Railway Byelaw 14 / Indigo / ZZPS / Wright Hassall

terrytibbs1234

I'm hoping someone may be able to give me some advice on this matter as I have searched all over this forum, PePiPoo, and various other sites found via Google, and haven't found the exact same situation. Also, I hope posting this here might help other people who find themselves in the same situation.

Apologies for the lengthily post, but I thought it best to give a lot of information upfront to hopefully head off any questions, and to make the contents of the letters more easily searchable for others in future.

- In April 2016, an acquaintance of mine parked at a railway station car park. When the driver arrived at the car park the barriers were open and no tickets were being issued by the machine. Once parked, the driver found a pay and display machine but was still unable to obtain a ticket. The driver checked other nearby cars and couldn't find any with tickets displayed, so thought parking restrictions were currently lifted. On exiting the car park several hours later, the barriers were still open and no ticket was requested.

- 13 days later, a 'Penalty Notice by Post' was received stating:

This above-mentioned vehicle was parked on Railway Assets (Railway Property) in contravention of the Railway Byelaws ("Byelaws") as displayed on the signage at the location. Photographic evidence can be viewed at www [dot] ipaymypcn [dot] net.

An offence has been committed by breaching Byelaw 14; having identified that an offence has occurred, your data has been released by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency as our client has reasonable cause (under Regulation 27(1)(e) of the Road Vehicles (Registration and Licensing) Regulations 2002); their records indicate that you were the registered keeper of the vehicle on the date of the offence.

As a result, a penalty, which has been issued under section 219 of the Transport Act 2000 as amended under the Railways Act 2005 of £100.00 is due within 28 days of the date of issue of this notice and you should now pay this penalty immediately. Further administration and debt recovery charges will apply if this remains unpaid after 28 days.

You are legally liable for this penalty even if you were not the driver at the time. If the penalty is paid within 14 days of the date of issue, a discount of the penalty to £60.00 will apply.

- 28 days after the date of issue, an appeal was lodged via email to ipaymypcn [dot] net (as per the appeals process stated in the letter) outlining the circumstances given above.

- No response was received from the appeal and 14 days after it was lodged, a letter from ZZPS was received:

We wrote to you previously about this penalty, and according to us, the penalty remains unpaid.

The penalty is an offer for you to make payment of an alternative charge under Railway Byelaws. If the penalty is not paid, then our Client is entitled to commence a private criminal prosecution against you for your breach of Railway Byelaw 14. This could result in you being fined up to £1,000 (level 3 on the standard scale, set out in section 37 of the Criminal Justice Act 1982.

By breaching Railway Byelaw 14, you have committed an offence. The penalty has been issued under section 219 of the Transport Act 2000 as emended under the Railways Act 2005.

Our next course of action is to pass this account to the law firm Wright Hassall LLP. We would prefer to get to the bottom of this with you, without the need to use lawyers. However, we are duty sound to advise you that if this does get passed to solicitors, the balance owing will be increased by a further £36.

The criminal prosecution process is not simple; if you need debt advice, places where this can be sought are detailed on the reverse of this letter.

It is in your interests to either get in touch or pay this penalty and we again invite you to do so.

- Although the letter starts ‘We wrote to you previously…’, this was the first letter received from ZZPS. As this is a pretty standard debt collector letter it was ignored.

- 31 days after that letter, another debt collection letter was received, this time from Wright Hassall LLP:

We have been instructed by ZZPS Limited, who are acting on behalf of Indigo Park Solutions UK Limited in connection with the recovery of the above debt, which has been incurred following the failure to repay the Penatly Notice detailed above, and we require you to make payment in full within the next 14 days.

Failure to make payment in full or contact us to discuss repayment of this debt may result in us recommending to the Car Park Operator that the matter be enforced through criminal court proceedings. Such proceedings would require your attendance before the Magistrates Court.

And that brings us up to date. So my question is: what would you guys recommend is done next? Continue to ignore and risk criminal proceedings? Reply and state the charge is being disputed and an appeal was lodged? Accept a good run has been had, but it’s now best to pay the charge? Any help gratefully received!

If you’ve made it this far, thanks very much for reading!

Coupon-mad

28 days after the date of issue, an appeal was lodged via email to ipaymypcn [dot] net (as per the appeals process stated in the letter) outlining the circumstances given above.

- No response was received from the appeal and 14 days after it was lodged, a letter from ZZPS was received:

I would email the BPA and say that you appealed in time and yet the appeal was ignored, so Indigo have breached the BPA CoP due to not providing a POPLA code.

aos@britishparking.co.uk

pappa_golf

agree with the above


just noticed that ZZPS must be getting formal


"The criminal prosecution process is not simple; if you need debt advice, places where this can be sought are detailed on the reverse of this letter.


since when did they get involved in criminal law?




WH refer to


"Failure to make payment in full or contact us to discuss repayment of this debt may result in us recommending to the Car Park Operator that the matter be enforced through criminal court proceedings. Such proceedings would require your attendance before the Magistrates Court."




I thought only the TRAIN OPERATOR could start CRIMINAL charges under bylaws?


april? , july now , nice game of 2nd class royal mail ping pong involved , or maybe a slow POPLa appeal would time this out ?

terrytibbs1234

Thanks for the replies. Do you think it would be a good idea to write to WH (the "real" firm, not the mates-with-ZZPS debt collecting department) at the same time to advise BPA are involved as no response to an appeal has been received and to desist contact blah blah harassment blah blah SRA Code of Conduct etc? Or should contact with this lot just be avoided?

HO87

Regardless of the threats being issued by the parties involved the truth is that this is still very much part of the debt collection process. Unlerss you fill particularly harassed I wouldn't do too much. As with all contact with a DCA it only ever encourages them the more.

I suspect the comment that appears in the WH letter was probably concocted by a ZZPS drone rather than anyone sitting in Leamington - but I think you're already onto that.

terrytibbs1234

An email has been sent to BPA. I'll update if anything useful comes back from them.

Herzlos

I'd complain to the SRA - Wright Hassal are (impersonating) a solicitor in this case, whilst misrepresenting the situation regarding a criminal prosecutionio that they are in no position to invoke - it has to be the rail operator and not the parking company.

It also times out in 6 months, so if you can string it out until October it's definitely gone, by playing ping-pong with mail at the upper edge of the response time.

However, no prosecution is going to happen, so I'd be inclined to write to the real Wright Hassal inviting them to start a magistrates prosecution for this offense and see what they say. For it to actually happen, WH would need to get the PPC to get the train operator to bring it to court on time (they are already 3 months into the 6 month window) and then someone will need to foot the costs of the prosecution - any fine you'd be given goes into the court system so the rail would be losing out on hundreds of ££'s, for what?

terrytibbs1234

So, a rather disappointing reply was received from BPA.

They are saying they won't do anything as their Code of Conduct hasn't be broken because Indigo could have replied to the appeal via post, but it wasn't received. They can only ascertain if mail was received by either side if recorded delivery was used. But recorded delivery isn't a requirement of the Code!

If Indigo can provide an audit trail of their response, then there hasn't been a breach of Code, but, because the charge is now with a debt collection agency, Indigo will not respond to any communication.

All seems rather convenient!

My thoughts are it now might be best to do nothing, and if it ever goes as far as prosecution, Indigo would now be "in possession" of the charge again, so would have to respond to communications from BPA regarding the appeal.

What do you guys think?

Coupon-mad

Yep let it time out, sixth months from the event and it's unrecoverable.

That is balderdash from the BPA, utter rubbish from a Trade Body.

Rigor1

I have been in a lengthy exchange with ZZPS and Wright Hassell over some tickets issued for my car back in December and January this year. I had problems with the mobile payment site when the car park operator changed and as you would expect my appeals have fallen on deaf ears.
I have repeatedly asked them to confirm their authority and they have all refused to do so. Wright Hassel only say that they would not act without authority so to me that's only an implied answer not a real one. So I would write to them and just ask that. Second class is best and takes about 2 weeks to get a reply.....
A question from me....what statute etc. can I quote to say the 6 month limit has passed go away ....

I have offered to settle this for a reasonable amount several times and I found unacceptable that they ignored my letters and only sent out new standard letters exactly as the above and increase the amount owing..

HO87

@ Rigor1 Posting about your issue on someone else's thread is unlikely to elicit much assistance and could well cause confusion. On that basis please start your own thread.

If ZZPS/WH continue to allege that the basis of the charge is the Byelaws then they are subject of a 6 month statute of limitation in common with all other summary-only matters. The Act (and section) to quote is s.127 Magistrates Court Act 1980.