Important snippet of information regarding Councils Bailiff companies and Data Protection 15) The law is quite clear on this and it is outlined in HM Courts’ Civil Procedure Rules. Only the local authority and not its ‘back office’ company nor its bailiff company is allowed to prepare a warrant of control (execution). It is at this point that the whole enforcement procedure collapses because no local authority ever prepares a warrant, for it incredibly, inexplicably and blindly leaves that to its ‘back office’ company and its appointed bailiff company without realising that this is an unlawful abandonment of it statutory responsibilities. Nothing could be plainer, so whatever bailiffs then do in an already legally flawed procedure. No matter how badly they behave, the responsibility for this irresponsible methodology lies firmly back with the local authority. The Definitive Guide provides much more detail. 16) It would appear that the local authorities and their ‘back office’ take their lead from the flawed and dangerous misassumption that as The Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 allows ‘back office’ companies to take charge of collections for council tax, the same automatically applies to parking and other minor traffic contraventions. It doesn’t. 17) There is no equivalent in parking and nor can there be as Penalty Charge Notices avoid all judicial and magistrates’ courts and are based on a ‘presumption of guilt’ – a worrying term confirmed by a senior official from the Ministry of Justice in a face to face meeting. Therefore passing on details of alleged contraventions to bailiff companies is strictly forbidden by law. The local authority cannot avoid responsibility for this serious error which causes suffering to members of the public. Data Protection and Traffic Management Regulations 18) Whereas parking and minor traffic infringements are determined by the Traffic. Management Act 2004, ‘back office’ companies do not sell their services to local authorities on providing quality traffic management; instead they chose to concentrate on ‘maximising revenue’. This comes at the cost of both traffic management and data protection regulations where ‘back office’ company knowledge on both is sparse at best as their employees have no training in traffic management regulations as this isn’t their priority. This one dimensional approach is too often ignorant of the statutes, official guides, civil procedure rules and other legal obligations. Collecting revenue is king and local authorities turn blind eyes as to how this achieved and consequently also act unlawfully. 19) The worst aspect of this arrangement is that when motorists initially appeal their tickets, they quite rightly assume that they are appealing to the local authority as Paragraph 80 (1) of the Traffic Management Act 2004 allows them to. Unfortunately without any admittance of the existence of a back office company the appeal is dealt directly by the ‘back office’ company - the very people who issued the ticket - to determine whether it is valid or not. One can be forgiven for having serious doubts that the company which issued the ticket under the contractual obligation to ‘maximise’ the local authority’s revenue and whose staff have no training in traffic management contrary to Sections 11.20 and 11.21 of the Department of Transport’s statutory guide, are in any way qualified to deal objectively with appeals. Some may also consider the failure to reveal just who is determining the appeal is deceitful. 20) This unfair ‘appeals’ procedure and council laxity was exposed by a recent Traffic Penalty Tribunal decision whereby adjudicator Christopher Nicholls ruled against councils allowing their contractors to process PCN appeals stating that “I find that no reasonable local authority could have concluded this contract met the terms of its regulatory and public law duties.” 21) Whilst the Data Protection Act 1998 permits the processing of personal data by ‘back office’ companies on behalf of local authorities, the Act strictly forbids the sharing of it with any third party. That includes bailiff companies. Indeed the Act and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) prevent the sharing of personal data by anybody for the reason of collecting alleged civil debts. 22) This violation of the Data Protection Act 1998 worsens when the bailiff companies then further share this personal data with its self employed contractors – who become fourth parties in this unlawful but happy ‘ring of roses’. These unknown and unregulated (that is unregulated by the local authorities which effectively employ them without knowledge as to their identity) agents are data controllers as described by the Data Protection Act 1998 and as such they should themselves be registered with the ICO by virtue of Section 17 of the Act. That never happens. So before bailiffs contact their ‘targets’ – their derogatory description for real people - the local authority and its appointed agents have already committed a multitude of offences in the pursuit of alleged outstanding parking tickets. 23) Local authority habits of passing on personal details to third party bailiffs can be seen to fall well short of legal requirements. One also needs to question how anybody could imagine that a human rights Act preventing the passing on of personal data to third parties without either the knowledge or consent of the person concerned and with a view to doing that person some harm in order to recover unproven civil debts connected with nothing more than a parking allegation, has become so corrupted as to produce the opposite result. The resulting bullying and abuse caused through the absurdity of imagining the Data Protection Act 1998 allows the persecution of ordinary people who have broken no laws is the appalling consequence. 24) As creatures of statute and regulation, local authorities and their outsourced companies are obliged to follow the Traffic Enforcement Centre Applicant User Guide, the Department of Transport Operational Guide to Local Authorities (Parking Policy), the Enforcement of Road Traffic Debts Order 1993 and County Court Civil Procedure Rule 75 which acts as an umbrella for all the above. 25) The Guides do not offer optional ways of interpretation; they are there to direct local authorities - the only authorised users – on what needs to be done in order to achieve the goal of lawful PCN enforcement. The TEC Applicant User Guide is the rule of the TEC court and like the DoT Guide it lists warnings that if the contents are not obeyed, then PCNs become unenforceable.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 17:05:16 +0000
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