Parking fine advice please.

Middles

Hi,

Firstly thank you for existing! I've just had a restless night having received a 60 pound (or 100 if not paid in 14 days) "Parking Charge" for not paying and displaying in a privately owned car park. This car park used to be a council owned car park and was always free after 8pm. i have found out (after some research last night) that it is now owned by a private company and that they now do charge 24 x 7.
I appreciate that I was in the wrong, incorrectly assuming things were the same as the last time I parked there, is not really a defence. However I do feel that the "Parking Charge" is extreme and I just do not have £60 to spare. The company issuing the Charge is UKPC and the car park was Portland St car park in Cheltenham.
Should I appeal this using one of your templates? Or is this a no win situation?
Your assistance and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks.

P.S. Please don't think me rude if I don't respond straight away I'm afraid I won't have access to this computer again until tomorrow.

neil.net

It's not a fine like you'd get from the police. It's basically a request for payment because in their eyes you didn't comply with their terms, at this stage it's nothing more than a piece of paper with details on and if you appeal correctly it's likely to become nothing more.

Don't pay it but don't ignore it - appeal it. Have a look at the NEWBIES thread. You'll need to do the first appeal to UKPC - who will probably reject it, but you will get a POPLA code to make an "independent" appeal.

Cheltenham has had a few changes to parking recently (private and council on-street parking) where people have been caught out.

Middles

Hi Neil.net,
Many thanks for your very quick response. I did manage to read some of the NEWBIE posts and stickies last night, I noticed that most of them referred to "free" car parks i.e. shopping centre type car parking. I wasn't sure about Pay and Display car parks and whether or not an appeal would be possible or not?

Grimble

Appeal, you did not see signs, use the template.

neil.net

Middles wrote: »

Hi Neil.net,
Many thanks for your very quick response. I did manage to read some of the NEWBIE posts and stickies last night, I noticed that most of them referred to "free" car parks i.e. shopping centre type car parking. I wasn't sure about Pay and Display car parks and whether or not an appeal would be possible or not?

You're welcome. I've edited my post as you were replying, but certainly appeal.

Umkomaas

Grimble wrote: »

Appeal, you did not see signs, use the template.

A bit premature?

@OP - I presume this was a windscreen ticket? If so you need to wait for receipt of the Notice to Keeper (NtK) which should arrive between days 28 and 56 after the date of the parking event. So don't act hastily, you've got time to read the NEWBIES FAQ sticky which will tell you everything about how to handle this.

Come back if your ticket is not as I've described