A letter I wrote to Companies House in March 2013

Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2013
To: enquiries@companies-house.gov.uk
Subject: Bureaucracy

Dear Companies House representative(s),

On February 13th, I went to the Companies House contact centre in London in person and requested the relevant forms for submitting the annual returns of ... Ltd. (Company Number: ...), a dormant company.

I was given a form AR01, which I completed and asked the staff at the Companies House office to check for me. I then paid the £40 fee with my debit card and left.  I later received an anonymous letter dated 18 February, informing me that I had not used the correct version of the form AR01 and that I should obtain the correct form, either from your website or from law stationers.

On March 14th, I received another letter, signed by ..., Compliance Case Officer (ref. ...), accompanied by the correct forms, asking me to complete and return them, along with a further fee of £40 and pointing out my legal responsibilities (but making no allowances for or reference to the responsibilities of Companies House staff in providing the correct forms).

I hereby wish to take this opportunity to express my concerns over the way in which this matter is being handled by Companies House:

a)  I went to the Companies House contact centre in London in person to make sure that I was complying with the regulations. You are now telling me that I should not have trusted your own staff and that I should have referred to your website as a more reliable authority. Unfortunately, it is equally possible that I could have downloaded the forms from the website only to have been told that the website was out of date and that I should have asked an authority at Companies House directly.  Should we be penalised in terms of my time, money and resources for going directly to the most legitimate authority, that is your own offices and officers, to obtain the correct forms?

b)  You sent me a letter telling me to obtain the correct form from either law stationers or your website, thus placing the onus on me to delve into all the old and new forms that may be around and asking and checking to make sure that I have the right forms.

c)  Later, you sent me a letter enclosing the correct forms and asked me to send it back to you along with a £40 fee which I had already paid.  If you were able to sent me the correct form in the first place, why did you ask me to go and look for it on the internet or in law stationers?

d)  And why ask me to pay again for something that I have already paid for expecting, in good faith, to have been given the correct forms by the offices at Companies House itself [I know, it is a ‘standard letter’ printed off and sent without any thought as to the extent of its relevance or impact – see paragraph regarding the zombification of society, below].

e)  I compared the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ forms and found that there is no functional difference between the two. In other words, there is no extra value in the information that you would receive on the new form as compared with the old form.  In other words, the whole exercise has been a total waste of time and resources.

f)  To make it clear to you how your approach to this matter has affected me, let me explain:

i)  I am no longer able to trust your staff at the contact centre.  If I am not able to trust someone I meet in person, how can I be expected to trust a website?  This lack of trust makes me more wary and hesitant in my approach to Companies house.

ii)  I have had to carry the burden of incomplete returns, wondering what to do next after your first letter (when to find the time to go back into Central London, or otherwise get some clear guidance).  It may be perfectly clear to you, but this would be the same as me expecting you to know how to apply for a research grant for looking into how to improve children's learning of mathematics (a very straight forward procedure as far as I am concerned).

iii)  I have had to seek advice from accountants and friends and to check on your website, download forms and try to decipher whether, for example the red warning related to ‘PROOF’ on downloadable the AR01 form has any bearing on what I am supposed to do or not (i.e . will be rejected again).

iv)  I spent time comparing the old and new forms looking for what might be that ‘vital’ piece of information that is so important to your system that you go through the process of rejecting and requesting that the form to be filled again. As it transpired; there was none.

g)  Now, let me explain the broader perspective of how your approach to this matter impacts the society we live in.  The time that I, as a citizen, spend on dealing with such petty bureaucracy deprives society of time that I can spend to contribute to society (that is you, me and everyone else), such as:

i)  Improving my business and the benefits that this would bring to society

ii)  Attending to my family’s needs and its positive benefits for our society

iii)  Time I could be spending with my children, helping them to become better citizens

iv)  Time I could be spending supporting friends with their social, psychological and spiritual needs

v)  Etc.

The consequences of these are that our children will end up living in a less enriched society.

Finally, given the above, as an educator, I am very concerned about the way in which our capacity to reason is being eroded as we rely increasingly on rigid rules imposed by mindless machines, putting us at the mercy of software and its developers.  Other examples of such trends within the system include a demand I received by the Inland Revenue for the sum of £0.00 which if not paid immediately would result in legal action being taken against me. I have also received letters from the Inland Revenue telling me that I have overpaid taxes and will be refunded, only to be followed by a demand letter from a debt collection agency for non-payment of the same tax.

Following this zombification of our society to its logical conclusion, what do you think our world will be like in a couple of decades from now? Would you like our children to live in a world like that? If not, please make sure that you play your part in bringing back humanity and reason into the system in ways that I am sure you are still capable of reasoning out for yourselves, but here is an example: Tell your bosses that for every penny spent in recruiting staff to provide a more personal service to companies, many pounds could be raised from increased tax revenues arising from a better-performing economy.

Having said my piece, what do you want me to do? Pay again? Fill in the almost identical new forms and send them back? Or can you just accept that I have provided you will all the information you are looking for plus the payment already and just file it?

In the hope that this letter will be read and treated as a plea of a concerned citizen calling fellow concerned citizens into action for us to treat each other less mechanically and more discerningly and empathetically... Over to you.

With my very best wishes (for all our futures),

Dr. Bijan Riazi-Farzad.

Director

Here is a visual summary of one of the main points of this letter 

I received a very polite and apologetic response which, in summary said that I had to fill in a new, near-identical, form anyway (but I could send it electronically and didn't need to pay again):

Dear Dr. Bijan Riazi-Farzad.

Thank you for your detailed e-mail, I have been asked to reply in my capacity as a Customer Services Officer.

Please accept my apologies for our error in providing you with the incorrect version of the AR01 form. It is disappointing to receive complaints concerning any of our staff or services.  Companies House has high standards that we expect our staff to meet, which helps us to ensure that customers receive the standard of service that they deserve.  Unfortunately however, we cannot remove the risk of the occasional human error.  That seems to be what happened in this instance. Your complaint will be brought to the attention of the staff concerned, who will be reminded of the need to ensure accuracy at all times.

I  am also sorry that the rejection letter was far from helpful due to the use of standard paragraphs and as you say the difference between the 2 AR01 forms are small ( 2007 Standard Industrial Classification code).

If you would like us to check the document before you post it please scan a pdf copy to me and I will have it examined .  This will ensure that it does not get rejected again, alternately, please be kind enough to return the document to:

         ...
         Customer Services
         Companies House
         FREEPOST 4008
         Crown Way
         Cardiff  CF14 1ZZ

We look forward to receiving the form AR01 so that the matter can be resolved as soon as possible.

In the meantime I would like to apologise on behalf of Companies House for the inconvenience and delays you have encountered on this occasion. As a mother of 3 myself I understand you have better things to do.  If you need to contact me direct at any point, my telephone number is ....

Yours sincerely


...
Customer Services 

A letter I sent to a London Council today regarding a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN)

Dear … Council Parking Services team,

Re: Penalty Charge Notice Number …

I hereby challenge the above notice on the grounds that 'there was no contravention' as explained below.

I, Dr. Bijan Riazi-Farzad of …, have been a frequent user of … Road for over ten years. In the last few years, the signage relating to the bus lane restrictions on … Road have been set up in such a way that they vary, indicating, "Use Both Lanes" during times that are outside the restricted period.

Regarding the alleged contravention, even though the times and date indicated on your cameras and videos are on a Monday, and within the normally restricted times, this particular Monday was a Bank Holiday. Given that the signage at the time of the alleged contravention indicated, "Use Both Lanes", it appears that someone had the good sense of deciding that the flow of traffic could be facilitated without significantly affecting bus passengers by changing the restrictions to what it would normally be for a Sunday.

In other words, at the time of the alleged contravention, the signage indicated that the use of the bus lanes was allowed. Since I am not in the habit of collecting evidence as I drive through the streets (such as photographs of the state of variable signs), I am unable to provide direct evidence that I did not contravene the regulations, as required by the PCN letter. Nevertheless, I cite the fact that, on the video footage, it shows three cars using the bus lane within the 24 second period of the video, as corroborative evidence of the truth of my declaration. The other in the long line of cars in the adjacent lane, probably, either wished to continue along that lane or have been conditioned into avoiding bus lanes altogether lest they be falsely accused.

Yours Faithfully,

Dr. Bijan Riazi-Farzad.

Post Script:

Having made my case above, I could have stopped at that point. However, I felt that to do so would be, at worst selfish and, at best, shirking my responsibilities as a citizen. I have, therefore, decided to elaborate on the wider issue in the hope that, rather than providing temporary symptomatic relief for myself, I could, perhaps, initiate a move towards addressing some of the underlying causes of this growing, and potentially catastrophic, societal malaise that I see as “dehumanisation” of citizens by government.

For example, in the current case, the potential positive effects on the community of the rare and intelligent move to facilitate traffic flow on a Bank Holiday through the use of adaptive signage, has probably been completely undermined, and more than compensated for, by the negative effects of the robotic system that has probably mindlessly sent out many PCNs, such as this one.  This means that, sadly, I and many other law-abiding citizens, are now faced with torrents of false allegations so that the council can delude itself into thinking that it is making savings in manpower through automation. I wonder if anyone realises that this erodes (eats into) the contributions that we citizens can make towards our community, both due to the  loss of time and the loss productivity that arises from the ensuing lack of trust in our supposed guardians and the consequent feeling of frustration.

Of course, this is a generous interpretation of what is happening, although there is an increased sense amongst the public that more sinister forces are at play, where fundraising is maximised (“to hell with the human cost”) by creating situations that pray on human vulnerabilities and ultimately lead to the creation of zombie-like conformity in its own image.

I have had to spend my precious time defending such erroneous notices on numerous occasions and, of course, whilst councils are quick to penalise citizens when they make a mistake, they do not compensate citizens when they make mistakes.  When law enforcement becomes a fundraising exercise, it creates an inherent conflict of interest. It could be argued that the more dissatisfied people are, the more likely they are to contravene regulations and, therefore, the more the government is at fault for not providing satisfactory alternatives. As such, if councils were required to give proceeds of fines to charities and were also penalised for the number of fines that they issue, then the focus would move from, “What can we do to increase revenues from fines?” (i.e. encourage people to break the law – or allege that they have, and in the process raise funds from passive people who just pay without challenging) to, “What are the alternative ways in which I can create a harmonious community in which there is mutual respect for each other’s rights to communal facilities so as to eliminate the need for penalising?”

We are all in the same boat and the vast majority of us are paddling hard to move humanity to a more ‘humane’ place for all our children’s futures. If, through the mediation of mindless computers, we begin to needlessly interrupt the rowing actions, we, not only slow down the progress of humanity, but I fear that we will derail humanity onto a path of progressive zombification.  There is increasing evidence that this has already started, fuelled by an obsession with ‘automation’. Computers compute. They have no sense of perspective. With increasing reliance on computers, I fear that we are also losing our sense of perspective. In a court of law, where real people judge real people, the most important factor in making decisions about the guilt of a person is the accused’s ‘intentions’. Computers and the zombies that they effectuate cannot compute ‘intentions’ and, therefore, have the potential to erode the spirit of humanity.

For example, I remember a time when my wife parked in a sparsely populated street and paid for parking and collected her ticket with a view to putting it behind the windscreen when, just at that moment, our two-year old son told her that he needed the toilet there and then. She rushed into a friendly shop opposite and returned two or three minutes later to find a parking attendant writing out a ticket. She showed him her ticket and tried to explain that she had been distracted from putting the parking ticket behind the window by an emergency involving a two-year old and the parking attendant, aloof to the erosive effect of his action on community time and cohesion and unaware of our mutual interconnectedness, simply quoted that she could write to the council to appeal. I did indeed write to the council and explained the situation. I received a response from another automaton stating that the regulations state that tickets must be clearly visible and since this was not the case, the appeal was invalid. In other words, don’t ask councils to think about the real people living in the real world, because in the age of automation, people are not to question the validity of the system leading to the formerly young, enthusiastic, curious and playful children becoming adults for whom “being human does not compute”.

In the past, citizens were only penalised for actions if those actions harmed the community in some way. However, there is now an increasing trend to penalise citizens for using their initiative, in spite of the fact that fixed laws cannot adapt to contingency situations.

By themselves, each of these acts of dehumanisation appear to be too petty to raise, when in fact, the sheer volume of them makes them a major cause for concern and ,therefore, it would be facile to see these Penalty Charge Notices, for example, as mere inconveniences, because if we do not see the signs of the erosion of the spirit of humanity (and I have numerous other personal examples within our society, including in banking, telecoms, insurance, other government organisations, etc.), then no one will put their “finger in the dyke”.

Finally, those of us who were born before the information age lament a time when one’s word was all that was needed for individuals and organisations to establish empowering working relationships. It brings tears to my eyes to think that, in the lauded information age, words on a piece of paper (or on screen) and the data that is collected about you is more important than looking at who you are and what you stand for. In this instance, I am comforted by the adage, “history repeats itself”.

End of Post Script