Newham Wrongly Accuses Legal Representative!

On December 6th 2022, Tahir Hamid and Nazma Yaqoob were driving in Newham. Between them they were issued with three fines totalling £390.

They decided to contest these fines and engaged legal representative, Ivan Murray-Smith. Mr Murray-Smith happens to be a Tory councillor in Great Yarmouth.

Reading between the lines, it appears that both Hamid and Yaqoob had committed a motoring offence, (probably). Unfortunately for Newham, when they sent out an automated charge notice, they omitted some material that was necessary for the charge notice to be legal.

Mr Murray-Smith, it seems, is something of an expert on the minutiae of the regulations surrounding fines and charges. Indeed, he has made a career out of catching out councils who get their procedures wrong. He noticed that the council’s notice was blank on one side, making it, just another piece of paper.

On behalf of his clients, he put in a defence stating that the notice was not lawful because it failed to meet the statutory requirements.

Here is where it gets interesting.

Rather than checking, Newham’s response was to accuse Murray-Smith of lying and fraud. This is a fairly big deal, accusing a legal representative of lying to a tribunal and committing fraud. The council alleged that he had deliberately made inaccurate, “bogus”, photocopies as part of an “orchestrated fraud”.

Unsurprisingly, Murray-Smith was somewhat put out.

He submitted the matter to London Tribunals where the adjudicator found that Newham had behaved in a manner that was “wholly unreasonable”. He noted that a finding of fraud would “have extremely serious consequences for Mr Murray-Smith’s professional and political life and put an end to his credibility as a representative before this council”.

The adjudicator quashed the fine (£390) and slapped Newham with costs of £455. Newham has now apologised to Mr Murray-Smith.

This begins to suggest a pattern of behaviour when it comes to issues with the courts that is not entirely welcome. We recall the judge’s scathing comments when Newham launched criminal proceedings against the staff of the City Farm. There the judge called Newham’s actions an “abuse of process”, he found “evidence of bias” and stated that to continue the prosecution would be an “affront to justice”.