Parking Prankster posts on POPLA Service Provision

Stroma

So Nigel who tells people that mitigation is not accepted at popla? And if you read half of the parking companies websites they don't accept mitigation. Some have breaking down will not be considered, others have if you don't own the car that is not acceptable,, so in other words if you sold the car today and the new keeper gets a ticket tomorrow that is not accepted.

Most people would appeal on what happened, not the legalise that we suggest on here, who the hell has heard of pre-estimate of loss beyond a few specialist websites dealing with parking? The problem is that people except reasonableness on these tickets, unfortunately they enter the twilight zone when they get a ticket.

Again I say popla is not fit for purpose, and from my perspective it never will be a platform where people can expect to be treated fairly!

Coupon-mad

Totally agree that the unfairness lies in ordinary people not simply being told at the top of a POPLA form or as required wording in a rejection letter:

''Mitigating circumstances cannot be taken into account, so do not tell POPLA that the permit slipped or you only took a minute to get change or anything else about what happened to cause this issue. That is not to say there are not grounds for appeal in certain circumstances. If you would like to see an example of an appeal that won, you can view one on the POPLA website (that would be much fairer and make it more of a level playing field).

Then they really, really need to get rid of the 4 headings for appeal reasons that the BPA said was to 'focus the mind' of the appellant. Or change them to 'the charge was not a GPEOL' etc.!

Stroma

For example this
http://www.trafficpenaltytribunal.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?categoryID=4126&documentID=132#pagenavbox

nigelbb

Stroma wrote: »

So Nigel who tells people that mitigation is not accepted at popla?

POPLA state as much on their website. It's just the same with proper parking tickets PATAS & TPT don't accept mitigation either.

nigelbb

POPLA should be forced to publish appeals & decisions just as PATAS/TPT then people could see what are grounds for a successful appeal.

Stroma

nigelbb wrote: »

POPLA state as much on their website. It's just the same with proper parking tickets PATAS & TPT don't accept mitigation either.

What happens if you don't have the internet?

nigelbb

Stroma wrote: »

What happens if you don't have the internet?

What has that got to do with mitigation? Whether you have the Internet or not no independent appeals service can consider mitigation as all they can do is deliver an objective YES/NO decision based on the facts. Considering mitigation would require a subjective assessment & that is not how these things work.

Courts only consider mitigation when it comes to sentence they do not consider mitigation in the objective judgement of guilt or innocence.

bod1467

The point is ... if people don't have Internet access then they won't KNOW that mitigation won't be considered. No Mitigation is only stated on the POPLA website - it is not stated anywhere else; not on the physical POPLA forms and not on anything provided by the PPC when rejecting an appeal. Therefore people are much less likely to compose a proper appeal. (People are people - they expect PPCs and POPLA to be reasonable like themselves)

Guys_Dad

Weighing in on mitigation.

First of all, what is mitigation per se ? Dictionary definition "The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something:"

Definitely NOT the job of an appeal service. Should POPLA say "£100 is too much but £25 is fair in this case"? I think not.

However, if people mean that the Appeal Service should be able to consider the circumstances - such as car broke down, driver taken ill as happened at Snowdon, etc etc rather than the appeal points we win on, then that's a different matter. Of course they should. In fact, do their actions in ignoring genuine cases such as above mean they are bordering on unfair trading and should trading standards or another body get a grip?

And their web site should recognise that there are more than 4 appeal points given that GPEOL and signs are heavy winners, for example. At the moment those 4 listed appeal points are too skewed in favour of PPCs.

We need to ensure that the message is getting out so that the 2% appeal rate rises. That doesn't mean of course, that 98% of people pay. Given the difference between tickets issued and (POPLA appeals + court cases issued), there must be a lot of tickets being torn up by the PPCs already.

So I am in favour of POPLA, even as it stands. I am in favour of of much more publicity on the whole private parking "industry" and appealing. I am in favour of MPs putting pressure on POPLA to come clean on the criteria for appealing. But I am not in favour of calls for a mass boycott of the appeal services as it just wouldn't happen.