12 December (Part 1) - Parking fines. Exposing Bexley’s dishonesty. (Episode 10)
Having
established to everyone’s satisfaction that the parking penalty issued to the
retired and disabled ex-policeman should not have been issued
by Civil Enforcement Officer BL286, but he lied on his report, and that Bexley’s appeal
process is unlawful as it automatically rejects representations to save time, the argument
shifted to whether this is deliberate policy or a one off mistake.
The answer was obvious but no one at Bexley council wanted to admit it, not even Mr. Paul
Moore who in other respects had tried to right Bexley council’s wrongs. Unlike
some of his colleagues he was rewarded with only two pages of handwritten A4.
After a polite rejection of the cheque the Director had offered as an olive branch to the
ex-policeman’s favourite charity, it put the argument as follows… (edited extracts)
You appear to misunderstand the word ‘error’. An error is a mistake but both CEO
BL286 and Authorised Officer I.S. are guilty of a deliberate lie on their
statements in an attempt to extort money from me.
You are aware that I have requested the Chief Executive to instigate an
independent review. He has declined and insisted on going to the next stage of
the complaints procedure. This is wrong, the senior officers do not have
training and experience in criminal investigations. Parking Services should not
be investigating themselves.
You and I are never going to agree whether their behaviour is criminal or an
error. Only an independent review can decide.
Clearly
the complainant has no knowledge of Bexley council’s idea if what usually constitutes
an independent review body. i.e. choose the chairman from a known pool of sympathisers and
pay him over £2k. a year for his loyalty, but I digress. What happened next?
Mr. Chris Loynes (still among the most popular of searches leading to this site -
this is today’s list) was appointed to carry out an ‘independent’ investigation
and he set out his understanding of the situation and terms of reference in a
letter dated 30 June 2010.
Mr. Loynes’ take on the matter was rejected five days
later. Another two pages of A4 the detail of which should perhaps wait until next week.
This story is reported in an indeterminate number of episodes.
A cumulative version is provided for convenience.