UKPC Parking Fine Help!!

Trante01

Hi Guys, I am a newbie here. I have never dealt with a parking ticket before. Basically I went to the cinema for a 13:20 showing at Vue cinema in Valley Park retail park in Purley. This is a free car park open to customers. I left the cinema around 4pm and car park was grid locked it took me 50 minutes just to get out of my space, Then a further 1 hour just to move about 10 feet. It was my sisters 18th birthday and my boyfriends 28th birthday, We had to be at a family meal for 7pm. I had no choice but to pull into the first space I saw and leave my car and get my dad to pick us up. I had to park over two bays due to cars trying to pull out being over the bays and cars behind me stuck in the traffic. I came back around 4 hours later to collect my car to find a UKPC parking fine on the windscreen.

I have appealed this and it has been rejected no surprise.

I have a POPLA code but will I be able to win this, I am reluctant to pay £60 for a free car park especially when it is so poorly laid out it caused hours of traffic. I was a paying customer at the retail park. if anything the car park lost the businesses there money as people could not get in or out.

They also have not loaded any photos on the website so i am not sure they actually have any?

I do have the messages I sent to my family advising them of the issue in the car park at the time and stating that I am going to have to leave my car and get picked up.

Any advise would be great.

Thanks

Danielle

Half_way

what have the cinema said about this?

Redx

just read and follow the advice in the NEWBIES sticky thread, and draft your popla appeal and post it here (no personal info or references) for critique

did you admit to being the driver in your first appeal ? I hope not

will you win this ? who knows , but hopefully YES with our help

complain to the landowner too and demand a cancellation , that is your best option

do both , ie:- popla appeal and get a cancellation

its not a fine , its an invoice, so dont use the f word again please, especially not in your complaint or appeal

Coupon-mad

I have a POPLA code but will I be able to win this,

Should be able to; various ways to beat UKPC at POPLA including on unreadable terms on a pale sign. Use their unclear sign photo on their website, screenshot the page, crop it and re-size and put it into your word document appeal you'll be working on and showing us.

Did you send the newbies thread template after the windscreen PCN not saying who was driving? Or did you appeal as driver before you found this forum?

And did they ever send you a 'Notice to Keeper' letter a month after the PCN?

beamerguy

Danielle,

Understand what this rabble is all about

PAST HISTORY OF UKPC
http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=ukpc

Trante01

Hi All, Thanks for the replies. I haven't contacted the cinema should I? I have already owned up to being the driver before I found this site. They have not sent me a notice keeper only a letter refusing my appeal. I will contact the cinema and will also draft up a POPLA appeal on here and will post shortly.

Thanks Guys

Coupon-mad

I haven't contacted the cinema should I?

Yes because it's easier than POPLA and they might agree to email/phone to cancel it for you.

Trante01

Morning All, So the cinema replied with the below: It is a Retail Leisure Park I am not sure who the landowners actually are? I have drafted up a POPLA appeal I will post in the next post

Dear Danielle,

Thank you for your email.

I am sorry to learn of your disappointment with the parking charges at the Croydon Purley Way Vue. Please be advised that we do not own or operate the car parks at any of the complexes and centres in which our cinemas are located.

Nonetheless, I would like to assure you that your comments will be addressed with the cinema's management team, so that they can review this internally with the operators of the car park. You may also find it beneficial to contact the operators of the parking directly, to air your views regarding this.

Kind Regards,

Demi
Customer Service Adviser

Trante01

Right how does the below look? I have worked out I have until the 16th May to send my appeal and they have until the 26th May to send out the NTK which kind of sucks! Wish I had found this site before I appealed!!

Dear POPLA,

POPLA Reference No: xxxxxxxx


I am the registered keeper of the vehicle, registration XXXXXXX. I received a parking charge from UK Parking Control Ltd (UKPC) for a parking charge of £60 issued on 28/03/2016 for an alleged breach of contractual terms and conditions by the driver of the vehicle. I have denied all liability to UKPC. Following the rejection of my appeal to UKPC I wish to appeal to POPLA on the following grounds:







1. The Notice to Keeper is not compliant with the POFA 2012 – no keeper liability
2. The parking charge of £60 does not represent a genuine pre-estimate of loss
3. UKPC have no proprietary interest in the land and no standing
4. The penalty charge is unlawful
5. Signage does not comply with the BPA Code of Practice


A detailed explanation of these points is given below.



1) NOTICE TO KEEPER NOT COMPLIANT WITH THE POFA 2012
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 NCP. 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 28/03/2016 and from my understanding the NTK was required to reach me by 23/05/2016 as of the 15/05/2016 I have still not received this. 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.
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 in 2015 that a parking charge with no NTK cannot be enforced against the registered keeper.


2) NO GENUINE PRE-ESTIMATE OF LOSS
The Notice to Keeper from UKPC alleges that the driver of the vehicle “breached the terms and conditions of parking” and so the charge levied must be damages that UKPC are seeking in redress.
The car park at which the alleged contract breach occurred is “free” and there was no parking charge levied. No damage nor obstruction was caused so there can have been no loss arising from this incident.
UKPC cannot demonstrate any initial quantifiable loss. The parking charge must be an estimate of likely losses flowing from the alleged breach in order to be potentially enforceable. Where there is an initial loss directly caused by the presence of a vehicle in breach of the conditions (e.g. loss of revenue from failure to pay a tariff) this loss will be obvious. An initial loss is fundamental to a parking charge and, without it, costs incurred by issuing the parking charge notice cannot be said to have been caused by the driver’s alleged breach. Heads of cost such as normal operational costs and tax-deductible back office functions, debt collection, etc. cannot possibly flow as a direct consequence of this parking event. UKPC would have been in the same position had the parking charge notice not been issued, and would have had many of the same business overheads even if no vehicles breached any terms at all.


3) CONTRACT WITH THE LANDOWNER — NOT COMPLIANT WITH THE BPA CODE OF PRACTICE AND NO LEGAL STATUS TO OFFER PARKING OR ENFORCE CHARGES
UKPC do not own the land mentioned in their Notice to Keeper and have not provided any evidence that they are lawfully entitled to demand money from a driver or keeper. I require UKPC to produce a copy of the contract with the landowner as I believe it is not compliant with the CoP and, without it, UKPC have no legal standing nor authority at this site which could impact on visiting drivers.
If UKPC produce a ‘witness statement’ I contend that there is no proof whatsoever that the alleged signatory has ever seen the relevant contract terms or, indeed, is even an employee of the landowner. I contend, if such a witness statement is submitted instead of the landowner contract itself, that this should be disregarded as unreliable and not proving full BPA compliance nor legal standing.


4) UNLAWFUL PENALTY CHARGE
Since there was no genuine loss or damage and a breach of contract has been alleged in a free car park, this ‘charge’ can only be considered an unlawful route of revenue generation. UKPC's own website states:
“Frequently Asked Questions
How much would it cost us to use your parking management services?
Nothing at all! We provide parking management services to our clients free of charge (subject to site survey).”
This indicates that UKPC generates revenues from these parking notices alone. Therefore, this is not a loss, rather a revenue source for them. Hence, it is against the principles of parking charges and should be quashed.


5) INADEQUATE SIGNAGE – NO CONTRACT AGREED TO PAY £100

The wording on the car park signage regarding PCN charges was small and unclear. The only notices are high up on posts. Inadequate 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. Nothing about KPS’s onerous inflated 'parking charges' was sufficiently prominent on their signage 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.


Yours faithfully

Herzlos

Go back to the cinema and tell them that if they can't cancel it, you want them to get the landowners to instruct their agent to cancel it, or you will not be visiting the cinema again.

What was the actual reason on the ticket?

You should be able to make all the usual POPLA appeal points (poor signs, no authority), but you should also be able to claim "frustration of contract"; even if there was a contract in place, your breach was forced by the traffic situation; you had no option but to abandon the car and were unable to park within a single bay.

It might help if you can get something from the cinema to confirm the traffic situation.

The Keeper liability part (point 1) doesn't apply here, because you've identified yourself as the driver. They don't need to fall back on keeper liability.

Coupon-mad

Trante01 wrote: »

Morning All, So the cinema replied with the below: It is a Retail Leisure Park I am not sure who the landowners actually are?

Google the name of the retail park, easy to find who runs it. Don't look for just a specific 'website' - look at all articles & adverts for units for rental by stores. The site managing agent's email is normally there.