Meteor Railway parking ticket

louloukoi16

new letter for PCN Debt Recovery and Prosecution Service also going to be forwarded to DVLA and BPA just got to change the wording slightly.
any thoughts?

bazster

Well if you really want to rattle their cage see the Exocet I have drafted below (and take CM's advice re getting together with others in similar circumstances to complain en masse to all the organisations listed by CM).

Before you do go rattling their cage though, do be aware that just occasionally one or another of the Train Operating Companies does have a go at a prosecution and, although their legal grounds are incredibly flimsy, they do succeed in conning ignorant magistrates into convicting.



Dear Sirs,

I write regarding the Parking Charge Notice which was affixed to a vehicle of which I am the registered keeper, on dd/mm/yyyy, by your agent Meteor, and the subsequent letter from yourselves dated dd/mm/yyyy.

It is clear from the wording that the original Parking Charge Notice is exactly that, a Parking Charge Notice, and was issued by and for Meteor. Clearly, then, this is purely a civil matter between me or the driver, and Meteor. This is emphasised by the signage (see attached) which clearly refers to a "Parking Charge Notice" and makes no reference to any penalty due pursuant to railway byelaws.

As far as Meteor and the Parking Charge Notice goes, the signage at the site makes no reference to the amount of any Parking Charge Notice, which is a clear breach of the BPA Approved Operator Scheme Code of Practice (CoP) with which Meteor is obliged to comply. Furthermore, although the Parking Charge Notice refers to the possibility of appealing to PoPLA (thereby further emphasising the civil nature of this notice and that it is not issued pursuant to railway byelaws), I, as registered keeper of the vehicle, have not received any Notice to Keeper compliant with PoFA 2012 and hence cannot be held liable for a civil Parking Charge Notice. As registered keeper I have also been denied my right to appeal to PoPLA, another breach by Meteor of the CoP.

Turning to your letter and the threat of prosecution, I would point out to you that:

(i) Under the railway byelaws there is no such offence as "parked without displaying a valid ticket or voucher".

(ii) Railway Byelaw 14.4 purports to provide for a penalty payable by the owner of the vehicle "as displayed in that area". There is no such penalty displayed in the area in question.

(iii) Your letter makes repeated references to "hirer/keeper/owner". Well which is it? Byelaw 14.4 is clear: insofar as it makes anyone liable for a penalty, it is the owner, not the hirer or keeper.

(iv) Insofar as Byelaw 14.4 might be valid and enforceable, it would appear to give rise to merely a civil liability for the owner. There is no provision for prosecuting the owner.

(v) Byelaw 14.4 is in any case ultra vires the enabling legislation, the Transport Act 2000, and is therefore null and void. The Act reads as follows:

The Authority may make bye-laws regulating—
(a)the use and working of railway assets,
(b)travel on or by means of railway assets,
(c)the maintenance of order on railway assets, and
(d)the conduct of persons while on railway assets.

There is nothing whatsoever there which confers the power to make byelaws concerning vehicle owners who may never have been on or near any railway asset.

(vi) If a police officer used the threat of prosecution to obtain money on his own account this would clearly be a very serious criminal offence, and it's exactly the same here. You are abusing your power of prosecution in an attempt to obtain money for yourselves and/or Meteor.


I will now be complaining to Trading Standards, the BPA and the DVLA concerning your and Meteor's behaviour in this matter. You are presumably unaware that another parking company was recently obliged to refund hundreds of Parking Charge Notices precisely because it obfuscated the basis on which it issued those notices in railway car parks, as you and Meteor have done here. Trading Standards is now investigating.

Yours etc.

bazster

I also note that their letter states that your details were obtained from DVLA by "Revenue Protection Support Services". That's worth checking, 'cos I reckon there's a good chance that your details were actually obtained by Meteor. When you complain to DVLA that your details have been mis-used, ask them to confirm who applied, when and how.

Coupon-mad

louloukoi16 wrote: »

new letter for PCN Debt Recovery and Prosecution Service also going to be forwarded to DVLA and BPA just got to change the wording slightly.
any thoughts?

Bazster has added stronger words so you should go for the strongest complaint you can muster. And (apart from anything else) it was very important to point out that ''Under the railway byelaws there is no such offence as "parked without displaying a valid ticket or voucher".

Have a chat to the other posters with Meteor tickets like yours as well and maybe all send similar letters at the same time or complain en masse to some groups? I wrote a letter yesterday for one of them - it's on his thread and I encouraged him to complain also to the BPA and DVLA and TOC and Passenger Focus, as well as Trading Standards at his local Council. A firm can't pretend that a charge has a level of authority (bylaws) that it does not, nor can they pretend POPLA isn't an option just because the car park happens to be on railway land. It is misleading, it dodges the BPA Code of Practice and POPLA without justification and the BPA should be flushing out this sort of sharp practice.

louloukoi16

bazster wrote: »

Well if you really want to rattle their cage see the Exocet I have drafted below (and take CM's advice re getting together with others in similar circumstances to complain en masse to all the organisations listed by CM).

Before you do go rattling their cage though, do be aware that just occasionally one or another of the Train Operating Companies does have a go at a prosecution and, although their legal grounds are incredibly flimsy, they do succeed in conning ignorant magistrates into convicting.

is this from the date that the notice was issue or when the NTK came through?

louloukoi16

ive also noticed this is past 56 days its been 60 days.

From newbies section

In most cases, only send an appeal or challenge when the PPC send you the postal 'Notice to Keeper' (NTK) or 'reminder to keeper' or Parking Charge' or 'charge notice' or whatever they call their first letter. If they are a firm which alleges 'keeper liability' under the POFA 2012 (they don't have to) the Notice has to arrive by day 15 if there was no windscreen ticket, and between day 29 and day 56 if there was a windscreen ticket. Some firms (e.g. Civil Enforcement, Smart Parking and some small PPCs) don't even bother with POFA2012 so the keeper is not liable - obviously the keeper is the only person identified in your appeal then!

Where is the information for this so i can put it in my letter.

Coupon-mad

You don't need that info and it's irrelevant to your complaint letters - you haven't been issued with a PCN that mentions POFA 2012. The bit you quoted does say ' If they are a firm which alleges 'keeper liability' under the POFA 2012 (they don't have to) the Notice has to arrive by ...'

But this isn't one of those, it doesn't have POFA 2012 or 'keeper liability' on it. It doesn't have POPLA either, it's a nullity really but Meteor are pretending it's a bylaws PCN!

What have all four of you Meteor posters on here agreed to do between you? It would be so good to know you have discussed this by pm with the others (search this forum for Meteor as a keyword to find them). I seem to be replying randomly every second day to one of other of the Meteor threads suggesting you all talk to each other and look at the advice on each other's threads, not stay isolated. The best complaints are mob handed! It isn't helping consistency of advice that each one of the posters in turn is asking various questions already discussed & covered on the other Meteor threads and we are repeating ourselves a bit here.

Stroma

That's a great letter by Bazster and should be referred to for each of these so called bylaw tickets.

HO87

I agree with Stroma's approach.

The byelaw offences could not be more clearly defined and the so-called Debt Recovery and Prosecution Service (DRPS) based in Portsmouth has continued to follow this line for several years and cannot be unaware of the arguments.

In my assessment baszter is correct in that byelaw 14(4)(i) simply makes an owner liable for a penalty (provided that penalty is clearly signed in the area) as the result of an offence under either byelaw 14(1) or 14(3). These offences can only be committed by the driver at the time. Whilst byelaw 14(4)(i) creates a "liability" it does not create an offence and from that point of view actually uses the word "may" not "shall" which is the standard wording elsewhere. Similar wording is usually regarded as creating a civil liability not something that is capable of being pursued in the magistrates courts.

DRPS have repeatedly issued magistrates court summonses against vehicle owners alleging offences under byelaw 14(1) and/or 14(3) (don't forget, these can only be committed by drivers) without any evidence whatsoever as to the identity of the driver. On occasion they have successfully obtained convictions. Others, previously, assess this action on the part of DRPS as being "ultra vires" - contrary to law - and on any reasonable reading of the byelaws I fail to see how anyone can disagree. One wonders quite how they have escaped actions for abuse of process?

However, we should be somewhat cautious as far as Meteor are concerned because they are not your normal PPC and there may of course be something of a vested interest. Meteor are owned by the Go-Ahead group who coincidentally also operate the South, and South-eastern rail franchises and it is the south-eastern franchise that runs the DRPS.

Perhaps, therein, lies the answer?

Stroma

So Meteor are owned by the TOC, never knew that! So this is definitely a vested interest, and these prosecution vermin are all owned by the same people. Which brings to the point of going to magistrates court, the judgements there are not paid to them, so they are going there it seems out of spite.

I hope prankster will blog this as it will get a wider audience, and that can only be a good thing. Also we should be advising everyone to make complaints to the bpa, dvla and trading standards every time one these tickets are given.