PCN for Parking In My Own Residents Bay

SatyaT

Hi Everyone,

Sorry if I do anything wrong whilst posting this....this is my first post!!

I received a PCN (on 28/11/2012) for parking in my own parking bay without displaying a permit, after reading though a few websites and some of the topics in these forums (a belated thank you!!) i felt relatively confident that i wouldn't have to pay the fine. With all the information at my fingertips, I sent the following letter (on 04/12/2012) in the appeals section on the PCM (uk) website thinking that it would be end of the matter.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Speculative Parking Charge Notice Number:
Vehicle Registration Number:

You issued me with a parking ticket on 28th November 2012 and I decline herewith your invitation to pay for the following reasons:


1) The car was parked in an allotted bay appertaining to the flat of the registered keeper. I am the current registered tenant of Flat , and as such am in possession residents parking permit of bay and have legal right to exclusive use the space. No trespass took place and there has been no loss to the landowner or other residents. Thus presenting me with a Parking Charge Notice is at odds with your contracted purpose of ensuring that there is no misuse of parking spaces by unauthorised individuals. Please see the attached evidence:

a. Picture :
Evidence that I have the appropriate Parking permit for Bay

b. Picture :
Evidence that I am the current registered tenant of Flat

2) On 28th November I cleaned the inside of my windscreen; whilst cleaning, the tax disc came away from the window and fell. As I was present at the time this happened, I was able to pick up the tax disc and place it on the dashboard. Upon exiting the car the parking permit was still adhered to the windscreen. I can only surmise that the drop in temperature as the day went on coupled with the remaining cleaning solution caused the adhesive on the permit to give way, thus the permit fell and so could not be seen by the Parking Attendant. It was a circumstance beyond my control that the adhesive had fallen off while I was away from the vehicle. Please see the attached evidence:

a. Picture :
Evidence that my tax disc is not adhered to the windscreen and is resting on the dashboard where I placed it after it fell off.

b. Picture :
Evidence of the residue left behind from where the permit was adhered.

3) The alleged indicated offence has caused no financial loss to the land owner. Requesting a payment of between £60 and £100 is judged by me to be unreasonable and disproportionate and therefore constitutes an unfair contract penalty under the terms of The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997, which is not legally enforceable.

4) The Explanatory notes on the back of the Parking Charge Notice indicate that I was to ‘allow 24 hours after issue of the PCN’ to view the alleged contravention. I, however, was not able to view the alleged contravention on your website until the 4th December 2012, 6 days after the date of issue of the Parking Charge Notice.

5) The Parking Charge Notice placed on the windscreen is incorrectly filled in with inaccuracies and numerous blanks.

I request that you cancel this payment request relating to this invoice in writing to me within the next 35 days after service of this letter. Should you decide not to cancel I require a Verification Code in order to refer it to POPLA, incurring a charge to you of £27 + VAT, not recoverable from me, and their adjudication, if sought, would be binding on you but not on me. In the event that you wish to proceed to County Court, please be aware that I will defend against your action.


Any further correspondence relating to this invoice, except for agreement of cancellation will incur you with an administrative charge of £30, per correspondence, for research and response and time involved in so doing. Any response other than an acceptance of cancellation will be taken as your agreement to the said charges and will be responded to with an enclosed invoice. Failure to pay such invoices may be the subject of debt collection or legal proceedings in a county court.

Yours faithfully,


Yesterday evening, however, i received a reply from them saying that my appeal has been rejected. The reply e-mail is as follows:

PCN number:
Vehicle registration:
PCN issued on:
Parked in:

10 December 2012

Dear Mr Thakor,

Thank you for your correspondence regarding the above Parking Charge Notice (PCN). I have considered your case carefully and have decided to reject your appeal on the following grounds;

The Parking Attendant recorded that the vehicle was parked without clearly displaying a valid permit. You should only park your vehicle in this area if you clearly display a valid permit. The area is clearly marked and signed appropriately advising this.

The Terms and Conditions of which our services are provided are clearly displayed throughout our sites, including the requirement to display a valid permit.

You now have a number of options;

1. Pay the Parking Charge Notice at the discounted amount of £60.00 within 14 days. Please note that after this time, the Parking Charge Notice will increase to the full charge of £100.00.

Payment can be made:

* Online, by visiting
* By phone, calling 0845 8679445. Please have your credit/debit card details and the information in this letter to hand.
* By post, sending a cheque or postal order made payable to Parking Control Management (UK) Ltd to the address at the top of this letter.

2. You may also make an appeal to POPLA - The Independent Appeals Service. If you wish to make an appeal to POPLA, information on how to appeal can be found at

The verification code you will need in order to appeal to the Independent Appeals Service is and the appeals form you will need is also available on the above link. It is important that you reference the verification code on the appeals form in the required section at the bottom of the form as appeals submitted without this code will not be assessed.

If you opt for independent arbitration of your case, the Parking Charge Notice will increase to £100.00 which you will be liable for in the event your appeal rejected.

Please note that the independent adjudicator is unable to waive the parking Notice because of mitigating circumstances and a decision will be based on facts and evidence only.

3. If you choose to do nothing, we will seek to recover the monies owed to us via our debt recovery procedures and may proceed with Court action against you.


Yours sincerely,
PCM Appeals Team

Could anyone please advise me as to what to do next. I'm starting to worry, as i really don't want to pay the extra £40 if I don't have to.

Thank you in advance!!

P.S.

Just looking at the letter to which the permit was attached too when it was delivered to my flat. It states:

'Place permit on display. It is your responsibility to check when leaving your vehicle'

As i stated in my original letter to PCM (uk) the permit was adhered to my windscreen when i exited my car.


Don't know if this information can be used, but thought i would post it and see what you guys thought.

spacey2012

You have cut yourself with your own sword.
Now they know they have a live fish on the hook.
Dig out your contract and see what it says in regard to parking space.

pogofish

As the ticket is totally none-legal and non enforcable, you would have been far better to have ignored them from the off but you can still do that now, or "appeal" to POPLA (if offered) and then ignore the result if that goes against you.

And in the meantime, if your parking space is included in your lease/deeds, your right to "Quiet Enjoyment" applies there too and you are quite entitled to give your managing agents a rocket for allowing these scammers to operate over your space and to insist they stop doing so.

SatyaT

Thank you guys for the prompt reply!

Unfortunately I sent of the 'appeal' to the PPC before reading a lot of the advice available.

I have read through my tenancy agreement and if there is no mention of any parking space in it. i don't have access to the actual lease for the property (the letting agents don't seem to think they have a copy and my landlord is out of the country for the next 2 months or so).

is the fact there is no mention of the parking space in the tenancy agreement of any use?

i am currently thinking about appealing to POPLA, if only so that i can generate a few invoices of my own and threaten PCM with debt-collection etc.

is this advisable? or is it best to just ignore from now, until eternity
(i actually plan on moving out of my flat next spring, and don't really want the PPC to follow me around so wanted to try and get this matter dealt with sooner rather than later...was my only real reason for acutally appealing)

pogofish

Its not a great problem that its not mentioned in your lease - Just that it would have been a clear line of approach to the agents. You still could but you would need to enlist the other residents and get a group demand to sack the PPC going.

Yes you could appeal to POPLA but don't make the mistake of taking PPCs seriously - they are not likely to pay any attention to anything you send them and are fully aware they are perpetuating a scam. TBH, any communication just makes them think you take them seriously and only prolongs the attempts to scam you.

If you just want them off your back soonest, ignoring them is the best way to go.

surfboy1

It seem that they have given you a POPLA appeal code.
If this was me i would appeal to POPLA costing them money.
If the appeal is not upheld then IGNORE the PPC safe in the knowledge that you have cost them £32!

retireby50

Just out of interest anybody know what would happen if an unused/unwanted POPLA appeal code was used by someone else..........

Coupon-mad

retireby50 wrote: »

Just out of interest anybody know what would happen if an unused/unwanted POPLA appeal code was used by someone else..........

I suspect that POPLA would send the appeal to the PPC in the first instance, who would say it doesn't relate to the incident in hand. I doubt there is scope for fun there.

SatyaT wrote: »

...i really don't want to pay the extra £40 if I don't have to.

:eek::eek: Whaaaaaat!! The 'extra £40'? I do hope you now realise that there is not even the first 40p due - let alone £40 or £60 or £100 payable?!

And PCM (ex-clamper scum, I believe) have said that 'if you appeal to POPLA then the charge increases to £100'. That's not allowed. There is a DFT paper re guidance about the Protrection of Freedoms Act (which led to POPLA from 2 months ago) which clearly says that the appeal fee is payable by the PPC and cannot be passed on to the motorist.

So include in your appeal to POPLA that PCM are breaching the BPA Code of Practice and have paid no regard to the DFT guidance, since their letter clearly says that anyone appealing to POPLA has their fake PCN increase to £100. Obviously that's designed to recoup the POPLA fee. NOPE, NOT ALLOWED.

Why not draft what you want to say to POPLA, and post it here first. We would not have suggested the words you used above, as it's PCM we would probably have suggested you ignored the fake PCN from the outset but no harm done! Now you have appealed then you may as well cost PCM some money with POPLA!

Include in your draft appeal for POPLA, the fact that PCM do not own the land. It's your landlord's space, it comes with the flat and you have exclusive rights to it - so in fact PCM were trespassing and you have no need to even bother with a daft permit scheme in your own exclusive space. Do not bust a gut trying to get the actual lease to prove this - JUST STATE IT AS FACT. Let PCM try to disprove it.

PCM also do not/cannot 'offer' the parking as consideration (you already have a right to park there, granted by your landlord) so there is no contract between you and PCM. AIUI, a contract can only exist if there is consideration and acceptance, neither of which applies here.

And the fake PCN is not a genuine pre-estimate of loss, because a resident parking in their own space does not cause any loss to anyone, let alone a third party ex-clamper. Even if the Managing Agents allow them on site and even if they have signs up (which they will). There is still NO LOSS.

I would also tell the Managing Agent in writing, that PCM were trespassing in that bay and you hold them jointly liable for the actions of their agent. Say that you do not recognise the permit scheme and their agent is risking legal action by encroaching in spaces which are expressly attached to the individual flats. Tell them you are opting out of the permit scheme as it is nothing more than a money-spinner for PCM, as it is for all private parking companies in residential car parks. Say that in addition, you consider it negligent that the Managing Agent has allowed PCM in this car park when their reputation is shocking and you believe they have unpaid CCJs.

Is this PCM (UK) Ltd or who is it precisely, exact name please of the firm?

Stroma

So they sent a letter to the RK of the vehicle (you) at the flat in the estate, so your defence should you go to popla amongst other things, would be that letter as it shows without question you can park there as its addressed to the person who has a right to use that bay. If popla decides against you ignore the parking company.

trets77

Are we still awaiting the first POPLA appeal anywhere?


It is now nearly 2013 and the scheme was set up October. Seems a long time for them to get their act together.