Parking Ticket Appeals successes and failures

Coupon-mad

Nicely done.

PLAN A strikes again.  ALWAYS complain to retailers.

adriansavy

 A few weeks ago I got a PCA from Parkingeye for parking 10 minutes in a tourist attraction car park (Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo). They wanted 100£! (reduced to 60 if I pay quickly) I appealed to Parkingeye claiming I was not informed at the entrance this will be a coins payment only. Inside there were 2 payment machines, I tried to use both but the card readers were not working. There was the option to pay by phone but there was no phone signal in the area and I just didn't have any coins so I left the carpark when I exhausted all other options to try and pay. Parkingeye declined my appeal as "they offered sufficient methods of payment". I appealed to POPLA on the same grounds as above and on the next working day I heard back from POPLA that Parkingeye withdrew my appeal and cancelled my fine as they probably didn't even want POPLA to investigate this appeal. 

Double_Whammy

Overstayed the 90 minute time limit in an Aldi carpark after a big shop and long queues at the checkout and received a Parking Charge Notice from Parkingeye. A quick call to Aldi Customer Services and the ticket was cancelled.

Mike_in-letcombe

I came back from holiday to Stansted Airport, upon leaving the car park I went over a pothole, which triggered my ‘boot not secure’ warning tone. As we had cases / backpacks / duty free bags in the boot of a SUV, there was a danger the boot could open and luggage fall out. The exit from the car park leads directly onto the ring-road and motorway. So I pulled into a (empty) bus stop, jumped out to check the boot was secure, jumped back in and drove on. Stopped for under 30 seconds. 

Got a £100 fine as I had ‘parked illegally’, signs state “No stopping at any time to drop off / collect” which the video shows I was not doing. Appealed but turned down - apparently, NSL Ltd, who run the parking enforcement at Stansted, decline ALL appeals and use the threat of a larger fine to dissuade any appeal to POPLA. I thought my case was valid, I had not parked, I had not picked up or dropped off any passengers, I had simply reacted to a safety concern that, had I ignored it and driven onto the motorway, would have probably been illegal. So I appealed to POPLA. 

POPLA viewed the evidence (my car pulling over into the bus stop, me jumping out and going to the boot, then me jumping back in and driving away). Interestingly, their ‘video evidence’ jumped away from my car to the pavement, them to a field, then back to my car. Bit strange as the CCTV is fixed. But the ‘insinuated’ I may have been dropping off or collecting someone in the 10 seconds their camera veered away! This is tantamount to fraud in my opinion,they are fiddling with their own videos to bolster their fine. 

POPLA approved my appeal, cancelling the £100 fine. They pointed out that there was a Code of Conduct that is imposed on the BPA and they implied that NSL Ltd were in contravention. They also picked up on the ‘video evidence ‘inexplicably’ jumping to other views’ - I think they also thought this was a deliberate attempt to deceive. They noted the video evidence showed me stopping for less than 30 seconds. 

One thing which may help - I also pointed out that the bus stop was empty, there were no passengers or busses there and that myself pulling over meant there was no danger to pedestrians or other road users. The adjudicator mentioned this and said it showed I made a considered and viable decision to not impact the airport safety in any way. 

Umkomaas

@Mike_in-letcombe, please start a new thread of your own, where you will receive bespoke help for your case. 

Have you viewed the NEWBIES FAQ Announcement, first post, which will give you your first steps to dealing with this?  Also, do some research on the byelaws applying at Stansted Airport, particularly anything about stopping a vehicle because of an emergency. 

Fruitcake

Umkomaas said:

@Mike_in-letcombe, please start a new thread of your own, where you will receive bespoke help for your case. 

Have you viewed the NEWBIES FAQ Announcement, first post, which will give you your first steps to dealing with this?  Also, do some research on the byelaws applying at Stansted Airport, particularly anything about stopping a vehicle because of an emergency. 

The poster won their PoPLA appeal, but it would have been better if they had posted in the PoPLA decisions thread.

Coupon-mad

Mike_in-letcombe said:

I came back from holiday to Stansted Airport, upon leaving the car park I went over a pothole, which triggered my ‘boot not secure’ warning tone. As we had cases / backpacks / duty free bags in the boot of a SUV, there was a danger the boot could open and luggage fall out. The exit from the car park leads directly onto the ring-road and motorway. So I pulled into a (empty) bus stop, jumped out to check the boot was secure, jumped back in and drove on. Stopped for under 30 seconds. 

Got a £100 fine as I had ‘parked illegally’, signs state “No stopping at any time to drop off / collect” which the video shows I was not doing. Appealed but turned down - apparently, NSL Ltd, who run the parking enforcement at Stansted, decline ALL appeals and use the threat of a larger fine to dissuade any appeal to POPLA. I thought my case was valid, I had not parked, I had not picked up or dropped off any passengers, I had simply reacted to a safety concern that, had I ignored it and driven onto the motorway, would have probably been illegal. So I appealed to POPLA. 

POPLA viewed the evidence (my car pulling over into the bus stop, me jumping out and going to the boot, then me jumping back in and driving away). Interestingly, their ‘video evidence’ jumped away from my car to the pavement, them to a field, then back to my car. Bit strange as the CCTV is fixed. But the ‘insinuated’ I may have been dropping off or collecting someone in the 10 seconds their camera veered away! This is tantamount to fraud in my opinion,they are fiddling with their own videos to bolster their fine. 

POPLA approved my appeal, cancelling the £100 fine. They pointed out that there was a Code of Conduct that is imposed on the BPA and they implied that NSL Ltd were in contravention. They also picked up on the ‘video evidence ‘inexplicably’ jumping to other views’ - I think they also thought this was a deliberate attempt to deceive. They noted the video evidence showed me stopping for less than 30 seconds. 

One thing which may help - I also pointed out that the bus stop was empty, there were no passengers or busses there and that myself pulling over meant there was no danger to pedestrians or other road users. The adjudicator mentioned this and said it showed I made a considered and viable decision to not impact the airport safety in any way. 

Please  re-post in POPLA DECISIONS which is s better thread for people to see.

Umkomaas

Fruitcake said:

Umkomaas said:

@Mike_in-letcombe, please start a new thread of your own, where you will receive bespoke help for your case. 

Have you viewed the NEWBIES FAQ Announcement, first post, which will give you your first steps to dealing with this?  Also, do some research on the byelaws applying at Stansted Airport, particularly anything about stopping a vehicle because of an emergency. 

The poster won their PoPLA appeal, but it would have been better if they had posted in the PoPLA decisions thread.

🤦‍♂️ - skim read.  Oops!

jcj1203

Hi all, new to the forum so hope this format is okay.

• Who was your ticket from?

Private Parking Firm (Civil) - UK Car Park Management (UK CPM)

• Which stage did you get to?

Formal - internal company appeal process

• How much did you get back?

Both £100 tickets cancelled

• Which ground did you appeal under?

Company unfairly issued the ticket - claimed there was no permit but there was.

• And then write your brief reclaim tale...

I had a friend come and stay at my flat for a weekend to help me move in. Our development is policed by UK CPM for parking, and has a number of allocated visitor bays for guests staying.

The firm requires guests to acquire and display a visitor permit (either in the form of a scratch card or normal square form permit) in their vehicle at all times and park in the designated bays. 

In our case, we used a scratch card permit which needed to be replaced every 24 hours (which we did so). 

My friend received 2x £100 parking tickets from UK CPM (for the same weekend) claiming that he had no permit displayed in the vehicle when in fact he did (and they were clearly shown in the photographs used in the alleged PCN).

I appealed to UK CPM (on his behalf, with his permission) using the MSE template letters on the grounds that these scratch card permits expressly refer to themselves as permits both on the front and the rear, and that all conditions on the use of the permit (and the conditions displayed on signage around the car park) had been met and followed.

After around 14 days, we received confirmation from UK CPM that both tickets had been cancelled in full with no further action being taken.

A really strange one, and an obvious easy win for us as it seems as though the parking police on duty that day didn't have their glasses on. However a rare win against UK CPM in their own appeals process from the looks of other posters experiences.

Just also want to say thanks to MSE for the templates and for all the posters in this thread for all the advice/help, makes a really good read for anybody facing the daunting appeal process of these cowboy parking firms! 

Peppershrimp

trishab_3 said:

This happened at Gallagher Park, Longwell Green Bristol. I parked slightly over a line as the person to my left was right on the line and the space to my right was empty (and there were plenty of parking spaces elsewhere so I was not preventing someone being able to park). Sensible solution, I thought, to the probability of cars getting dented by opening doors had I parked in the middle of the bay. Refused to pay the "fine", and the company didn't bother to address my points, just sent standard threatening letters. In the end they said they would not accept any further letters from us, so we sent them another one. All this took 3 months, but have heard nothing for over a year now.
I wrote a letter to every shop on the retail park telling them what I thought of the system. Someone else was "had" at the same time as me, which leads me to expect that they must be making a fortune out of shoppers.

this could be word for word what just happened with me. I’m trying to find the landlord of the car park, no luck so far.