Parking fine - 6 hour ticket- over stayed 17min

Coupon-mad

You are joking? You already HAVE the NTK. The NEWBIES thread tells you it's the first letter. Obviously that's when you appeal.

Why did you read paragraph 9? Can't see the point in your case. This is so simple.

All you needed to do was read the NEWBIES thread and submit the appeal online that I've already set out there in blue writing, calling yourself the KEEPER.

mrbg07546

Ilford lidl.

Northlakes

So you can't have spent 6 hours in Lidl but did you spend anything at the other retailers on this site?

Have you complained to any of them?

This is usually the best action in the first instance.

A well known site this. This poster complained to Farmfoods and got the PCN cancelled.

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=85390

mrbg07546

Re: PCN No. ....................

I challenge this 'PCN' as keeper of the car and I will complain to the landowner about the matter if it is not cancelled.

I believe that your signs fail the test of 'large lettering' and prominence, as established in ParkingEye Ltd Your unremarkable and obscure signs were not seen by the driver, are in very small print and the terms are not readable to drivers before they park.


In addition to the above. ;the parking ticket (after unloading with a pram and child) was issued at 11:04 and the parking space was exited at 17:12. By law a grace period after ticket expires of 10 minutes applys.

Further, I understand you do not own the car park and you have given me no information about your policy with the landowner or on site businesses, to cancel such a charge. So please supply that policy as required under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. I believe the driver may well be eligible for cancellation and you have omitted clear information about the process for complaints including a geographical address of the landowner.

There will be no admissions as to who was driving and no assumptions can be drawn. You must either rely on the POFA 2012 and offer me a POPLA code, or cancel the charge.

I have kept proof of submission of this appeal and look forward to your reply.

Yours faithfully,

mrbg07546

lidl says its a retail park and cant do anything

Coupon-mad

So move your complaint to the retail site owner or agent which runs the place, easy to Google for any retail park.

mrbg07546

Ok appeal rejected - as its a maximun stay car park (6 hours).

so i have now used a template and added point 5 .

Also - the parking fine was to mywife and the appeal letter to myself. My wifes name is on car, should i specify shes the registered keeper or does that not matter?


ParkingEye PCN, reference code *******
POPLA Code: *********

I am the registered keeper and I wish to appeal a recent parking charge from ParkingEye. I submit the points below to show that I am not liable for the parking charge:

1) No genuine pre-estimate of loss
2) No standing or authority to pursue charges nor form contracts with drivers
3) No valid contract formed between ParkingEye and the driver
4) The ANPR system is unreliable and neither synchronised nor accurate
5) Grace Period and Disability Discrimination

1) No genuine pre-estimate of loss.
This car park is a free shopping car park limited to 2 hour. It is alleged the driver overstayed in this car park by 17 minutes. It was the end of the shopping day on a Saturday and the car park was almost empty. Therefore there can be no loss as a result from this car park event.

In ParkingEye v Smith at Manchester County Court in 2011, claim number 1XJ81016, the original claim of £240 was deemed an unrecoverable penalty, unrelated to damages incurred and the only sum that could be recovered was deemed to be £15 (the amount of the pay and display fee for more than one visit). The entirety of the parking charge must be a genuine pre-estimate of loss in order to be enforceable. As the PCN sum is massively inflated, I require ParkingEye to submit a breakdown of how this sum was calculated prior to the parking event, as being capable of directly flowing from a minor alleged breach.

The ParkingEye notice to keeper alleges ’breach of terms/failure to comply’ and as such, the landowner/occupier (not their agent) can only pursue liquidated damages directly following from the parking event. This might be, for example, a reasonable sum based purely upon the alleged lost parking revenue, or even loss of retail revenue at a shopping centre if another car was prevented from parking. However, this is not the case because the occupants of the car recall that the car park was less than half full on arrival.

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. Given that ParkingEye charge the same lump sum for a 17 minute overstay as they would for 3 hours, and the same fixed charge applies to any alleged contravention (whether serious/damaging or trifling), it is clear there has been no regard paid to establishing that this charge is a genuine pre-estimate of loss caused by this incident in this car park.

The DfT Guidance and BPA Code of Practice require that a parking charge for an alleged breach must be an estimate of losses flowing from the incident. ParkingEye cannot change this requirement so they have no option but to show POPLA their genuine pre-estimate of loss for this charge, not some subsequently penned ‘commercial justification’ statement they may have devised afterwards (since this would not be a pre-estimate):

The British Parking Association Code of Practice uses the word ‘MUST’:
“19.5 If the parking charge that the driver is being asked to pay is for a breach of contract or act of trespass, this charge must be based on the genuine pre-estimate of loss that you suffer.”

Neither is this charge ‘commercially justified’. In answer to that proposition from a PPC which had got over-excited about the ParkingEye v Beavis small claims decision (now being taken to the court of appeal by Mr Beavis anyway) POPLA Assessor Chris Adamson has stated in June 2014 that:

“In each case that I have seen from the higher courts,… it is made clear that a charge cannot be commercially justified where the dominant purpose of the charge to deter the other party from breach. This is most clearly stated in Lordsvale Finance Plc v Bank of Zambia [1996] QB 752, quoted approvingly at paragraph 15 in Cine Bes Filmcilik Ve Yapimcilik & Anor v United International Pictures & Ors [2003] EWHC Civ 1669 when Coleman J states a clause should not be shrunk down as a penalty, “If the increase could in the circumstances be explained as commercially justifiable, provided always that its dominant purpose was not to deter the other party from breach”.

This supports the principal 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 of damages must be compensatory in nature rather than be punitive.”

2) 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. This has not been produced by the operator in their rejection statement so I have no proof that such a document is in existence. I contend that ParkingEye merely hold a bare licence to supply and maintain (non compliant) signs and to post out ‘tickets’ as a deterrant. 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. This is required so that POPLA and myself can check that it allows this Operator to make conracts with drivers themselves and provides them with full authority to pursue charges, including a right to pursue them in court in their own name. Please note that a witness statement to the effect that a contract is in place will not be sufficient to provide sufficient detail of the contract terms (such as revenue sharing, genuine intentions of these restrictions and charges, set aounts to charge for each stated contravention, etc.). In any case, ParkingEye’s witness statements have been exposed as photocopy templates from clients who may well have no knowledge of any individual parking event and the signatory may never even have seen the contract.

3) No valid contract formed between ParkingEye and the driver

I believe that ParkingEye place their signs too high and any photographs supplied by ParkingEye to POPLA will no doubt show the signs with the misleading aid of a close up camera & flash and the angle mat well not show how high the signs are. As such, I require ParkingEye to state the height of each sign in their response.

Unreadable signage breaches Appendix B of the BPA Code of Practice which states that terms on entrance signs must be clearly readable without the 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. The driver was not aware of any charges as there was no clear signage anywhere near the area where the car was parked. 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) The ANPR system is unreliable and neither synchronised nor accurate
If ParkingEye’s ANPR records are completely reliable (which I contest) then this Operator claims that the car was in the car park for 36 minutes, yet their evidence shows no parking time, just photos of a car driving in and out which does not discount the possibility of a double visit that afternoon. It is unreasonable for this operator to record the start of the ‘parking time’ as the moment of arrival in moving traffic. The exit photo is not evidence of ‘parking time’ at all.

This Operator is obliged to ensure their ANPR equipment is maintained as described in paragraph 21.3 of the BPA Code of Practice and to have signs stating how the data will be stored/used. I say that ParkingEye have failed to clearly inform drivers about the cameras and what the data will be used for and how it will be used and stored. If there was such a sign at all then it was not prominent, since the driver did not see it. I have also seen no evidence that they have complied with the other requirements in that section of the code in terms of ANPR logs and maintenance and I put this Operator to strict proof of full ANPR compliance.

In addition I request the entire reliability of the system. I require that ParkingEye present records as to the dates and times of when the cameras at this car park were checked, adjusted, calibrated, synchronised with the timer which stamps the photos and generally maintained to ensure the accuracy of the dates and times of any ANPR images. This is important because the entirety of the charge is founded on two images purporting to show my vehicle entering and exiting at specific times. It is vital that this Operator produces evidence in response and explain to POPLA how their system differs (if at all) from the flawed ANPR system which was wholly responsible for the court loss recently in ParkingEye v Fox-Jones on 8th Nov 2013. That case was dismissed when the judge said the evidence from ParkingEye was fundamentally flawed because the synchronisation of the camera pictures with the timer had been called into question and the operator could not rebut the point.

So, in addition to showing their maintenance records, I require ParkingEye to show evidence to rebut the following assertion. I suggest that in the case of my vehicle being in this car park, a local camera took the image but a remote server added the time stamp. As the two are disconnected by the internet and do not have a common “time synchronisation system”, there is no proof that the time stamp added is actually the exact time of the image. The operator appears to use WIFI which introduces a delay through buffering, so “live” is not really “live”. Hence without a synchronised time stamp there is no evidence that the image is ever time stamped with an accurate time. Therefore I contend that this ANPR “evidence” from the cameras in this car park is just as unreliable and unsynchronised as the evidence in the Fox-Jones case.

5) Grace Period & Disability Discrimination

In the BPA code of practice (version 6 October 2015) – Section 13 it explains a reasonable grace period.
The ANPR system of parking Eye claimed 6 hours 17 minutes from entering and leaving the car park. (The ticket was for 6 hours and was purchase around 8-10 minutes after entering the car park)
Under point 13 the fine should not apply due to the following.
• On entering the car park – establishing location of signs and reading them takes time. Following this parking car up and then locating and purchasing from the ticket machine
• Reasonable period to leave the car park.

In addition to the above, I have dyslexia/ADHD which makes tasks such as reading signs slower than usual than the typical individual. In section 16 it states reasonable adjustments must be made to remove barriers against disabled people. This is also supported by the Equality Act.



I request that my appeal is allowed.

Yours Faithfully,

nigelbb

mrbg07546 wrote: »

1) No genuine pre-estimate of loss

Putting this as your Number 1 appeal point will almost certainly result in your POPLA appeal being refused. As it's a maximum 6 hour stay I would not use this argument at all as there was no option to stay longer & the £100 penalty will be seen as legitimate after the PE vs Beavis decision in the Supreme Court

Coupon-mad

Also - the parking fine was to my wife and the appeal letter to myself. My wifes name is on car, should i specify shes the registered keeper or does that not matter?

Do you mean you appealed? Your wife should have done, as the NEWBIES thread says, the registered keeper appeals.

Never mind, at least you used the template and called yourself the 'keeper' but this wasn't ideal. Should have been in your wife's name.

The POPLA appeal you've found is too old. You cannot argue 'no genuine pre-estimate of loss' in 2016, due to ParkingEye v Beavis which you will read about in other people's 2016 POPLA appeals. So, search the forum for the keywords:

ParkingEye POPLA

..and only read 2016 examples. You will find several to crib from; start again I would say.

And here at the end you've given away who might have been driving. No! We hope you didn't add this sort of giveaway sentence to the first appeal?

In addition to the above, I have dyslexia/ADHD which makes tasks such as reading signs slower than usual than the typical individual. In section 16 it states reasonable adjustments must be made to remove barriers against disabled people. This is also supported by the Equality Act.

After you appealed in your name (which did not match the name on the PCN) did ParkingEye then send you a fresh copy of the PCN in YOUR name, or not?

And this 17 minutes...what was the difference in minutes from arrival past the cameras, until you bought a ticket and what was the difference in minutes, after expiry of the ticket compared with the time when the ANPR 'out' camera caught your car? In other words, please tell us how this 17 minutes was split before and after the paid-for time?

Or was it 17 mins overstay at the END plus more minutes (how many?) before you paid & displayed?

mrbg07546

I appealed on the form, put my name but didnt put i was registered keeper. or disclose who i was. parking eye did not send a fresh copy of PCN in my name.


6 hour 17 minutes. difference between anpr and ticket is about 9 minutes.(lost ticket). but i remember clearly. and about 8 minutes to load car and leave. so the 17 minutes is a combination of start and end.


i did not refer in that way in the initial appeal letter (dyslexia adhd)/