Parking Ticketing Limited

mrsunnybunny

Today, I have received the following reply via email. This is in response to an appeal submitted using the standard blue form.

I'd much appreciate any suggestions on how to proceed!

Dear Sir/Madam, PCN Ref: [...] Registration: [...]

Thank you for your letter of appeal against the Parking Charge Notice issued under the terms of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.

There are Warning Signs situated on the site that state; Warning, Private Property, vehicles parked in this area must park within a correct marked bay and clearly display a valid PTL authorized permit in the windscreen. Failure to comply will result in the vehicle being issued with a Parking Charge Notice without any notice given. Having carefully considered the evidence provided by you and the Warden we have decided to reject your appeal for the reason below.

As the vehicle was not parked within a correct marked bay, displaying a valid PTL permit in the windscreen, (having checked photographs of when the vehicle was issued with the PCN), you can view the photographic evidence yourself online at https://www.payptl.co.uk ) as clearly stated on the warning signs, the vehicle was issued with a Parking Charge Notice.

We have considered your reason for appeal but unfortunately the warden has to see the permit clearly displayed in the windscreen and the vehicle parked within a correct marked bay on the particular day when inspecting.

We would advise that we are registered with the BPA and Audited by the BPA I can assure that our signage is at the standard legal requirement.

Signage clearly states vehicles parked in this area must park within a correct marked bay and clearly display a valid PTL authorized permit in the windscreen. We would also advise that there are 62 signs installed at the location you received a parking charge notice with warning signs stating parking conditions apply at the entrance as you enter the location.

We are sorry but we won’t be accepting your appeal on this occasion as the warden acted accordingly to the signage at the location.

We are not able to take into account mitigating circumstances. That an appellant feels he or she had good reason for breaching the terms of parking is not a reason for which we can allow an appeal. When parking on private land, a motorist freely enters into an agreement to abide by the conditions of parking in return for permission to park. It is the motorist’s responsibility to ensure that he or she abides by any clearly displayed conditions of parking that are clearly displayed on the signs.

Supreme Court of the United Kingdom – Landmark court decision

On the 4th November 2015 a landmark judgement was handed down in favour of a parking operator who took a motorist to court for non-payment of a parking charge. Further details on the case can be found here - https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2013-0280-judgment.pdf ). This case was seen as an important “test case” due to the complex legal arguments used by both sides. Therefore falls outside “The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999” and falls also outside Genuine Pre-Estimate of Loss.

The responsibility to observe and obey parking restrictions is yours and as we operated correctly in this
Instance due to the vehicle being incorrectly parked we will not be accepting your appeal, on this occasion.

You have now reached the end of our internal appeals procedure.

Due to above you appeal is refused, you now have the following options:
1 Pay the PCN at the prevailing price of £100 within 14 days of above date. Please note that after this time the Parking Charge Notice will be passed to our third party debt recovery company whereby further charges may be applied.

2 Make an appeal to POPLA-Independent Appeals Service within 28 days by visiting https://www.popla.co.uk and completing the appeal form online quoting POPLA appeal reference [...]. If you prefer to complete your appeal in writing please contact Parking Ticketing Ltd on 0845 689 45 45 to request the POPLA appeal forms.


3 Please be advised that if you opt for independent arbitration of your case, the ability to pay the parking charge at the reduced rate of £60 will be at an end, the full charge of £100.00 will be payable should your appeal be unsuccessful. If you opt to pay the parking charge you will be unable to appeal to POPLA. Please visit https://www.ptlappeals.co.uk/refused-appeals to view other motorists appeals to POPLA against ourselves, that were refused for various appeal reasons, meaning the discounted rate of £60 no longer applied and the PCN was at the original full cost of £100.


4 If you choose to do nothing, we will seek to recover the monies owed to us via our debt recovery procedures which will lead to costs being added to the original charge of £100 and we may proceed with Court action against you. Please visit https://www.ptlappeals.co.uk/county-court to view County Court Judgments where we have been successful in obtaining judgment for non-payment of the PCN costing the defendant at least 3 times the original amount of the original £60 PCN. We do not enter into multiple appeals.


Yours sincerely


Appeals Dept.

Pay On-line: https://www.payptl.co.uk Phone Pay: 0844 848 0814



By law we are also required to inform you that Ombudsman Services (https://www.ombudsman-services.org/) provides an alternative dispute resolution service that would be competent to deal with your appeal. However, we have not chosen to participate in their alternative dispute resolution service. As such should you wish to appeal then you must do so to POPLA as explained above


Parking Ticketing Ltd
83 Ducie Street
Manchester
M1 2JR

mrsunnybunny

What a joke. Few minutes later I receive another email, identical expect with a different reference number, which is a response to someone else's appeal but clearly emailed to me in error.

Ralph-y

it just shows that they really did look at your appeal before making a decision

is there any address / contact details for the other one ?

Ralph:cool:

mrsunnybunny

No, not for the other one. Just a number plate and relevant reference numbers.

Ralph-y

wait for further advice ......

but It would be tempting to go to the website and see if you can find out more using the reg / reference numbers .......

the other keeper might like to know his/her details are being given out ....

and might never even know about it until debt collectors or LBC letters appear

anyway .... you now need to start reading up on POPLA appeals in preparation for yours ...

good luck

Ralph:cool:

mrsunnybunny

Ralph-y wrote: »

wait for further advice ......

but It would be tempting to go to the website and see if you can find out more using the reg / reference numbers .......

the other keeper might like to know his/her details are being given out ....

and might never even know about it until debt collectors or LBC letters appear

anyway .... you now need to start reading up on POPLA appeals in preparation for yours ...

good luck

Ralph:cool:

Will do thanks; slightly confused about the NTK though and what I should be expecting

Coupon-mad

The NEWBIES thread tells you to search the forum for similar POPLA appeals already written in the last couple of months. Then show us your draft based on the recent ones you find.

We would not expect you to get a NTK at all, which makes it obvious what your first point of appeal is and why you again wait until day 28!

If you don't know what I am on about, you will when you search and read other similar PTL or 'permit POPLA' (a suggested search term!) appeals from 2016. DO NOT look at older ones.

mrsunnybunny

A draft appeal below; any feedback would be much appreciated. I have not yet received the NTK and there is time left. I will thus wait until day 56 is over and then use the wording below

Dear POPLA Adjudicator,

As a law abiding citizen who always pays his way, I was extremely upset to hear of a £100 ‘parking charge notice’ displayed on the vehicle of which I am registered keeper for. The parking charge notice suggested “Invalid Permit” as the reason for issue.
The vehicle in question was parked in a residential car park and does hold a valid permit. The space in which it was parked is for sole use of that vehicle and at the time in question, the permit was displayed in the windscreen, but had slipped half-way out of view. Even so, both parking bay number and permit number were still visible as evidenced by my photo (see below).

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 and displayed the permit
3: The vehicle was displaying a permit on the windscreen
4: No genuine pre-estimate of loss
5: No standing or authority to pursue charges nor form contracts with drivers
6: No contract formed to pay £100 due to unclear sporadic signage where the parking charge is now prominent.

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 Parking Ticketing 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 21/04/2016 and from my understanding the NTK was required to reach me by 16/05/2016. 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 Parking Ticketing 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 in 2015 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 and displayed the permit
With regards to the PCN, the vehicle in question was in possession of a valid permit at the time of contravention. It was parked in the same space for several month without any issues. As shown by the photo below the parking permit was displayed on the windscreen and both permit number and bay number were visible. As the pictures shows that while the permit slid down a little, the relevant details were still visible. I anticipate that any pictures provided by Parking Ticketing Ltd would have been taken from an angle as to create the impression that permit number and bay number were not visible. My picture shows that this is not the case.
Below you will find a picture of the permit in the vehicle’s windscreen as I found it when the PCN was received. As shown in the picture, the permit had slipped half-way out of view, but all relevant information still visible.

[picture]

Further it is noted that if for example all of the ‘resident only’ spaces were occupied by valid residents, regardless of whether permits were displayed, Parking Ticketing 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 for which they hold a lease, especially not when a permit is displayed.

3. Unreasonable and unfair terms – no contract agreed to pay £100. Inadequate signage
The only notices are up on walls, away from the single light source in the car park area, which is not a 'sign' nor does it communicate full contractual terms & conditions. The residential car park in which the parking bay is located is generally very dark and no signage was clearly visible by the vehicle. Any photos supplied by Parking Ticketing Ltd to POPLA will no doubt show the signage 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 Parking Ticketing Ltd signs are one of many pieces of information in the clutter of this residential car park. It is noted that the pillar next to which the car is parked does not display any notices by Parking Ticketing Ltd, as evidenced by the photo below.

[picture]

As such, I require Parking Ticketing 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. Parking Ticketing 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 Parking Ticketing 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”.
Parking Ticketing 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 Parking Ticketing Ltd are likely to be paid by their client - so any such payment income must be balanced within the breakdown Parking Ticketing Ltd supply and must be shown in the contract, which leads me to appeal point 5 below.
In addition, there can be no loss as this is a car park for the use of residents and their visitors as it is the resident’s own vehicle which is parked in his dedicated space.

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

6. No contract formed to pay £100 due to unclear sporadic signage where the parking charge is not prominent.
No contract can have been formed between the driver and Parking Ticketing Ltd because the signage is inadequate, unlit and the “charge” is not clearly displayed in large lettering. The ruling of Parking Eye v Beavis is irrelevant in this case as the parking spaces are for the enjoyment of the residents, and are not offered as spaces for public parking. A vehicle parking in his own dedicated is not depriving any other resident of their allotted parking space. Parking Eye v Beavis is only relevant to a public car park with a high turnover of public vehicles.
As per the parking bay lease signed and agreed to in 2015, there is no mention of Parking Ticketing Ltd, or any other parking company or third party to manage the car park in question. As per appeal point 5 above, the vehicle was parked while observing the requirements of the property lease therefore there is no contract between the keeper and Parking Ticketing Ltd.
Below you will find a picture of the permit the vehicle holds, as provided by the management company.

[picture]

Neither the permit itself nor the form the resident signed adequately (or at all) warned 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,

{Name of Keeper}

Coupon-mad

No Genuine pre-estimate of loss

If you found that in a 2016 version more recently than March, I'd be surprised...

mrsunnybunny

Coupon-mad wrote: »

If you found that in a 2016 version more recently than March, I'd be surprised...

No, not past March. Do you recommend just taking it out then? I left in as thought it couldn't hurt and it was still used in Jan/Feb

With regards to "1: The notice to keeper is not compliant with the POFA 2012 – no keeper liability", is it worth mentioning at all (and giving proof) that the keep at the time the PCN was received was out of the country and could not have driven the car themselves?