6 November (Part 2) - Parking fines. Exposing Bexley’s dishonesty. (Episode 8)
On
29th March the disabled ex-policeman wrote again to Bexley Council’s Director of
Customer and Corporate Services, Paul Moore. Another four pages of hand written A4
complaining that his previous letter had been “delegated to a minion who
proceeds to send two sheets of waffle”. Here is a flavour of it…
He states that the CEO made a misjudgment, if that is so I pointed out his misjudgment
at the time so he should have cancelled the PCN then and there. If he did not have the
discretion to cancel and this misjudgment was genuine he should have admitted his mistake
and rectified it in his report. He did not, In fact he chooses to tell an absolute lie,
thereby abusing his powers.
I have a signed admission from [Mr. Greg] Tippett and [Mr. Graham] Ward that you operate
a policy of discounting the first appeal of a PCN and reject it out of hand with
no investigation. The excuse given is that the Traffic Management Act 2004
allows [only] 14 days for a response, which is insufficient for an Authorised
Officer to leave his desk. Unbelievable.
This proves that Authorised Officer I.S. lied in his statement when he says “I
have considered all evidence from both parties” when he rejects my challenge.
This shows a lack of integrity within Bexley Parking Services.
The letter goes on to piece together various dishonest statements
concocted at ranks between Civil Enforcement Officer and Deputy Director and
says that is all the proof necessary for a conspiracy charge. It also asks for
an explanation of some of the terms to be found in Mr. Ward’s letter.
Could you please explain what were “the contractual penalties imposed upon Vinci
Park” and “the error was dealt with through the council’s contract and
liquidated damages were levied against the contractor for their error”.
Mr. Moore took just over a month to reply. He repeats the misjudgment word when
referring to the Enforcement Officer’s false statement on his report, that is
not going to go down well. He explains that the liquidated damages means that
the parking contractor was made to pay the full cost of the PCN (£120) to the
council and repeats the offer of a meeting but rejects the suggestion it might
be recorded. Would anyone expect anything else of Bexley council? Mr. Moore
would have done better if he had simply accepted that the Enforcement Officer
had fibbed. By then the parking contract had gone to NSL. What harm would it
have done?
This story is reported in an indeterminate number of episodes.
A cumulative version is provided for convenience.