"independent" appeals service, post Oct 2012

Rover_Driver

Begs the question - how will the appeals service find the tickets 'valid', once they discover the legal position of PPCs and their unenforceable invoices.
And if they do throw it out, is that the end of the claim as far as the PPC is concerned?

HO87

Rover_Driver wrote: »

Begs the question - how will the appeals service find the tickets 'valid', once they discover the legal position of PPCs and their unenforceable invoices.

Agreed. This has always been the elephant in the room - even before the VCS judgment. At best, all a PPC can do is to seek to recover its losses. If this is the case how is it that so many of them make a profit given that the collection of parking invoices is often their only or only substantial source of income? Is this the losses actually suffered by their client's and pocketed as part of their contracts with them?

trisontana

I did ask Steve Clark ("Head of Approved Operator Scheme" at the BPA) for his comments on Martin Cutt's speach and received this rather curt reply:-

Many thanks for your note
We have written to Mr Cutts regarding this matter.
As far as comment is concerned, I believe that in a democracy, it is right that people with differing views are able to share them.

ripped_off_driver

I read somewhere that London Councils have been confirmed as the provider of the POPLA service. I will try to dig out the reference. It will be extremely interesting to see how this all pans out.

peter_the_piper

Which one will be the first to add £27.00 somewhere to the charges, not the appeal fee of course.

peter_the_piper

BASFORDLAD wrote: »

Dear ******

The sequence of events following receipt of a ticket would be that a person makes representations to the operator of the parking on the private land. If those representations were not accepted, the person would have the opportunity to make an appeal to new Appeal Service. If the Appeals service decided the ticket was valid then the person would have to pay the ticket. If the person failed to pay the ticket, the operator could pursue them for the debt in the usual way. The use of debt collectors at an earlier stage would not be possible.

Stephen Benton | Programme Director, Transport & Mobilit

I understood the decision was only binding on the PPC.

Oldfatgrumpy

As the right to issue penalties is based on the existence or otherwise of proprietary interest, I'm just wondering if the PPCs can obtain such interest by, say, paying a peppercorn rent for each area they hope to control?

trisontana

Except they are not "penalties".

Oldfatgrumpy

trisontana wrote: »

Except they are not "penalties".

Yes sorry I was trying to avoid the word "fines" and forgot I should say "invoices" instead. But other than that, am I right? Would it remove one of their stumbling blocks?

BASFORDLAD

Ive just spoken to this Stephen Benton

He advised he was only an administrator for this service and was not legally trained. He did say that an adjudicator was about to be appointed (he said a lawyer). I asked him would the person doing this know about whether the company owned the car park in question (with regards to appeals) as this went to the heart of the matter. He said they would be looking in to this.
I asked him when this person was likely to be appointed. He said it was imminent.

So obviously its important that we get the facts over to the adjudicator to hopefully put the cat among the pigeons.

I think it will be worth contacting Stephen Benton on a weekly basis to see if the person has been appointed and then get the contact details.