Advice would be gratefully received.

RW123

There are some excellent tips on this site, many thanks for all the hard work that obviously going into maintaining not only this section but the whole of the board.

That said, I would be extremely grateful for advice on a PCN I have received today.

I work in a hospital, parking is enforced, the issuing company are a member of BPA.

Today I parked in my usual bay in the disabled parking section and forgot to display my blue badge. I quite simply forgot, no excuses and no other explanation for it. My first thought was to ignore the PCN, however on reading this forum I'm now fairly sure this is not the right course of action!

My question is... given the fact that other members of staff have suffered the same fate and even including a copy of the blue badge the appeals have been turned down... is it worth me even bothering to appeal? If you think it is worth me appealing I know there are one or two letter templates that I could use usefully displayed on this site.

Many thanks for your help and advice with this.

Fruitcake

Do not pay, do not ignore, do not reveal who was driving.

Read the Sticky thread for Newbies at the top of the page and submit your first appeal using the template letter you will find there.
This will no doubt be rejected but the parking company must provide you with a POPLA code.
Use this code to make a draft appeal and post it on here for checking by the experts.
Submit your POPLA appeal and win.

The blue badge does not apply on private land but since you have one you should mention this in your first appeal. In your second appeal you can then include failure by the PPC to abide by the 2010 Equality Act.

You should also complain to the Hospital administration and PALS about the way a registered disabled person with protected characterisitics has been treated. Again quote the 2010 EA and be most forceful on this.

eta

Do not use mitigation in your appeal, just the winning points that you will find in the Sticky thread.

Redx

a BB isnt relevant on private land and there is no requirement for it

what IS relevant is the law , namely the EA 2010 , just because you did not have or own a BB , or fail to display it does not change the fact that you are protected under the EA 2010 and the trust has a moral and legal duty to uphold the law , the law wins over any petty rules , period

so complain to the trust and to PALS about this and mentione the fact that the EA 2010 applies and its BPA rules that BB holders (or strictly speaking EA 2010 protected person) should not be harassed in this way

so yes appeal , appeal to the PPC , appeal to the trust and appeal to PALS too , reminding them of the law and their lawful compliance requirements

those bays are provided BY LAW for people who are protected under the EA 2010 , not for BB holders only no matter what the rules or signs say

any rejection means you use legal appeal points to POPLA

bazster

Yup, by law they are required to make "reasonable adjustments" for all people with "protected characteristics", not just those who have and display blue badges.

Umkomaas

As a minimum you must appeal to the PPC, using, verbatim, the pre-prepared template in the NEWBIES thread, and aiming for a POPLA verification code in the (probable) rejection letter to your appeal.

This is the quickest and easiest way to get rid of this sh-eye-t from your life. The other issues raised above are also extremely pertinent, but are less potent in the short term c.f. a POPLA appeal.

Coupon-mad

RW123 wrote: »

There are some excellent tips on this site, many thanks for all the hard work that obviously going into maintaining not only this section but the whole of the board.

That said, I would be extremely grateful for advice on a PCN I have received today.

I work in a hospital, parking is enforced, the issuing company are a member of BPA.

Today I parked in my usual bay in the disabled parking section and forgot to display my blue badge. I quite simply forgot, no excuses and no other explanation for it. My first thought was to ignore the PCN, however on reading this forum I'm now fairly sure this is not the right course of action!

My question is... given the fact that other members of staff have suffered the same fate and even including a copy of the blue badge the appeals have been turned down... is it worth me even bothering to appeal? If you think it is worth me appealing I know there are one or two letter templates that I could use usefully displayed on this site.

Many thanks for your help and advice with this.

Please don't use the one on the main site, it's horribly out of date. The template to use is the one in the NEWBIES sticky thread.

Surely (please tell me they didn't) staff haven't been PAYING these fake PCNs just for the want of just Googling 'How to win at POPLA' when they got a rejection letter with the golden ticket of a POPLA code on it? We win all POPLA appeals (100% record) and although it won't be the point that wins at POPLA it is worth pointing out that a person's right to use a disabled bay (and their need to use it) does not suddenly disappear of course, just because they forget to display a wholly irrelevant Council Blue Badge over which a BPA member has zero authority. These are not fines from an authority and the Blue badge scheme is not the only indicator of disability need.

Dublindel

Deal with this as instructed on here but make sure you tell all your friends and staff about this site and your findings.

RW123

Well, it seems my colleagues HAVE been paying their parking fines. I have now put a link to this forum on the Trust Bulletin Board advising people not to do anything about PCN's until they have visited this site.

Anyway, I now have my letter from Minster Baywatch advising me that they are unable to cancel the PCN as it was issued correctly. They say:

Conditions of parking at this site state that only vehicles displaying an approved disabled badge may park in allocated disabled bays. The vehicle in question was observed to contravene this condition by our operative.

When I visited the POPLA code checker site and entered the information to check my 28 day deadline I got the following information;

Grounds for complaint
This code was generated 2 day(s) before the date of your appeal rejection letter. This means that you have not been given the full 28 days to appeal that you are entitled to under the British Parking Association's Code of Practice. Please consider making a complaint.

I'm not sure what this means? A complaint to whom??

I know I now have to compose an appeal letter for POPLA, I've had a look through the relevant thread and am now totally confused as to which template to use. Would it help if I took a picture of the relevant sign displayed at the disabled bays in the car park?

Sorry to be a pest, but I would be grateful for any further help or advice.

Fruitcake

RW123 wrote: »

Well, it seems my colleagues HAVE been paying their parking fines. I have now put a link to this forum on the Trust Bulletin Board advising people not to do anything about PCN's until they have visited this site.

Anyway, I now have my letter from Minster Baywatch advising me that they are unable to cancel the PCN as it was issued correctly. They say:

Conditions of parking at this site state that only vehicles displaying an approved disabled badge may park in allocated disabled bays. The vehicle in question was observed to contravene this condition by our operative.

When I visited the POPLA code checker site and entered the information to check my 28 day deadline I got the following information;

Grounds for complaint
This code was generated 2 day(s) before the date of your appeal rejection letter. This means that you have not been given the full 28 days to appeal that you are entitled to under the British Parking Association's Code of Practice. Please consider making a complaint.

I'm not sure what this means? A complaint to whom??

I know I now have to compose an appeal letter for POPLA, I've had a look through the relevant thread and am now totally confused as to which template to use. Would it help if I took a picture of the relevant sign displayed at the disabled bays in the car park?

Sorry to be a pest, but I would be grateful for any further help or advice.

A complaint to the BPA.

One of the more knowledgable posters will be along to help you, but have another search of the Sticky thread. I know the information is there somewhere. If there isn't a specific one for Minster Baywatch, have a look and pick the one that suits your situation best. Post 3 of the Sticky thread leads you to a list of templates and tells you what you should or shouldn't include.

You will win on no GPEOL but there are a number of points as well that you should include such as poor signage.

Coupon-mad

Among the POPLA appeal examples linked in 'How to win at POPLA' in post #3 of the NEWBIES thread, there's a UKPC one near the bottom about disabled bays and the Equality Act which grants you the right to park there. Now POPLA won't care two hoots about point #1 but it's legally true and we put it in POPLA appeals where there was a disabled person in the car in a disabled bay, because POPLA need to learn! They are a service provider and they should darn well be taking account of the Equality Act and the fact that the person has a right to use a reasonable adjustment without a blue badge, blue car, blue hat or anything else a PPC might stipulate on a sign. All such random contract terms - even if well meant by the Hospital - are unenforceable if the effect is to cause detriment to a disabled person (who may not even have a badge, they don't have to...).

So use the UKPC 'disabled bay' version and amend it to suit, changing UKPC to 'Minster Baywatch' throughout, and of course tweaking anything not right for your car park. Do not remove any whole appeal points though - every POPLA appeal includes an 'unclear signage' paragraph, for example, even though in almost every case 'there are signs up' (of course there are!). If you said you were driving then appeal as driver but if (as we hope) your DID NOT say who was driving, keep it that way.

Do post your whole POPLA draft appeal here for critique if you like - don't start a new thread about it as that just confuses us!

Dee140157

And as for the complaint issue you were informed about, what that means is this.

You have the right to have 28 days to appeal for the day they reject your first appeal. However because the PPC applied to POPLA 2 days before they wrote to you, you have only been given 26 days to appeal. This is against the BPA code of practice.

Therefore you should also separately complain to Steve Clarke of the BPA about the PPC breaki g the code of conduct. His details are in post 6 of Newbie thread.