Pointless Bureaucracy and Red Tape

How to mitigate the adverse effects of intrusive and unwarranted parking and moving traffic enforcement imposed by Central and Local Government on your company.

Introduction

Any company that owns and operates a fleet of vehicles will at some point fall foul Local Authority parking and moving traffic enforcement. This takes the form of their issuing Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) for alleged parking, bus lane and moving traffic contraventions.

The legislation is such that these PCNs cannot be ignored. The consequences of doing nothing are severe. The legislation throws all established legal principles out of the window. You are assumed guilty unless you can prove otherwise and Local Authorities are granted draconian powers for the recovery of debts.

This might be acceptable if the implementation of the legislation was fair and lawful, and it could be shown that enforcement leads to improved traffic flow. In practise the opposite is most definitely the case. It does not matter how conscientious your drivers are, Local Authorities issue tickets indiscriminately.

The Impact

As more and more Authorities have exploited the revenue raising potential of traffic enforcement so the number of PCNs issued has increased. This has resulted in an unavoidable increase in administrative overhead for companies involved in the transport business. Most firms now have staff dedicated to the processing of PCNs.

There is no escaping the fact that parking and moving traffic enforcement has a detrimental effect on your business. How you minimise that impact depends on the profile of your business. However, the damage may not be just to your profits; there can be a human cost. Enforcement may also have a demoralising effect on your drivers.

Softening the Blow

Be Organised – Knowledge is Power

Every single communication from a Local Authority must initially pass through a central point to be logged and filed. The traffic enforcement system is fairly simple when it works smoothly, but things often go wrong thanks to Local Authority incompetence and a less than reliable postal service. In these, not so rare cases, the consequences can be dystopian for the unprepared.

Many Local Authorities are disorganised, and in addition they flout the law by sending out incorrect documents or disregarding prescribed time periods. Verifiable documentary evidence of wrongdoing is often all it takes to get a PCN cancelled.

Obey and Pay?

One option is to simply pay every PCN at the “discounted” rate without question. This should minimise administration costs unless you encounter a case that goes wrong due to no fault of your own. Therein lies a degree of unpredictability.

If you adopt a policy of payment then who pays; is it the company or the driver?

Forcing the driver to pay leads to a loss of earnings and it may also engender feelings of resentment at being denied the right to challenge the implicit assumption of bad driving. The adoption of this policy may ultimately lead to a high turnover of personnel.

If the company pays, then the drivers will be happier. However, they need to take some ownership of the PCN otherwise the lack of awareness may lead to lax standards of driving and an increase in the number of PCNs received.

Get Your Hands off My Money!

Experience shows that if you challenge a PCN the odds are in favour of it being cancelled. The majority of PCNs are incorrectly issued, but Local Authorities take advantage of the recipient’s ignorance and fear of authority to extort the payment.

There is also the question of probabilities. If you pay each £120 PCN then you lose £60 with 100% probability each time. Experience shows that with a little bit of effort and patience it is realistically possible to get 80-90% of all PCNs cancelled. On that basis you lose £120 with a 10-20% probability each time. The individual “hit” is greater when you lose, but overall you don’t pay out so much money.

Who Goes into Battle?

So who should be allowed to challenge the PCN? The ultimate responsibility for dealing with the PCN legally lies with the Company Secretary but drivers are usually permitted to make individual representations against the PCN.

In broad terms the alternative strategies are:

• Hand the PCN to the driver and let him/her deal with it.
• Employ staff to challenge all PCNs.
• Contract out all PCN processing.

In practice some combination of the above may prove appropriate.

Conclusion

Doing nothing is not an option. Parking and moving traffic enforcement is a stealth tax on your business. The question is, as always, how to minimise the amount of tax you pay.