IE Legal Total Parking Solutions

echo6

So if I understand correctly.

POFA Schedule 4, Paragraph 4 -

Right to claim unpaid parking charges from keeper of vehicle", subsection 5 states "The maximum sum which may be recovered from the keeper by virtue of the right conferred by this paragraph is the amount specified in the notice to keeper under paragraph 8(2)(c) or (d) or, as the case may be, 9(2)(d) (less any payments towards the unpaid parking charges which are received after the time so specified).

On the signs in the car park the wording appears as follows

By failing to comply with the above terms of use you agree to pay a Parking Charge Notice of £60 (reduced to £30 if paid within 14 days). If payment is not made within 28 days further administration costs may be incurred including costs of debt recovery. Total Parking Solutions may request the name and address of the registered keeper from the DVLA under the reasonable cause criteria for the recovery of Parking Charge Notices.

According to the BPA codes of practice.

19.9 You should warn drivers that if they delay payment beyond a payment period of 28 days, and you need to take court action or use debt-recovery methods to recover a debt, there may be extra ‘recovery’ charges for debt-recovery action. However, you do not need to say how much these recovery charges are in advance, on your signs or notices

POFA does not say anything about debt-recovery. But the PPC sign implies this can be added to the charge. Whilst BPA codes of practice does say the charges must be reasonable, and Section 19.8 states

you must be able to justify the level of parking charges to the AOS Board,

At no time has there been any admission with respect to who the driver was, and from what I can tell there is no provision which would force the keeper to disclose who the driver is. Would that situation change at County Court? POFA states the PPC must bring these charges to the attention of the driver. Section BPA 19.4 deals with notice to keeper and I guess drawing to the attention of the driver is handled by signage? Section BPA 19.5 states

this charge must be based on the genuine pre-estimate of loss that you suffer. We would not expect this mount to be more than £100.

OK on now to Napier Parking Limited v Christopher Taylor
hxxp://napierparking.co.uk/assets/files/news/Napier%20V%20Taylor%20C7GF8T8C%20Summary.pdf
Taylor lost;
1) Because the signage was deemed sufficient
2) Judge found based on the balance of probabilities that he was the keeper and driver.
The Judge "according to the paper he had" agreed the charges, plus loss to claimant in attending court and interest, to a total of £327.45.

btw, I have had an acknowledgement from the Land owner today from an email I sent yesterday. I expect a response on their return to work in the New Year.

Coupon-mad

At no time has there been any admission with respect to who the driver was, and from what I can tell there is no provision which would force the keeper to disclose who the driver is. Would that situation change at County Court?

Unlikely, and the intention of Parliament was clearly that keepers do not have to name the driver.

MPs refused to add a clause about that, despite BPA lobbying for it in 2012 when the POFA Bill was being read and we followed the discussion in Hansard. Most Judges would not ask, and if they did you could still say that you are either unaware for sure of who the driver was (if true) or that you know who was driving but prefer to exercise your right to defend this as keeper - without naming the driver - rather than give a name to a private firm allowing them to inflict this level of harassment on a driver, who (unlike a keeper) wouldn't have any such statute to 'protect' them.

Where are you getting this ancient stuff about 'GPEOL' from? An old version of the BPA CoP? It's out of date and wrong, bin it:

this charge must be based on the genuine pre-estimate of loss that you suffer. We would not expect this mount to be more than £100.

And looking at an old Napier court case, where Mr De Savary, the Napier owner, used to turn up himself and make a fairly decent job of arguing his case and claiming for his own time, really does not give you any idea of a typical ham-fisted PPC robo-claim doomed case!

TPS are nothing like Napier, would not send their own chap to court, could not claim all sorts of costs and are not renowned for winning (or being litigious) at all.

echo6

Where are you getting this ancient stuff about 'GPEOL' from? An old version of the BPA CoP? It's out of date and wrong, bin it:

Hah! yes sorry, it would appear the BPA are not very good caretakers of their own web site.

hxxp://www.britishparking.co.uk/Code-of-Practice-and-compliance-monitoring
hxxp://www.britishparking.co.uk/write/BPA_CodeofPractice_v8.pdf

Which is the latest and current BPA CoP?

Umkomaas

Which is the latest and current BPA CoP?

v6, October 2015.

KeithP

echo6 wrote: »

http://www.britishparking.co.uk/Code-of-Practice-and-compliance-monitoring
http://www.britishparking.co.uk/write/BPA_CodeofPractice_v8.pdf

Which is the latest and current BPA CoP?

As indicated by Umkomaas, it's the first one on your top link.

echo6

Latest update to the BPA CoP was just posted today.

Version 7 January 2018

hxxp://www.britishparking.co.uk/Code-of-Practice-and-Compliance-Monitoring

Umkomaas

http://www.britishparking.co.uk/Code-of-Practice-and-Compliance-Monitoring

http://www.britishparking.co.uk/AOS-Code-Changes-2018

Thanks for the update @echo6. Worthy of a new thread, which I’ll organise.

EDIT TO ADD - I see that regular Computersaysno has already done so.

echo6

Not everything is in there that I was hoping would make it :-(

hxxps://bmpa.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002770209-BPA-Code-of-Practice-Revision-May-2017

echo6

My son received an identical letter today from I E Legal dated 2nd January for a "FORMAL DEMAND" by "4:00pm Tuesday 9 January 2018"

According to Royal Mail I E Legal have yet to receive the letter my son sent on the 27th December 2017 in response to their first letter ! The University received theirs on the 28th December 2017.

Quentin

echo6 wrote: »

According to Royal Mail I E Legal have yet to receive the letter my son sent on the 27th December 2017 in response to their first letter ! The University received theirs on the 28th December 2017.

Sounds like you used a signed for service.

One should never use a signed for service when corresponding with these people.

It allows recipients to prove letters have not been received by simply refusing to sign for them.

Always use the free cert of posting you get on request when handing s letter into the Post Office