GEMINI PCN, Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford

bangladude

Dear All,

I'm completely new to the art of appealing private PCNs, and have since gone through the information of the newbies thread. I'd like to apologise in advance if my questions have been covered before, or if I've missed something.

So basically I work at Broomfield hospital, Chelmsford, and until August, both staff and visitors would park in their respective areas without being charged for not displaying permits or tickets. It used to be lenient and the most we would get is a warning that if we repeatedly parked without a permit, we would get a penalty notice, but no one was known to get a penalty.

Things have toughened up since August however, and GEMINI are now charge. Me being the lazy man I am, did not bother getting a permit until I got a £40 fine, which I stupidly paid at the time before I discovered the legal ins and outs. I have generally been too busy to try and appeal. I then applied for a permit from the hospital and I have been in possession of a staff permit since September.

We are supposed to park in staff bays, but unfortunately there are less bays than staff and often we overflow into the visitors car parks and anywhere really. The ticket man has been allowing for people with staff permits to park in these other places due to the lack of capacity, but there is no written signage indicating that this is technically ok.

Now I have been displaying my permit in my vehicle since September in both the staff and visitor car parks (it sits on the dash), but on one occasion whilst using the visitor car park, my permit had slid off the dash and I forgot to put this back on before leaving my vehicle. Unfortunately that day I got a ticket charging me £40 if paid within 14 days and £80 if longer. I really didn't want to pay another fine, and spoke to my hospital travel centre, who explained that I would need to send an email appeal to GEMINI.

I sent an email appeal (before knowing about all of the advice on these forums) saying that the ticket was a mistake and that I held a valid permit since September, which is on the hospital database, giving them my permit number. I said that I presumed the inspector did not notice the permit (which I realised I should not have done later). I also stupidly mentioned that I was the driver of the vehicle . I did mention that there were no staff parking spaces available and had to park in the visitors bay as I was on-call seeing emergency patients.

The response to my appeal was dated 18/11/16 and showed photographic evidence of the permit not being displayed on my vehicle with a date and timestamp (I didn't expect them to take pictures ). They said they were satisfied with the correct issuing of the PCN as no permit was displayed. It has given me 14 further days from the 18th to pay at the discounted rate of £40, after this it will go to £80. They have given me a POPLA code.

I really don't want to have to pay £40 when all that happened was my permit fell off the dash. I have been given an email address of someone at the hospital who may or may not be able to deal with this through the hospital, and have emailed them today explaining that my permit must have slid inbetween the windscreen and the dash making it not visible from the outside. They have yet to reply.

Given the fact that I parked in a visitors bay with photographic evidence showing I did not have a displayed permit at the time, and also the fact that I mentioned I was the driver with a displayed permit in the appeal email, will this hinder my chances of a successful POPLA appeal? If so, I'd rather pay £40 than £80 as this process seems like a big hassle.

I have only got two days left before the charge becomes £80 and I have a feeling the hospital probably won't help me in this. I suppose I could speak to PALS (even though I'm not a patient but a member of staff).

I suppose my questions are
a) If I should wait for an email response (I have 2 days and no real time as I'm on call these next two days)
b) If I should try going through PALS instead
c) What grounds do I have at POPLA stage of a successful appeal given my context, and I suppose
d) What is the best next step given my situation?

Sorry if it sounds like a lot to digest, I would appreciate everyone's thoughts on this.

Carthesis

Your grounds are that you have a permit. It would be trivial for the permit to be linked to a list of authorised VRNs that the parking womble could verify against to see if you have a permit or not.

If you've the time, you should try complaining to PALS, try complaining to the hospital grounds admin types, and to anyone else you can think of.

Then yes - appeal to POPLA. Id be amazed if there aren't a number of similar cases on here you could use as a guide.

Redx

as they have only just started operating recently on this site , you should also be complaining to the trust as to why they are NOT following the NHS guidelines issued by Jeremy Hunt 2 years ago too

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-patient-visitor-and-staff-car-parking-principles/nhs-patient-visitor-and-staff-car-parking-principles

and possibly getting your union involved as well

there is no reason in this day and age why VRM details cannot be placed on a "whitelist" , the paper permit system is archaic and fails daily for various reasons

Coupon-mad

They have given me a POPLA code.

So now win at POPLA!

See post #3 of the NEWBIES thread for template POPLA appeal wording. Copy it into a draft. Show us and we will comment (you must make sure you pick the templates that make sense, any POPLA appeal can use at least three of them if not more).

It has given me 14 further days from the 18th to pay at the discounted rate of £40, after this it will go to £80.

Well you won't be paying a penny so forget that. Even if you lose at POPLA you don't go and PAY!

bangladude

So I went back to the hospital travel centre, which is manned by some dude who acts clueless and doesn't want to get involved (when really he knows everything). He told me to "appeal" and I told him that failed. I then pressed him further and he vaguely came out with a name of someone to email, but then said that guy was off sick. I then told him there must be someone in charge of contracting these Gemini lot, and he finally gave me an alternate contact. I called the number and explained the situation and she emailed gemini telling them to cancel my "PCN". Gemini have cancelled the fine

Thanks for all the advice everyone, much appreciated!

Coupon-mad

Fantastic, well done for persevering. Would you please say who cancelled it (the person's name at least) so others finding this thread know who the organ grinder is there, the person who can rein in the monkey?

Umkomaas

Nice result, and well done on your determination to get to the bottom of this. :T

beamerguy

bangladude wrote: »

So I went back to the hospital travel centre, which is manned by some dude who acts clueless and doesn't want to get involved (when really he knows everything). He told me to "appeal" and I told him that failed. I then pressed him further and he vaguely came out with a name of someone to email, but then said that guy was off sick. I then told him there must be someone in charge of contracting these Gemini lot, and he finally gave me an alternate contact. I called the number and explained the situation and she emailed gemini telling them to cancel my "PCN". Gemini have cancelled the fine

Thanks for all the advice everyone, much appreciated!

Well done ...... make sure you get it in writing

Just goes to show that there is always someone who can cancel scammers tickets, you just have to hunt them down

bangladude

Yeah, it was all through e-mail correspondence, so I have proof on the cloud

I don't think I can give her name for her privacy because technically she was just covering for someone else who was sick, but I can say that every hospital will have an "Estates & Facilities Management Directorate" or just people in charge of "Estates". If you ever get problems with tickets from a hospital your best bet would be to call the hospital switchboard and ask to be put through to Estates.

Then you will of course need to give a mitigating reason. They tend to generally be reasonable especially if you are a member of staff. They may then contact the parking company directly at their discretion. I don't know how they would be with patients and visitors, but if they decline to talk to patients and visitors, it's probably best to go through PALS instead.

Thanks again everyone!