Council SAR missing documents

MaebyJade

Hi,

In Feb I received a bus lane fine from Stoke-On-Trent City Council, which I appealed (on the day there was an accident and diversion). Anyway, my appeal was rejected via a non-formal letter asking so I decided to wait for a Notice of Rejection before appealing to adjudicator. That never came and I didn't hear anything back for a couple of month so wrongly assumed that was then end of that. Fast forward to the start of June and I received a letter from SOT council telling me I have ignored 'several reminders' and they were going to proceed court action, this was quickly followed by a letter from court. This issue is I hadn't received anything from them other than what I've mentioned above.

With the threat of court hanging over my head, I decided to make a SAR to see what these letters they claimed to have sent me contained. Yesterday, my I got a response to SAR request and the only letter in that it contained were the PCN and informal rejection letter, it was missing the letter threatening court action. I responded with querying why that letter and the 'several reminders' they mentioned in the letter were missing from the SAR request. This is the response I got;

"Thank you for your email. We have discussed your queries with the Parking Services team and they have advised that whilst their system can show an “event trail” such as the one provided to you, it does not hold an actual copy of the letter and they are not able to reproduce it as it is not a statutory document. The Parking Services Team send out the debt reminder letters as an extra in order to give customers a further opportunity to comply/respond, but the Traffic Management Act does not require the local authority to do this."

I don't know if I believe the and was wondering anyone with better knowledge of Traffic Management Act can clarify. I find it a little unfair that they have proceeded with Court action without any notice or opportunity to appeal properly. They claimed they have but even their SAR response is missing the letters they claim they have sent and I don't get why they would delete letters relating to an ongoing fine.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Coupon-mad

Report them to the ICO.

Redx

you may not get very much info on here as this is about the council and not private pcn,s etc

I suggest you try pepipoo fightback forums and use a non-Hotmail address for signing up, then post in their council section

MaebyJade

Thanks both. Will try pepippoo and look into reporting them to the ICO

Coupon-mad

Easy to do online - there is a button to report concerns about how your data was handled/stored/withheld from a SAR by a data controller.

MaebyJade

Well a bit of a twist this morning, got the below letter from SOT Council Parking team;

"I write with in relation to the above Penalty Charge Notice.

I note from my records that you have not received a formal rejection to your representations and therefore as a gesture of goodwill I have cancelled the penalty and no further action is required.

Should you require and further information please do not hesitate to contact a member of the parking team on 01782 237999"

I suspect one of two things could have happened; the explanation they gave about their system not keeping records of letters is true (which I doubt) is actually true and because they can't provide the relevant copies of documents they have given up the chase because they could potentially be in breach of ICO rules. Or they never sent any letters (other than the ones I have) but continued to pursue the penalty notice anyway and now I made SAR, they lied about their system limitations and realised the game is up.

IMO I think the second scenario is more likely, which I find shocking that they took it as far as commencing court proceedings and threatening bailiff action all the while not bother to check they were following the correct procedure of issuing a PCN. I'm glad it's all been resolved but a part of me is curious how many people this has happened to and they've buckled under the threat of court/bailiffs and just paid up.

Umkomaas

I'm glad it's all been resolved but a part of me is curious how many people this has happened to and they've buckled under the threat of court/bailiffs and just paid up.

Get a local newshound involved. Local press like to run such stories of public maladministration, which could unearth a number of cases where people have inadvertently paid under duress.