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« Last post by tincombe on Yesterday at 03:22:59 pm »
Is this any better?
IMO, no.
Make the adjudicator's job as easy as possible.
Procedural Impropriety
S6(6)(a)(iii) of the Appeals regulations states “If the enforcement authority does not accept the representations, its decision notice must describe the form and manner in which an appeal to an adjudicator must be made."
In their NOR, the only information regarding appealing is contained Section 4 'How to Appeal Your decision' and the adjudicator will see that this comprises only a form issued by the Tribunal. This form has been devised to act as a guide to appellants and is useful in this regard because it includes aspects of the Tribunal's practice as well as legal matters, but does not differentiate. It is not intended to stand on its own, but to be read in conjunction with the mandatory information to be included under s6(6)(a)(iii).
But this essential information is not included in the NOR. Therefore, the recipient is not made aware of:
1. The adjudicator's power to accept appeals submitted outside the 28-day period;
2 The conditions under which a recipient may claim costs or have these awarded against them;
Further procedural improprieties arise in Sections 3 and 5 of the NOR.
Both of these sections repeat the misstatement of the council's power to increase the penalty, namely '*** 28 days we may issue/send you a charge certificate''. This is manifestly incorrect because, as the NOR makes clear, events are triggered ' normally 2 working days after posting' which in either case, whether a certificate is 'issued' or 'sent' means that the increased charge does not apply until this point, which is incorrect in law: my increased liability, if any, arises after the 'payment period' has expired: service of a CC could be anything up to 5 days later depending on the time of year.
And to illustrate further the council's inability to express clearly and succinctly the regulations' requirements, I refer the adjudicator to this passage in S 3, How to Pay:
3 How to Pay
[Reference to discount]...Failure to pay the penalty charge at the full rate may result in the issue of a charge certificate which increases the amount by a further 50%. If the penalty charge is not the paid within a further 21 days, Medway council may apply to the county court to recover the charge as if it were a debt payable under a County Court order.
This must be paid before the end of 28 days beginning on the date of service of this notice.
Setting aside for one moment that a recipient has only 14 days in which to pay a charge certificate, I am confused by their last reference to 'This must be paid before the end of the period of 28 days etc..'.
'This' means what? The county court order, the charge certificate or what? It is ambiguous to the point of being incapable of singular definition and therefore is misleading.
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