

23: A ticket cancelled by order of the Adjudicator. This means no paperwork received and more evidence of contract failure.

23: In this case the motorist claimed the address was too general as only a street name, and a long one at that, was specified. That didn't work. However, although not mandatory there were no photographs which is odd and tipped things the way of the motorist. In addition the warden says he gave the ticket to the motorist and the motorist said he didn't. There was enough doubt for the ticket to be cancelled.

23: A motorist who has a blue badge was helping his elderly mother into a nursing home and forgot to put the badge on display. No mercy for innocent error. He has to pay the parking ticket. Being a good Samaritan is expensive.

24: Another by order ticket cancelled.

24: All meters were covered. The motorist paid by phone but still got a ticket. There were not enough signs about how to pay. The ticket was cancelled.

24: The bay markings on the pathway were not clear enough to prove that there was a pavement parking bay so the ticket has to be paid. The failure of the council to make bays clear has worked in their favour this time; on the road it usually goes against them. Only park on the pavement if you are sure you should.

25: A motorist's daughter needed the toilet. He used the loading bay to park in for a few minutes. The ticket has to be paid.

25: The parking ticket recorded an incorrect tax disc number and the other evidence was poor. The ticket was cancelled.

25: The contravention time was recorded as 20:26 but the zone ended at 17:30 so the ticket was cancelled.

26: Another by order ticket cancelled.

26: A personal appearance by the motorist and no show by Barnet Council / NSL. How rude. The ticket was cancelled.

26: A taxi driver was collecting a disabled passenger in a wheelchair. the traffic warden claimed to have observed for 8 minutes. The motorist is allowed time for passengers to board and for the loading of luggage i.e. the wheelchair. The ticket was cancelled.

27: This one is great. The penalty issued was that the motorist had parked after the expiry of paid for time. The motorist had not paid at all so he was given the wrong category of ticket. The ticket was cancelled. A lucky escape for that motorist.

The contract is still going very badly at the end of the first quarter of the year. How long does it take to get your act together. What does this tell us about what the huge customer services and development and regulatory services handovers will be like, massive disasters for £100m pa.a. of services.

Keep putting those appeals in.

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance

PATAS 9 -14 July

Here are the figures for the next week of final appeals to the Parking & Traffic Appeals Service:

	Appeal	Appeal
July	Allowed	Refused
9	3	0
10	0	0
11	1	0
12	6	0
13	0	0
14	3	1
Totals	13	1

The only case lost was when a motorist who didn't have a bank card on him met with a broken parking meter and his own photograph showed that he should have paid by phone as an alternative. Given that the council might not have served their paperwork if that photo had not been submitted that case also might have been decided in favour of the motorist.

Other cases that were allowed include someone unloading heavy boxes in person. Another case saw the parking ticket not being served properly and the tone, content and consistency of what Barnet Council / NSL had to say being less believed than the motorist.

In one case the Notice to Owner was defective. That is something I will consider in detail soon in a separate post.

Another motorist had paid by SMS but still got a ticket. The traffic warden claimed to have observed from 12:52 to 14:57 which seems unlikely. Documents were not produced by Barnet Council / NSL in this case so the motorist won.

In a case heard on 12 June the parking ticket and the car had different registration numbers so that certainly had to be cancelled.

Also that day an appeal concerned a faded yellow line in Hoop Lane. The ticket was issued in March 2012 and yet Barnet Council / NSL produced photographs from 2009. How do they help clarify anything?

Two tickets were heard at an adjourned appeal to allow time for Barnet Council / NSL to produce evidence of the pay-by-phone requirements. The documents were not produced at the adjournment and so the motorist won.

On 14 July the three allowed appeals were because Barnet Council / NSL did not produce the necessary paperwork.

You do have to ask yourself what sort of contract handover has taken place on this One Barnet outsourcing. It should be the simplest of contracts to hand on to another company and here we are, 10 weeks into the contract, and paperwork is not being produced in anything like a consistent manner for PATAS. This truly is shambolic.

Keep piling the appeals in. Whilst Barnet Council / NSL are in such a mess you stand every chance of winning an appeal.

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance

NSL at PATAS ( NSL = No show likely )

Timberland ladies no show socks

I had been told that NSL were failing at the start of May to submit paperwork to PATAS because of  what seemed like the ridiculous reason given to me that NSL didn't know how to use the Civica system and had put all the back office staff on gardening leave.

Surely the council wouldn't let a contractor start who was not ready to provide the contracted for service (there had already been a postponement of a month in the start date) or that NSL will pass through the supposedly thorough tendering process with this great gap in their knowledge or that NSL wouldn't have got enough staff trained up to process the 3,000 parking tickets that are issued every week?

If this is the quality of service that we get at every One Barnet contract outsourcing we are in for a very bad time.

Well it seems that someone has blundered. Whether it is NSL or Barnet Council, there is sure to be a cover up.

I have recently worked out how to find out what cases have taken place at PATAS ( Parking and Traffic Appeals Service ) in the first two weeks of May. I have ignored the very day of the handover, 1 May, and then looked at the number of cases heard each day and whether the appeal was Allowed i.e. the parking ticket (PCN) was cancelled or if the Appeal was refused in which it should be paid.

Here are the numbers:

Date in	Ticket	Appeal
May	Cancelled	Refused
2	14	1
3	5	1
4	15	1
weekend
7	none	none
8	17	1
9	10	0
10	42	0
11	33	0

That is not very good is it? 136 cases which were found in favour of the motorist, some 97% in favour of the motorist. Nearly every case that i looked at as to why the appeal was allowed was a variation on the words that Barnet Council failed to put in any evidence.

If this doesn't spur you on to appeal to PATAS if Barnet Council reject your appeal then I don't know what would make you.

The lost cases were also interesting.

A builder parked on the pavement in order to unload soil. Next time he won't park on the pavement which is good as vehicles damage the pavement and get in the way of prams.

One person drove 10 feet very slowly and the traffic warden managed to get the ticket onto the car. The driver then got out to remonstrate. He should just have driven off before the ticket hit the windscreen to see if the council (NSL) can manage to serve properly by post as then there would not have been any photographs with a ticket on the screen.

Another case was lost because someone took 6 minutes to pay. Evidently the adjudicator has never tried to regsiter and use the hopeless pay-by-phone system.

The next two had their tickets cancelled because of no-show by Barnet but probably shouldn't have received a ticket in the first place.

A funeral directors got a ticket. What sort of society do we live in?

A 24 hour emergency glazier got a ticket. They doubtless had a smashed door or window to deal with.

If your ticket got cancelled, did you get told in time before the hearing or did you turn up there and find out on the day thus wasting your time and train fare. Did you ask for and receive any compensation?

So you can that at the moment if the council reject your appeals you should go to PATAS. Get some help if you need it. Gary Shaw (grendel@waitrose.com) might help you, especially if you were caught in Hampstead Garden Suburb as he knows the roads well there. Barry Segal is probably the most famous expert in London, you can find him at appealnow. There are references to Barry on the nutsville.com blog.

Whatever you do, don't just pay for an easy life. You are throwing your money away.

Appeal!

Yours appealingly

Miss Feezance