UKPC Issued Ticket on Residential Site

Coupon-mad

Yes it would be obvious. UKPC (99% of the time) forget it when we play the trick of appealing as keeper (not driver) to a windscreen PCN.

It's why we do it this way, gives you a slam-dunk winning POPLA point as long as no sentence you add into the POPLA appeal slips up about implying who parked/was driving. The keeper is 100% safe and not liable where there was no NTK served at all.

stevewilliams_2

This is the appeal letter I intend to submit to POPLA (unless anyone disagrees?) I've pinched most of it from previous successful appeals...

Dear Sir / Madam,

I was extremely dismayed to hear of a £100 ‘parking charge notice’ displayed on the vehicle of which I am registered keeper for. The vehicle in question was parked in a residential car park, separated by flat number of which and I had been informed by the letting agent that no permit was required. The space in which it was parked is for sole use of that flat number of which I am also the registered tenant.

How a £100 ‘fine’ can arise from a residents vehicle being parked in that same residents’ allocated parking space, without being unlawful, is beyond me.

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

1. The Notice to Keeper is not compliant with the POFA 2012 - no keeper liability
2. Vehicle issued the PCN is considered to be a genuine resident
3. Unreasonable and unfair terms – no contract agreed to pay £100. Inadequate signage
4. No genuine pre-estimate of loss
5. No standing or authority to pursue charges nor form contracts with drivers
6. No contract between driver and UK Parking Control Ltd

1. The Notice to Keeper is not compliant with the POFA 2012 - no keeper liability
To date I have not been issued a Notice to Keeper (NTK) by UK Parking Control Ltd. As a Notice to Driver was provided on the vehicle, an NTK is required to be issued no sooner than 28 days after, or no later than 56 days after the service of that notice. This stipulation is laid out in Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA).

The alleged infringement occurred on 31/12/2015 and from my understanding the NTK was required to reach me by25/02 /2015. As none of the mandatory information set out by Schedule 4 paragraphs 8 and 9 of the PoFA has been made available to me as Registered Keeper the conditions set out by paragraph 6 of Schedule 4 has not been complied with. Therefore there can be no keeper liability and as a result I request that UK Parking Control Ltd provide evidence to POPLA of who the driver was.

The keeper liability requirements of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 must be complied with, where the appellant is the registered keeper, as in this case. One of these requirements is the issue of a NTK compliant with certain provisions. This operator failed to serve any NTK at all. As there has been no admission as to who may have parked the car and no evidence of this person has been produced by the operator, it has been held by POPLA multiple times that a parking charge with no NTK cannot be enforced against the registered keeper.

2. Vehicle issued the PCN is considered to be a genuine resident
With regards to the PCN, the vehicle in question is registered to the tenant of the property of the allotted parking space at the time of contravention. If for example all of the ‘resident only’ spaces were occupied by valid residents, regardless of whether permits were displayed, UK Parking Control Ltd would still have incurred zero loss. When empty, these resident spaces cannot be re-offered in exchange for fees to those who have no association with the buildings, making the charges punitive.

The reason land owners employ parking companies are to stop non-residents abusing the car park in question. Genuine residents should not be deterred from using the parking spaces provided to their properties.

3. Unreasonable and unfair terms – no contract agreed to pay £100. Inadequate signage
Any photos supplied by UK Parking Control Ltd to POPLA will no doubt show the signage in daylight or with the misleading aid of a close up camera with an extremely bright flash and the angle may well not show how high the sign is nor the fact the UK Parking Control Ltd signs are one of many pieces of information in the clutter of this residential car park. As such, I require UK Parking Control Ltd to state the height of each sign in their response and to show contemporaneous photo evidence of these signs, taken at the same time of day without photo-shopping or cropping and showing where the signs are placed among a myriad of other information bombarding a resident without the help of external lighting such as a camera flash or torch.

Unreadable signage breaches Appendix B of the British Parking Association’s (BPA) Code of Practice which states that terms on entrance signs must be clearly readable without a driver having to turn away from the road ahead. A Notice is not imported into the contract unless brought home so prominently that the party 'must' have known of it and agreed terms beforehand. Nothing about this Operator's onerous inflated 'parking charges' was sufficiently prominent and it is clear that the requirements for forming a contract (i.e. consideration flowing between the two parties, offer, acceptance and fairness and transparency of terms offered in good faith) were not satisfied.

4. No genuine pre-estimate of loss
The charge of £100 is punitive and unreasonable, contravening the BPA Code of Practice section 19. UK Parking Control Ltd must therefore be required to explain their 'charge' by providing POPLA with a detailed financial appraisal which evidences the genuine pre-estimated amount of loss in this particular car park for this alleged contravention. However, with or without any 'breach', the cost of parking enforcement would still have been the same and there was no loss or damage caused so UK Parking Control Ltd have no cause of action to pursue this charge. The fact that the recommended maximum level in section 19.5 (“we would not expect this amount to be more than £100”) has not been exceeded merely means that the operator does not have to justify the amount in advance. In no way does it absolve the operator of their responsibility to base the figure on a genuine pre-estimate of loss, or to comply with section 19.6 which states that the charge “cannot be punitive or unreasonable”.

UK Parking Control Ltd cannot include their operational tax-deductible business running costs - for example, costs of signage, staffing and dealing later with the appeals, or hefty write-off costs. This would not represent a loss resulting from a breach of the alleged parking contract and in any case I believe UK Parking Control Ltd are likely to be paid by their client - so any such payment income must be balanced within the breakdown UK Parking Control Ltd supply and must be shown in the contract, which leads me to appeal point 5 below.

5. 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, UK Parking Control Ltd 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 UK Parking Control Ltd to strict proof to provide POPLA and myself with an un-redacted, contemporaneous copy of the contract between UK Parking Control Ltd 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 UK Parking Control Ltd.

5. No contract between driver and UK Parking Control Ltd
As per the property lease signed and agreed to in 2015, there is no mention of UK Parking Control Ltd, or any other parking company or third party to manage the car park in question. There is no mention of requiring to display a permit to park in the space provided with the property. As per appeal point 2 above, the vehicle was parked while observing the requirements of the property lease therefore there is no contract between the keeper and UK Parking Control Ltd.

The form the resident signed adequately (or at all) did not warn of the AMOUNT of any parking charge nor drew attention to any further terms which could apply to the contract at the time of the permit being handed over. It is too late to bring other terms into a contract (not even those on a sign) if these terms were not part of the agreement made at the time of the permit being provided. They were not. The residents had no idea that a 'fine' of £100 could possibly apply.

In any case, even if POPLA consider signage to be relevant in this instance, the driver was not adequately informed of the terms nor warned 'prominently in large letters' of the actual sum of the parking charge anywhere, which fails 2(3) of Schedule 4 outright.


This concludes my POPLA appeal.

Yours faithfully,

catfunt

Point 4 - no GPEOL - they will counter with the Beavis argument. You will need to explain in your appeal why the Beavis ruling does not apply to your case.

stevewilliams_2

catfunt wrote: »

Point 4 - no GPEOL - they will counter with the Beavis argument. You will need to explain in your appeal why the Beavis ruling does not apply to your case.

Thanks. Never heard of that, will look in to it now.

stevewilliams_2

This Beavis bloke has caused us a headache hasn't he!! It's non stop reading.....

beamerguy

stevewilliams wrote: »

This Beavis bloke has caused us a headache hasn't he!! It's non stop reading.....

Well NO, Barry Beavis stuck up for his rights, he did it for all of us, hence the petition which we are waiting a reply from government
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/111925

Very few people will go this far to help you and I, Barry did

The headache comes from the Supreme Court who made a severe error on behalf of the public, sad but true

stevewilliams_2

beamerguy wrote: »

Well NO, Barry Beavis stuck up for his rights, he did it for all of us, hence the petition which we are waiting a reply from government
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/111925

Very few people will go this far to help you and I, Barry did

The headache comes from the Supreme Court who made a severe error on behalf of the public, sad but true

Fair point, although it was meant to be tongue in cheek....

I'll put my name to the petition now, thanks.

BiscuitMuncher

You might want to change the heading of point 2. Vehicle issued the PCN is considered to be a genuine resident

I copied that too from someone else's appeal.

Make sure you understand what you are writing and double check everything.

stevewilliams_2

Hadn't noticed that, thanks.

Coupon-mad

You need to make it clear that the driver has not been identified, so I think I would change 'I' to 'we' here and add the line shown:

I was extremely dismayed to hear of a £100 ‘parking charge notice’ displayed on the vehicle of which I am registered keeper for. The vehicle in question was parked in a residential car park, separated by flat number of which and we had been informed by the letting agent that no permit was required. The space in which it was parked is for sole use of that flat number of which I am also the registered tenant, however the driver has never been identified and my appeal is as the keeper only.

As POPLA have been damn stoooopid as regards keeper liability recently, even telling keeper appellants that they are liable when there has been no NTK (like here) I suggest adding a second point under the first appeal point and move your numbering down:


2. The driver has never been identified - no driver liability is possible.

Just to make it clear, I am appealing only as the registered keeper and there is no situation under which I can be held liable. In the absence of a NTK there can be no 'keeper liability' as already stated and in the absence of evidence as to who was driving, neither can there be held to be any 'driver liability' in this case. POPLA please note: I cannot be held liable in law.