ParkingEye fine Tower Road Newquay

Justice13075

I had a parking charge for an overstay in a motorway service station this is what i wrote

Date Monday 6th April 2015

Dear Sirs/Madam

Re: PCN No. 0474150324017

I challenge this 'PCN' as keeper of the car, on these main grounds:

a). The sum does not represent a genuine pre-estimate of loss, nor is it a core price term. It is a disguised penalty and not commercially justified.
b). As keeper I believe that the signs were not seen, the wording is ambiguous and the predominant purpose of your business model is intended to be a deterrent.
c). There is no evidence that you have any proprietary interest in the land.
d). Your 'Notice' fails to comply with the POFA 2012 and breaches various consumer contract/unfair terms Regulations.
e). There was no consideration nor acceptance flowing from both parties and any contract with myself, or the driver, is denied.

Your clients should be thoroughly ashamed of the shoddy way you treat consumers visiting their premises. The landowner will be made fully aware of this matter and your response, which I will forward to their CEO when I complain in writing and via social media, as appropriate. Parking firms like yours fail to demonstrate even a basic understanding of customer service. The reputation of your business model appears to be more akin to a protection racket than 'parking management'. Your ATA may offer sound-bites about driving up standards or fight for motorists' rights but in reality they are not a regulator; they merely exist to represent the interests of paying members, in order to gain access to DVLA data. The public have no faith in the private parking industry and, as far as I have seen, your firm has not shown itself to be any different than the ex-clampers with whom you share a membership.

The purpose of this communication is:

1. Formal challenge
There will be no admissions as to who was driving and no assumptions can be drawn. As such, you must either rely on the POFA 2012 or cancel the charge. I suggest you uphold this challenge now or alternatively, send a rejection letter - subject to accepting my claim for costs as clearly stated below, since you have no case.

2. ''Drop hands'' offer
The extravagant 'parking charge' is baseless but I realise that you may have incurred nominal postage costs. Equally, I have incurred costs to date, for researching the law and responding to your junk mail dressed up to impersonate a parking ticket. It is clear that my costs and yours, at this point, do not exceed £15. Therefore, this is a formal “drop hands” offer. I remind you of the duty to mitigate any loss, so withdraw the spurious charge within 35 days without further expense and I will not pursue you for my costs. If you persist then I will charge in full for my time at £18 per hour plus my out-of-pocket expenses and damages for harassment.

3. Notice of cancellation of contract
I hereby give notice of withdrawal from this alleged 'contract' which was never properly offered by you and certainly was not expressly agreed. This 'contract' is hereby cancelled and any obligations now end. If you offer - and if I decide to use - IAS or POPLA, then the contract ends immediately on the date of their decision (whatever the outcome) so my notice of cancellation still applies. The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation & Additional Payments) Regulations apply now to every consumer contract, save for a few exemptions, which parking contracts are not. It is the will of Parliament following the EU Consumer Rights Directive, that express consent is obtained for consumer contracts now - not implied consent - and that information is provided in a durable medium in advance.

You have failed to meet these requirements. The foisting of unexpected contracts like this on consumers, by stealth, is a thing of the past.

By replying to the challenge you are acknowledging receipt and acceptance of points 2 and 3 above. If you decide to persist with this unwarranted threat, I will be put to unnecessary expense and hours of time in appealing or defending this matter. As such, you will be liable for my costs and a pre-estimate of my loss - and in contrast with yours, mine is genuine - is that this sum will be likely to exceed £100.

I have kept proof of submission of this challenge. I look forward to your considered reply within 35 days.

Within 2 days I had this back

Dear Madam,

Thank you for your correspondence. With reference to the Charge Notice issued to the above vehicle, after reviewing our data and in view of the representations made in connection with its issue, we can confirm that we have decided to cancel this Notice and no further action is to be taken.

Yours faithfully,

CP Plus Limited

Hope this helps

Coupon-mad

That's not a POPLA appeal nor about ParkingEye/Tower Road. Not relevant to this thread but it's good to see CP PLus gave up at first appeal stage after getting the forum template.

Coupon-mad

We still need to know the answer about the dates please…over the weekend is fine...

…but I have amended point #1 (see separate post below showing what I suggest your point #1 says) and I suggest you REMOVE point #4 about ANPR as it lends nothing to the appeal and made no sense for your case.

Also chop out this paragraph at the start of point now #4 which is your 'no GPEOL' point now, because this makes no sense when the driver DID pay:

[STRIKE]‘’This car park is Pay and Display and as far as I can ascertain as keeper, a payment was made. Having received the Notice in the post I had very little information (see point #2) so went and checked the signage(!) and it seems that up to 2 hours would have cost £3.50 so the only recoverable sum under the POFA 2012 is the sum of the alleged 'outstanding' parking charge = £3.50 at the most. Parking Eye have not told me these details, despite it being a prerequisite of Schedule 4. ‘[/STRIKE]’

I would start with a summary 'Background' before the bullet points, to helpfully explain to POPLA what happened without saying who parked the car, so they can start off with an understanding of your position as an honest person from the outset:


Background from the appellant who is the registered keeper (the driver was not evidenced):

As a law abiding citizen who always pays her way I was deeply upset to return from holiday to find £100 ‘parking charge notice’. Just by way of background for POPLA, the effect was devastating. I felt sick; the holiday budget was long gone and this is so much money. We didn't go abroad this year to save money and this smacks us in the face, I could have cried.

I have researched and found this appears to be an all-too-common, misleading trap set by ParkingEye this Summer, as widely reported online by victims and I now feel strong enough to exercise my right to appeal this to POPLA.

I am the registered keeper but I was an occupant of the car so can give you an honest account. The driver will not be named because I wish to use the protection offered to keepers in the POFA 2012, as one of my appeal points.

We went to the beach a couple of days before we left for home. The driver drove into what was signed as a ‘pay and display’ car park and we had 2 young children in the car. The driver paid for up to 2 hours parking, got the tickets and after time spent on Fistral beach we returned to the car within the 2 hours, packed the kids and stuff into the car and left.

How a £100 ‘fine’ can arise from that, without being unlawful, is beyond us.

I submit the points below to show that I am not liable for the parking charge:

1) Unreasonable and unfair terms – no contract agreed to pay £100. Fails the ‘Aziz test’.
2) The Notice to Keeper is not compliant with the POFA 2012 - no keeper liability.
3) No standing or authority to pursue charges nor form contracts with drivers.
4) No genuine pre-estimate of loss.




(see next post for my suggestion for point #1)

Coupon-mad

1) Unreasonable and unfair terms – no contract agreed to pay £100. Fails the ‘Aziz test’.

The sign was ambiguous and unclear because the entire sign is about 'PARKING TARIFFS' (not 'total stay') and the sign creates no obligations except to:

- 'enter your full VRN correctly’ (it says 'you must' and the driver complied with that term).
- 'park within bays' (the driver complied with that term).
- 'Blue Badge holders - tariffs apply' (OK, but not relevant and not an obligation upon us).

The only place the word 'stay' is mentioned on the sign is where it talks about maximum stay of 14 hours, the rest is all about 'parking time'. So as the P&D machine is the 'point of sale' and the P&D ticket is the receipt upon which an ordinary consumer would rely for the parking time, there was no contravention of the sign. The only contract agreed was to pay the tariff and return before expiry.

It seems from my research of this issue that, unbeknown to the driver, the car was being timed secretly by cameras from a significantly earlier point than when the driver bought the ticket. So although we were back in time, ParkingEye had already spuriously added some ten minutes or so, from the outset when we first drove off the road! They have counted in their alleged ‘parking time’ the minutes spent driving round, looking for a space, then parking up, getting the kids out and sunhats/buggy/sun tan lotion, beach stuff et al and then walking to the pay and display machine, queuing to pay, fumbling for the right change and getting a ticket. These minutes were perfectly reasonable activity for a family arriving at a beach car park, were not part of any ‘period of parking’ and were before we even had an opportunity to read any sign and pay & display!

It is wholly deceptive and unfair on drivers to impose a different time limit from cameras, than the time limit set on the Pay and Display ticket. Deceptive information which causes a consumer to take a different decision than they would have done, which then causes them detriment, is unlawful under the 'misleading actions' section (7.3) of the CPUTRs.

This was undoubtedly a ‘concealed pitfall or trap’, which resulted in a disproportionate and unfair charge which placed an unfair burden upon the driver, breaching Schedule 2 of the UTCCRs and the Unfair Contract Terms Act:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/2083/pdfs/uksi_19992083_en.pdf

‘’SCHEDULE 2 Regulation 5(5) INDICATIVE AND NON-EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF TERMS WHICH MAY BE
REGARDED AS UNFAIR - 1. Terms which have the object or effect of –

(e) requiring any consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation;
(i) irrevocably binding the consumer to terms with which he had no real opportunity of becoming acquainted before the conclusion of the contract...’’

Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977:
‘A person cannot by reference to any contract term be made to indemnify another person (whether a party to the contract or not) in respect of liability that may be incurred by the other for negligence or breach of contract, except in so far as the contract term satisfies the requirement of reasonableness.’

I would also mention the case in 2014 at Altrincham County Court: 3JD08399 PE v Ms X. Fistral Beach. It was found that 31 minutes driving around looking for a space was not classed as parking and therefore there was no contravention of the parking terms and conditions.

In our case, the driver relied upon the expiry time on the Pay and Display ticket, sadly soon discarded as we had no reason to think it would be needed again. We returned to the car in time so complied with all the P&D machine terms and the driver NEVER agreed nor accepted any contract to pay £100.

Obviously if drivers had any idea their P&D ticket would not be the time under which they would later be bound and that the operator held all the cards with a secret timing already working against them, they would not park at this car park at all because this is contrary to good faith.

In the Barry Beavis v ParkingEye hearing at the Supreme Court in July 2015 the matter of the Aziz test was discussed, relating to the ECJ case: Aziz v Caixa d’Estalvis de Catalunya, Tarragona I Manresa [2013] 3 CMLR 5.

The question arising from that binding case is whether a term would have been agreed, had the parties sat down with a blank sheet of paper and negotiated the term in advance. I can state as an indisputable fact that the driver would without a shadow of doubt, never have agreed to this term, had it been negotiated in advance and if we knew then what we know now the driver would never have entered a ParkingEye run car park and never will again.

A Pay & Display machine system is incompatible with ANPR enforcement; an operator cannot run two systems with two timings and favour the one which operates disadvantageously to consumers.

Under the Consumer Rights Act now enacted, the question of unfairness in any consumer contract must be considered by the Courts (whether a consumer raises this issue or not) and therefore by definition, should also be a consideration of an ADR prior to court. It is suggested that it would be unjust if POPLA were to settle on anything less than a consistent approach: i.e. that any PCNs where operators have acted or operated unfairly, like this one, should be cancelled.

This was no agreed contract and the sum is unfair, unreasonable and unrecoverable.

PTJBS05

The event was on the 20th Aug, they issued on the 28th and I received the letter on the 2nd September, 13 days after the event. Sadly I did not keep the envelope.

PTJBS05

Coupon-mad, firstly amazing that a complete stranger will go to such lengths to help and advise. I cant say I have experienced anything like this before.


I am very grateful !


I am going to slowly read your posts now and digest them. I didn't have internet access over the weekend so this is my first opportunity.


I have to read things a few times over to take it in, so here goes.

PTJBS05

All read and now feeling so much more comfortable. After you have virtually written the whole of my POPLA appeal (very generous of your time, everyone's time is so precious I realise this. We are all busy not just me, we all have our own busy circumstances)


It is now starting to make much more sense to me. It feels less jumbled and now it has structure. I would never have been capable to bring this together alone.


Now that all the information that was not relevant has gone it is much more clean cut and concise.


I think I have cracked it with your help, so I will post it now to reflect all advised changes.


It does look a lot better !

PTJBS05

Re: ParkingEye PCN, reference code
POPLA Code:
Background from the appellant who is the registered keeper (the driver was not evidenced):

As a law abiding citizen who always pays her way I was deeply upset to return from holiday to find £100 ‘parking charge notice’. Just by way of background for POPLA, the effect was devastating. I felt sick; the holiday budget was long gone and this is so much money. We didn't go abroad this year to save money and this smacks us in the face, I could have cried.

I have researched and found this appears to be an all-too-common, misleading trap set by ParkingEye this Summer, as widely reported online by victims and I now feel strong enough to exercise my right to appeal this to POPLA.

I am the registered keeper but I was an occupant of the car so can give you an honest account. The driver will not be named because I wish to use the protection offered to keepers in the POFA 2012, as one of my appeal points.

We went to the beach a couple of days before we left for home. The driver drove into what was signed as a ‘pay and display’ car park and we had 2 young children in the car. The driver paid for up to 2 hours parking, got the tickets and after time spent on Fistral beach we returned to the car within the 2 hours, packed the kids and stuff into the car and left.

How a £100 ‘fine’ can arise from that, without being unlawful, is beyond us.

I submit the points below to show that I am not liable for the parking charge:

1) Unreasonable and unfair terms – no contract agreed to pay £100. Fails the ‘Aziz test’.
2) The Notice to Keeper is not compliant with the POFA 2012 - no keeper liability.
3) No standing or authority to pursue charges nor form contracts with drivers.
4) No genuine pre-estimate of loss.

1) Unreasonable and unfair terms – no contract agreed to pay £100. Fails the ‘Aziz test’.

The sign was ambiguous and unclear because the entire sign is about 'PARKING TARIFFS' (not 'total stay') and the sign creates no obligations except to:

- 'enter your full VRN correctly’ (it says 'you must' and the driver complied with that term).
- 'park within bays' (the driver complied with that term).
- 'Blue Badge holders - tariffs apply' (OK, but not relevant and not an obligation upon us).

The only place the word 'stay' is mentioned on the sign is where it talks about maximum stay of 14 hours, the rest is all about 'parking time'. So as the P&D machine is the 'point of sale' and the P&D ticket is the receipt upon which an ordinary consumer would rely for the parking time, there was no contravention of the sign. The only contract agreed was to pay the tariff and return before expiry.

It seems from my research of this issue that, unbeknown to the driver, the car was being timed secretly by cameras from a significantly earlier point than when the driver bought the ticket. So although we were back in time, ParkingEye had already spuriously added some ten minutes or so, from the outset when we first drove off the road! They have counted in their alleged ‘parking time’ the minutes spent driving round, looking for a space, then parking up, getting the kids out and sunhats/buggy/sun tan lotion, beach stuff et al and then walking to the pay and display machine, queuing to pay, fumbling for the right change and getting a ticket. These minutes were perfectly reasonable activity for a family arriving at a beach car park, were not part of any ‘period of parking’ and were before we even had an opportunity to read any sign and pay & display!

It is wholly deceptive and unfair on drivers to impose a different time limit from cameras, than the time limit set on the Pay and Display ticket. Deceptive information which causes a consumer to take a different decision than they would have done, which then causes them detriment, is unlawful under the 'misleading actions' section (7.3) of the CPUTRs.

This was undoubtedly a ‘concealed pitfall or trap’, which resulted in a disproportionate and unfair charge which placed an unfair burden upon the driver, breaching Schedule 2 of the UTCCRs and the Unfair Contract Terms Act:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/2083/pdfs/uksi_19992083_en.pdf

‘’SCHEDULE 2 Regulation 5(5) INDICATIVE AND NON-EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF TERMS WHICH MAY BE
REGARDED AS UNFAIR - 1. Terms which have the object or effect of –

(e) requiring any consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation;
(i) irrevocably binding the consumer to terms with which he had no real opportunity of becoming acquainted before the conclusion of the contract...’’

Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977:
‘A person cannot by reference to any contract term be made to indemnify another person (whether a party to the contract or not) in respect of liability that may be incurred by the other for negligence or breach of contract, except in so far as the contract term satisfies the requirement of reasonableness.’

I would also mention the case in 2014 at Altrincham County Court: 3JD08399 PE v Ms X. Fistral Beach. It was found that 31 minutes driving around looking for a space was not classed as parking and therefore there was no contravention of the parking terms and conditions.

In our case, the driver relied upon the expiry time on the Pay and Display ticket, sadly soon discarded as we had no reason to think it would be needed again. We returned to the car in time so complied with all the P&D machine terms and the driver NEVER agreed nor accepted any contract to pay £100.

Obviously if drivers had any idea their P&D ticket would not be the time under which they would later be bound and that the operator held all the cards with a secret timing already working against them, they would not park at this car park at all because this is contrary to good faith.

In the Barry Beavis v ParkingEye hearing at the Supreme Court in July 2015 the matter of the Aziz test was discussed, relating to the ECJ case: Aziz v Caixa d’Estalvis de Catalunya, Tarragona I Manresa [2013] 3 CMLR 5.

The question arising from that binding case is whether a term would have been agreed, had the parties sat down with a blank sheet of paper and negotiated the term in advance. I can state as an indisputable fact that the driver would without a shadow of doubt, never have agreed to this term, had it been negotiated in advance and if we knew then what we know now the driver would never have entered a ParkingEye run car park and never will again.

A Pay & Display machine system is incompatible with ANPR enforcement; an operator cannot run two systems with two timings and favour the one which operates disadvantageously to consumers.

Under the Consumer Rights Act now enacted, the question of unfairness in any consumer contract must be considered by the Courts (whether a consumer raises this issue or not) and therefore by definition, should also be a consideration of an ADR prior to court. It is suggested that it would be unjust if POPLA were to settle on anything less than a consistent approach: i.e. that any PCNs where operators have acted or operated unfairly, like this one, should be cancelled.

This was no agreed contract and the sum is unfair, unreasonable and unrecoverable.


2) The Notice to Keeper is not compliant with the POFA 2012 - no keeper liability
As this was a Pay/Display car park, the Notice to Keeper (NTK) has to set out the position clearly in terms of 'describing the parking charges due' which remained unpaid as at the day before the date of issue of the PCN. Due to this timeline stated in Schedule 4, these 'parking charges due' can only be a tariff the driver should have paid, because no higher sum was 'due' before the PCN was even printed!

I can see from the limited information before me in the NTK, only that the car stayed for a certain amount of time and that the contravention was 'either/or' an overstay or failure to pay. This does not create any certainty of terms, it leaves a keeper to wonder what the hourly rate tariff even was and whether the driver paid nothing, or paid too little, or paid only for half an hour or an hour, or paid in full but put in the wrong car registration, or some other event. This Operator has the technology to record car registrations, to collect/record payments and to take photos of cars arriving and leaving, so it would be reasonable to assume that they are able - and indeed are required under the POFA - to state on the NTK the basic requirements to show a keeper how the 'parking charges' arose and the amount of outstanding parking charges (tariff) as at the day before the PCN was issued.

These are the omissions:
''9(2)The notice must—
(b)inform the keeper that the driver is required to pay parking charges in respect of the specified period of parking and that the parking charges have not been paid in full;
(c)describe the parking charges due from the driver as at the end of that period, the circumstances in which the requirement to pay them arose (including the means by which the requirement was brought to the attention of drivers) and the other facts that made them payable;
(d)specify the total amount of those parking charges that are unpaid...'
NTK is not compliant, for example re this requirement:

The NTK specifically fails on all counts.

It even misdescribes the circumstances, stating that the 'free stay' allowed is 0 hours and 0 minutes and that the contravention is for 'staying longer than authorised' or 'without authorisation'. Well it's a P&D car park, not a permit one, so there is no possibility of 'authorisation'. Therefore the NTK is non-compliant.
The validity of a NTK is fundamental to establishing liability for a parking charge. As POPLA Assessor Matthew Shaw stated: ''Where a Notice is to be relied upon to establish liability...it must, as with any statutory provision, comply with the Act.'' This NTK was not compliant due to the omissions of statutory wording, so it was not properly given and there is no keeper liability.

3) No standing or authority to pursue charges nor form contracts with drivers
I believe that this Operator has no proprietary interest in the land, so they have no standing to make contracts with drivers in their own right, nor to pursue charges for breach in their own name. In the absence of such title, ParkingEye must have assignment of rights from the landowner to pursue charges for breach in their own right, including at court level. A commercial site agent for the true landholder has no automatic standing nor authority in their own right which would meet the strict requirements of section 7 of the BPA Code of Practice. I therefore put ParkingEye to strict proof to provide POPLA and myself with an unredacted, contemporaneous copy of the contract between ParkingEye and the landowner, not just another agent or retailer or other non-landholder, because it will still not be clear that the landowner has authorised the necessary rights to ParkingEye.


4) No genuine pre-estimate of loss
The Operator cannot reasonably claim a broad percentage of their entire business running costs, as they operate various different arrangements, some where they pay a landowner a huge amount akin to a 'fishing licence' to catch motorists and some where they have pay and display, and others which are free car parks. I suggest there was never any advance meeting held with the client, nor was any due regard paid to establishing any 'genuine pre-estimate of loss' prior to setting the parking charges at this site. I put this operator to strict proof to the contrary and to explain how the calculation happens to be the same whether the alleged overstay is 20 minutes or 20 hours.

The Operator alleges 'breach of terms/failure to comply' and as such, the landowner/occupier (not their agent) can only pursue liquidated damages directly flowing from the parking event. This must amount in its entirety, only to a genuine pre-estimate of loss, not some subsequently penned 'commercial justification' statement they have devised afterwards, since this would not be a pre-estimate. Any later 'new' calculation (even if dressed up to look like a loss statement) would fall foul of Mr Greenslade's explanation abut GPEOL in the POPLA 2014 Report and would also falls foul of the DFT Guidance about private parking charges.

In this case, even if the Operator contends there was a small outstanding P&D sum (which they have missed off the Notice to Keeper, so I have no idea) they certainly cannot claim an inflated amount. A GPEOL calculation must be a sum which might reasonably flow directly as a result of a parking event.

An Operator cannot include 'staff time spent on appeals' and other tax deductible business costs such as administration, accounting & equipment. Appeals staff are already paid to do their admin job which includes handling appeals among other tasks, so there is no question that there is any 'loss' caused by these staff who are not 'significantly diverted' from their normal activity when they deal with challenges or POPLA stage.

Judge Charles Harris QC in 'A Retailer v Ms B' (where the Claimant tried to claim a 'loss' from a consumer for 'staff and/or management time investigating') stated:
"[14] The claimant in the instant case has not established either that the staff in question were significantly diverted from their usual activities or that there was any significant disruption to its business... Nor was there any loss of revenue generation. [15] The two security people, far from being diverted from their usual activities, were in fact actively engaged in them. They were doing just what the claimants paid for them to do... [16] So the claim in respect of staff time cannot, in my judgment, be established. I was not clear if, at the end of the case, the other two alleged heads of loss – administrative costs and security equipment costs – were still being sought. But, if so, these claims too cannot succeed. Neither can be shown to be attributable to the defendants’ activities. The amounts spent by the claimant would have been identical had the defendants stayed at home... [17] It follows that the claims must be dismissed’’

http://www.farrarsbuilding.co.uk/cms/uploads/A-Retailer-v-B-K_001.pdf

In the case of private parking charges in general - including this Operator - the administrative staff and Managers who handle challenges and POPLA appeals are not 'significantly diverted from their usual activities', nor do appeals cause any 'significant disruption to its business', nor was there any significant loss of revenue generation. So none of the 'staff time' can be properly included in a GPEOL calculation. If POPLA do accept a small amount of staff time in a GPEOL sum then this could only be 1% of the typical time taken for POPLA appeals, because only 1% of cases follow the POPLA route. No higher figure can have been in the reasonable contemplation of the Operator at the time of the parking event because the chances of POPLA are even less than 'debt collector stage' both being far too remote to be likely.

The charge is unconscionable and extravagant and unrelated to local Penalty Charge levels in this area. It is believed that the Supreme Court’s decision in ParkingEye v Beavis will have an impact on the outcome of this POPLA appeal. If the operator does not cancel this charge and/or if there is no other ground upon which the appeal can be determined, I ask that my appeal is adjourned pending the Beavis case.
POPLA Assessor Chris Adamson has stated in June 2014 that:

''the aim of damages is to be compensatory, beginning with the idea that the aim is to put the parties in the position they would have been in had the contract been performed. It also seems that courts have been unwilling to allow clauses designed to deter breach as this undermines the binding nature of the initial promise made. Whilst the courts have reasonably moved away from a strict interpretation of what constitutes a genuine pre-estimate of loss, recognising that in complex commercial situations an accurate pre-estimate will not always be possible, nevertheless it remains that a charge for damages must be compensatory in nature rather than punitive.''


This concludes my POPLA appeal.

Yours faithfully,



xxxxxxxxxx {registered keeper's name...}

Umkomaas

It even misdescribes the circumstances, stating that the 'free stay' allowed is 0 hours and 0 minutes

This 'free stay allowed is 0 hours and 0 minutes' is used by PE when a registration plate number hasn't been entered, or the number has been incorrectly input. You might need to be prepared to cover/rebut this if/when you receive the PE evidence pack (around 7 days before the date by which POPLA will deal with your appeal) and PE argue this point.

The charge is unconscionable and extravagant and unrelated to local Penalty Charge levels in this area.

You may want to contact the local authority to check out the levels of local penalty charges, then quote them alongside the above sentence to add weight to your assertion.

PTJBS05

Good Point I called the Cornish council and their charges can very from as low as £25 using the discount offered to pay straight away or as high as £70 depending on circumstances.


The driver did input the reg, so perhaps it was mistyped. Hhhmmmmm