CP PLUS - Charge Notice Watford Gap services

offyman

Hello,
Just had a "charge notice" from cp plus, I was at watford gap services on the 10th October and stopped for a rest for 36 minutes over the time allowed and have kindly been given a discounted £50 fine !!
It is there standard template letter, My concern is the "New Law Effective From 1st October 2012" that they state.

I read on here that the general advice is ignore it, but I'm a law abiding citizen !! and want to know the safe option, and get sound advice. My "discount is "only" valid till the 16th November 2012.

So all help and advice appreciated.

Thanks in advance:money:

Buellguy

Ignore it, put it in the bin (along with any other 'fines' you get from them), sit back, chill

trisontana

It's not a fine, the new law doesn't change anything. You haven't broken any laws and you can just ignore all their silly letters.

RENEGADE_2

You owe nothing.
Firstly the only money that a PPC can seek is landowner losses which in your case would have been the first fee for staying beyond two hours.

However, I am aware of nationwide CP Plus signage. It says 2 hours maximum stay but it fails to specify the period of non-return effectively making it possible to drive off the premise at 1hr 59 and straight back on. If so, there is no real reason to leave either. A car car stay as long as he likes in the absense of the non-return by notification. Losses=zero. Write to them if you wish, they'll reject it and they'll give you a POPLA number. Write to POPLA and take no notice of what they tell you because it is only binding for CP Plus. CP Plus in turn will have to pay over £30 for this fruitless venture.

The_Slithy_Tove

offyman wrote: »

It is there standard template letter, My concern is the "New Law Effective From 1st October 2012" that they state.

What do they say about it? What are they claiming about the Protection of Freedom Act?

There is a lot of misinformation around concerning the Protection of Freedom Act. This is largely pedalled by the private parking companies in an attempt to add some kind of legitimacy to their charges, not helped by sloppy and lazy journalism which regurgitates what the parking companies say without checking if it's true or not.

Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedom Act 2012 introduces the concept of Keeper Liability for private parking charges if the registered keeper fails to divulge who the driver was. That is all.

• It does not make parking charges enforceable (or any more enforceable than they were before, which, on the whole is not enforceable at all)

• It does not require the registered keeper to name the driver on request - there is no obligation. If the keeper fails to name the driver, the "liability" (such as it is) reverts to the keeper (see previous point). If the driver and keeper are the same person, then there is no difference anyway.

• It does not set out any kind of statutory framework for parking charges, they are still based on contract law or trespass, and in that respect nothing has changed

• It does not define the wording that must be used to make parking charge notices "legal" or "enforceable". The Act sets out wording and points that must be included in order for the parking company to be able to apply keeper liability, but using all the correct words does not make the notice any more legally enforceable than it was before (see point 1)

offyman wrote: »

I read on here that the general advice is ignore it, but I'm a law abiding citizen !! and want to know the safe option, and get sound advice. My "discount is "only" valid till the 16th November 2012.

The advice to ignore still stands, since nothing has changed with respect to the (in)validity of the charge you have received. You haven't broken any law, so your bona fides as a law abiding citizen still stands.

ManxRed

Ignoring it IS the safe option.

pogofish

offyman wrote: »

It is there standard template letter, My concern is the "New Law Effective From 1st October 2012" that they state.

[TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM]

Nothing significant has changed - The charges remain just as illegal, so you can ignore now, or do POPLA and ignore that if you want. However, for the easiest route, just ignore them altogether now.

HardWorker2010_2

Offyman,

CP Plus are spineless. Once they realise you are 'in the know' about their scam they will give up and turn their attention to their next intended victim.

Ignore them, I have many times.

surfboy1

You say that you are "a law abiding citizen" so you can relax, safe in the knowledge that you have not broken any laws by ignoring this scam.

Coupon-mad

offyman wrote: »

Just had a "charge notice" from cp plus...

My concern is the "New Law Effective From 1st October 2012" that they state.

I read on here that the general advice is ignore it, but I'm a law abiding citizen !! and want to know the safe option, and get sound advice. My "discount is "only" valid till the 16th November 2012...

We are all law-abiding citizens too! And most such people would not dream of replying to phishing emailers - so why take this similar scam seriously and be thinking you may have to respond just because they have impersonated a parking ticket and quoted a fairly irrelevant new law?

This 'new law' guff has been covered endless times; in just a month we've been constantly asked up to half a dozen times every day about the new law (Protection of Freedoms Act if you want to search for other threads). It has been discussed to death TBH and you could have just searched the forum - but we always reply because it's important that people know that fake PCNs have not suddenly become magically enforceable!

So here's the same old summary again :

The safe option is that registered keeper doesn't 'have to' do anything at all. These fake PCNs are as unenforceable as they ever were! - it's just that these scam firms are now able to aim their threatogams at the registered keeper if they are not informed who the driver was.

Big deal...the keeper can still make paper aeroplanes out of them as we always did, just as shown by Tim Cary, the expert Solicitor in this Watchdog clip!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAIcdi9niHA


A SUMMARY:

As far as private parking ticket scams are concerned, for a vehicle where you or family are the registered keeper*:

Any fake PCN issued for an incident from 1st October 2012 onwards:

- if you were parked in Scotland or NI = IGNORE IT.

- if your 'ticket' is from a firm who are NOT members of the BPA AOS, or are one of five PPC AOS members currently banned from getting data = IGNORE IT.

- if your 'ticket' is from a 'non-banned by the DVLA!!' AOS member in England/Wales, like CP Plus, there are 2 choices:

a) IGNORE IT, as ever, playing snap with the threatograms that match our sticky thread 'PPC letter chains' (near the top of this parking forum),

or

b) Appeal it with help from here in how to word it, and insist on a referral to the POPLA appeals service if it's not cancelled. Costs the PPC £32 plus, costs you nothing, it's not binding on you but it is binding on the PPC. If you do not win your appeal then revert to ignore mode.

This option is for those who want to fight back, cost the PPC money and test the POPLA system whilst also getting their PPC's tactics scrutinised; start by reading threads about POPLA.

Recent posters have had great success where their case is clearly a very unfair ticket (such as disabled overstay or slight overlap of a white line, etc.) by using email and wording it not as an appeal but a complaint, and copying in the retailer/landowner to that complaint.


HTH






* it is different for hire/lease/company cars as you could find the fake PCN paid for you! Here is a thread about what to do.

fil_cad

Ignore everything from them and there inhouse debt collectors DRP after 3 begging letters off each of them the show is over they go away forever and ever ahmen .... unless you manage to get another bogus charge off them then it all starts again :rotfl::rotfl: