All very good points.

Advice wanted on how to respond (if at all).

I received a PCN from NSGL on 8th July at Gloucester South Doc. I was displaying a valid ticket and have witnesses and photos to prove it. I appealed to NSGL. They rejected my appeal having their photos taken from angles/with reflections on a sunny day that don't show the ticket.
I then appealed to POPLA who allowed my appeal, but subsequently "it came to their attention that some evidence was missed" so they had to review the appeal. That review is still ongoing. (see earlier post by Bryen in early October).
Today I received a Notice to Keeper letter from NSGL saying the PCN is overdue and I should pay the £80 or tell them the driver's details with threat to use debt recovery service. How should I respond given the POPLA Appeal is still ongoing?

As far as you are concerned your POPLA appeal was allowed.
Rightfully or wrongfully whatever the assessor decision ... it's final.
Otherwise it makes a mockery of POPLA.

As you will have a letter from POPLA stating your were successful,
copy it to NSGL stating "this is your final correspondence"

Let NSGL fight it out with POPLA and right now you are being
harassed

I would also report them by email to aos@britishparking for breaching the BPA CoP and harassment , including copies of all paperwork

POPLA's Lead Adjudicator is on record as saying that a decision is final and will not be changed. Have you emailed POPLA to check?

Please can you critique my complaint to POPLA. The complaint arises from their handling of the appeal I made relating to a PCN received for failure to display a valid parking ticket. The Operator, NSGL, has photos that purport to show no visible ticket, whilst I have photos from different angles which clearly show a valid ticket.

The initial POPLA judgement issued on 29th September was to allow my appeal. In particular MY stated “The operator has provided a photograph of the appellant’s vehicle with the PCN attached and the photograph (date/time stamped 08/07/16 17:56:58) shows what appears to be the appellant’s parking ticket, visible on the driver side of the dashboard ... accordingly I must allow this appeal”.

Then on 3 October I received an email saying that “it has recently come to our attention that some evidence was missed by the assessor when investigation your appeal. As such, we will have to review the appeal.” Due to problems with the POPLA forum, it was only when I received a Notice to Keeper that I became aware that a revised decision had been made and after a couple of phone calls to POPLA they emailed out the following yesterday.

“The operator's case is that the appellant was not displaying a pay & display ticket in the vehicle. The appellant states that he was displaying a pay & display ticket in his vehicle on this date. He states that he has provided photographic evidence to show that a ticket was displayed in the windscreen and that the ticket was valid.

The operator has provided photographic evidence of the signage at the site. The signage states “Private Property: A parking charge of £80 will be applied to vehicles that do not comply with the following regulations: Failure to display a valid pay and display ticket”.

The operator states that the Parking Charge Notice (PCN) was issued because the appellant failed to display a parking ticket.
The appellant states that a ticket was clearly on display.
The operator has provided me with photographic evidence of the appellant’s vehicle parked at the Gloucester Docks Car Park.
The British Parking Association (BPA) Code of Practice, section 20.5b states that “In deciding whether a payment ticket has been visibly displayed on a vehicle you must do a thorough visual check of the dashboard and windows”.
Having reviewed the evidence provided by both the appellant and the operator, I am not satisfied that there was a parking ticket visible in the vehicle on the date of the contravention.
The photographs provided by the operator have been time and date stamped which confirm that on the date that the appellant had parked, he had failed to display a ticket in the windscreen on the vehicle.
Although the appellant has provided photographs of his vehicle displaying a ticket, I cannot confirm when this photograph was taken as it is not date stamped. As such, I do not consider this to be sufficient evidence to disprove what the operator has said. Therefore, whilst I acknowledge the reasons for the appellant’s appeal, the terms and conditions of the car parking site, were not met. It is the driver’s responsibility to adhere to the terms and conditions and check these before leaving the vehicle unattended.
As such, I can only conclude that the PCN has been issued correctly.
Accordingly, the appeal must be refused.”

My complaint is as follows:

FAO Mr John Gallagher: Complaint to POPLA over their handling of case XXXXX.

The handling of my case raises serious concerns over the impartiality, processes and competence of POPLA and these need to be addressed to maintain its reputation.

Firstly why was the case reviewed? Your web site says “POPLA is a one stage process,... unless it is clear that a procedural error was made.” What procedural error was made as I’m sure that there are a number of Quality Processes in place that MY adhered to in making public his judgement to allow my appeal. Can you confirm the procedural error and also that in the period between the 29th September and the initiation of the review on the 3rd October that no external contact was made by NSGL, BPA or any other body to influence POPLA?

Secondly the review was because “it has come to our attention that some evidence was missed by the assessor”. What was that evidence and have I seen it/had the chance to comment?

It is also clear that AB in making her judgement to disallow my appeal only used the evidence that was available to MY, she just took a different view of that evidence. Hence it appears that the “missing evidence” was a spurious reason to reopen the Appeal.

Thirdly turning to AB’s handling of the evidence; she states that “she cannot confirm when the photographs were taken.” In my appeal submission I included the jpeg files for my photos and stated that “All the jpgs I have attached are unaltered and taken before I opened my car on return to the car park. The times can be obtained by right clicking, noting the two cameras, IMG ref, are on GMT (i.e. 6pm GMT is 7pm BST) whilst the mobile phone, HDR ref was on British Summer time.” The time of my photographs was therefore available to the assessor. Why did AB not right click the files to confirm dates and times? It was also the purpose of including an independent witness statement to confirm the timings and visibility of the valid parking ticket. Why was this ignored?

I also thought it was a principle of our legal system that one was presumed innocent (of not displaying a valid ticket) unless proven guilty. The NSGL photos do not prove guilt.

Fourthly MY in allowing my appeal stated: “The operator has provided a photograph of the appellant’s vehicle with the PCN attached and the photograph (date/time stamped 08/07/16 17:56:58) shows what appears to be the appellant’s parking ticket, visible on the driver side of the dashboard”. Why did AB ignore this clear evidence in my favour in reaching her judgement?

Please respond within 7 days.

no need for a new thread , the original thread is here

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5535294

pm crabman or soolin and ask them to merge the new thread with the old one

one topic , one thread please

So, Popla prefers the word of a PPC to that of a private citizen, no big deal, the IAS do it all the time.

The only thing that matters is what a judge thinks, challenge them to take you to court where, should you prevail, you will take the pants of them.

Surprisingly POPLA do not think there is anything wrong with their revised Judgement to disallow my Appeal.

Their reply is as follows:

"Good afternoon,

Thank you for your recent email.

Our lead adjudicator, John Gallagher, has asked that I respond on his behalf.

From your email, I can see that there are several reasons for why you are unhappy with your POPLA appeal. I hope to address all of the points raised in this email.

The first point you made was that you were unsure why your appeal outcome had changed. We received notification from the operator that a procedural error had occurred. Please be mindful that we will always ensure that the correct decision has been made. Only if a procedural error has occurred would we look to make any changes.

In light of the procedural error, we reviewed the decision made and more importantly, the rationale behind how the decision was made. With this in mind, we realised that the wrong decision had been made and subsequently, we changed the decision.

Your appeal has been refused as there was no ticket displayed at the time that the charge was issued. The operator provided us with time and date stamped photographs of your vehicle, where it is clear that no ticket has been displayed.

I appreciate that you also provided your own photographic evidence of the vehicle, in which a ticket has been displayed, however, these photographs are not time and date stamped.

Furthermore, when we examined this evidence more closely, we can see that one of the photographs was taken at 19:02 on 8 July 2016. Another was taken at 17:57 on 8 July 2016. Another was taken at 18:03 on 9 July 2016.

The operator’s photographs were taken at 17:55 on 8 July 2016, therefore I am satisfied that the operator’s photographs had accurately captured that no ticket was on display at the time the charge was issued.

Based on all the evidence provided by both parties, we are satisfied that the correct decision has now been made.

While I can understand that it is disappointing and even frustrating when an appeal results in an outcome that you were not hoping for, particularly when it was originally allowed, our role as an impartial appeals service means that quite simply, we must base our decisions upon the factual evidence presented to us.

I am satisfied that this has now been done in your appeal and, as such, there will be no change to the outcome of our decision.

Kind regards"

I can see no point progressing further with POPLA, but note they do not address my question about what the procedural point that NSGL raised was. I think it was more likely they complained about the decsion going against them,
Secondly they do not address my independent witness statement. I think it is unlikely that two people of good character would lie for me over a £40 PCN.
Finally the evidence the first assessor saw on the NSGL of a ticket is not mentioned.
When/if it comes to court, the case will hinge on when my photos were taken, am I and two independent people lying to the court, and was I visibly displaying the valid ticket at the location I chose to place it on my Honda's dashboard.
At that point I will be back to this splendid forum for help with my defense.
Seasons Greetings to all.

Merry Christmas Bryen, glad to read you are not paying it just because POPLA caved in. No court cases at all so far for this bunch:

http://www.bmpa.eu/companydata/NSGL.html

So they are unlikely to have much clue. Most likely you will be in 'ignore the debt collector letters' mode through most of 2017...yawn!

Can you post up your photos and the operator photos?

Is it the case that they took misleading photos to hide the fact a ticket was displayed - eg took them at an angle?

Bumping to see if there is any photos?

You can trust hoohoo, photos would be useful.

Coupon Mad/hoohoo

Thanks for support, sorry for the delay in posting pictures. Its not a case of trust, I don't know where best to post the pictures from the operator to link across to a new post. I couldn't find a recommendation in the newbies bit and don't have anything set up to share pictures on line, so am a bit confused by all the choice.

Thanks for advice

To upload a photo/scan link, you first need to host it on a free photo hosting site (Photobucket or Tinypic), copy the URL, paste it here, but change the http to hxxp and we'll do the conversion. Newbies can't directly upload links to photos/scans until they've got a few posts under their belt.

Hi. Thanks for advice, I'll try links to scans of NSGL photos of my car not displaying a valid pay and display parking ticket. The photos are hosted on Dropbox as I had an account with them.

No sign of a ticket on this one due to reflections, angle of the photo and the nature of a Honda Civic dashboard which "flows" round the speedo cluster so hiding the ticket from some viewing angles including those used by the parking officer who took the photos.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69338881/MSE%20Scan%201.jpg

Similar story for scans 2 and 3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69338881/MSE%20Scan%202.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69338881/MSE%20Scan%203.jpg

Scan 4 the 17:56:58 picture shows the pay and display ticket in side view below the reflection of lampost.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69338881/MSE%20Scan%204.jpg
My photos show the ticket clearly but are not date stamped. They do however have a timecode in the jpeg and I have a witness statement from two independent people that the ticket was visible when we returned to the car. The time is around 7pm when the car was returned to.

One example is on this link
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69338881/IMG_8814.JPG

Wow!

Are the scans the same quality as sent to POPLA, or have they lost a bit of quality?

I cannot see how POPLA possibly ruled their photos proved a ticket was not on show and that yours were not valid!

That is awful.

I would be tempted to complain to ISPA about this one even though ISPA hardly exist, it seems. They are still around so complain to them about this travesty. And to the local Trading Standards.

And send the whole lot to your MP and to Marcus Jones of the DCLG to show him an example of what happens when the BPA is allowed to 'pseudo regulate' private parking firms and the low level of POPLA decision-making and the rogue practices of parking firms. Your case has everything.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=71732680#post71732680

Fight back.

"Are the scans the same quality as sent to POPLA, or have they lost a bit of quality?"

hoohoo

The photos were sent to me by NSGL four to a page in a pdf as their evidence pack to POPLA. I needed to print them, take out my number plate and rescan so they lost a bit of quality, but they were nothing like the quality of my jpg photo in the first place. I assume the originals are, and my valid ticket would be even clearer on that one.

On 3 January I received a second Notice to Keeper from NSGL. The first issued on 9 November was put on hold by NSGL on 22 November when I complained about not yet having seen the POPLA revised judgement.

My question is in my particular circumstances, should I reply to the Notice to Keeper to tell NSGL that I deny any breach of the terms that apply at the car park?

In particular I was displaying a valid Pay and Display ticket.
That I have clear photographic evidence and independent witness statements to support my case.
That their photographs do not prove that I wasn't displaying a valid pay and display ticket.
That appointment of debt collectors is a waste of time and a failure on their part to minimise costs as I deny any liability to them.
That I will robustly defend any court claim they bring against me.

Advice much appreciated.