APCOA (appeal denied)

FlorrieFreeman

'll try to be as brief as possible. This is another of those 'drop and go' situations that seem to be a regular feature on these threads. It happened on an APCOA controlled airport involving a 'pause' on a roundabout to disembark passengers. Time taken - approx. 25-30 seconds.

A PCN eventually arrived citing 'failing to park in a designated area'. The heading included a date of issue. This was 18 days after the event and delivered five days later. A total of 23 days had elapsed since the alleged contravention. After reading the threads I was all for ignoring this correspondence completely, but then after reading so many posts which talked about the '14 day' notification rule I believed that I had enough solid evidence to make a successful appeal and therefore avoid their inevitable begging letters.

Taking notes from the forums and without revealing driver information I appealed on three main points. Basically as follows -

1. Although payment was required to be made to APCOA, there was no specific identification of the creditor. Was it the airport ? APCOA ? A.N.Other ?.
2. That they had failed to provide that they,or a third party, were entitled to enforce an alleged breach of contactual terms and conditions.
3. That they had failed to deliver the notice to keeper within the statutory 14 days as prescribed by the PoFA.

APCOA responded as follows;-

Thank you for your letter of appeal against the Parking Charge Notice issued by us to you on xx/xx/2014. Having carefully considered the evidence provided by you, we must advise your appeal has not been successful on this occasion.

There follows a paragraph referring to red routes, markings around the airport etc. It then continues-

In response to your comment made in your letter, please note notices only need to be issued within 14 days if the notice issued mentions “under protection of freedom act”. According to British Parking Association guidelines, the maximum time to notify the registered keeper is no more than 28 days after receiving keeper data from the DVLA which takes no more than 35 days. Once we receive the registered keeper information we issue a notice to the customer, and no more than six months after the unauthorised parking event. It is our understanding that as we have not referred to this act in our documentation, we are able to work with the BPA code of practice (june 2013) which states that we have up to 28 days to deliver a postal PCN from the date of contravention. As your vehicle was parked in contravention of the terms and conditions of the site we are satisfied that the notice was correctly issued in accordance with the BPA code of practise and are not able to waiver the charge on this occasion.

It probably makes little difference but in the first paragraph APCOA state that “the PCN was issued by us to you on xx/xx/2014”. (the day of the incident) This is an outright lie. The only PCN was received 23 days later than this date, by post. There was no response to questions 1 and 2.

Did I miss something in the forums? Have the rules changed re. the 14 day notice period? In all the time spent scanning the threads concerning parking offences I've obviously completely missed anything that mentions the “under protection of freedom act”.

APCOA have included a POPLA frequently asked questions form together with a ten digit reference number. Incidentally, is the POPLA “code pack” that I read about and the 10 digit ref. number the same thing? If so, did they have to pay £27.50 to get it ? I'd love this to be true.

So, I'm back to square one regretting making any response at all to their first contact. Any suggestions as to the next move? Do nothing and ignore it? I can't make much of an appeal to POPLA if this 28 day rule is correct. Anyone else experience a similar situation? Help or comments would be much appreciated. Many thanks.

Dee140157

Oh yes they did have to pay £27 + vat to get the POPLA code for you to appeal using.

And yes a NTk must arrive by day 14 if no wondscreen PCN if they are citing keeper liability. And since it is not land relevant for keeper liability, they are talking bunkum.

Find yourself a good APCOA appeal and crib most of your own from it and get it sent off. At least you know you have cost APCOA to go further and with a good appeal you will win.

Draft your appeal here if you wish, but there should be many to chose from.

HO87

If you have a 10-digit code then that is your POPLA code and you should use that within 28 days of it being issued. You can check that it was valid and its date of issue (which may not be the same as the date it was sent to you) on the Pakring Cowboys website here.

You should also go to the Newbie thread which will give you all you need to know about making a winning POPLA appeal - we have a near 100% success rate so although there is alot of reading its far more satisfying that simply handing you money over the the likes of APCOA.

They are spouting rubbish, as usual, but then when they are making money off the back of people having incurred no loss whatsoever themselves what do you expect?

bazster

APCOA stopped alleging keeper liability at its airport sites some time ago, which is why (i) they don't bother adhering to the PoFA timescales and (ii) they can be safely ignored so long as you don't admit to being the driver. Basically with these APCOA airport tickets we are in the same position we were in prior to PoFA, when the advice was invariably to ignore. The alternative is to kill it by appealing to PoPLA and costing them £27 into the bargain.

I'm intrigued by "failing to park in a designated area" though. If I drive to the airport (Luton?), drive round the roundabout and depart, I too will have failed to park in a designated area. Are they now trying to suggest it is compulsory to park in a designated area once you've entered the airport?

FlorrieFreeman

Many thanks for all your help. Suitably heartened I'll get started on a POPLA appeal and will post it here for scrutiny.
I'll be back.