husband named me as driver for PCN - what now?

disgruntleddriver2018

Dear all,

I fear we've messed up our defence against a ***king eye PCN. We stupidly ignored the first letter from before Christmas last year, having done this in the past (ca. 2013) but I now see after reading all the threads on here the goalposts have shifted since then, and ignoring is no longer advised.

My husband was the registered keeper of the car and therefore he received the PCN in his name. After ignoring all the letters he finally received the notice before court proceedings, which made us sit up and take notice! The only advice I could find on this forum to put a halt to that was to send PE a letter from my husband naming me as the driver. We did this, and thus I now have the PCN addressed to me, and my husband has received a letter saying they are no longer chasing him.

As I was travelling away from home with work, I missed the £60 discounted period, and now it's up to £100.

The background is that I parked at a private car park, paid for 9 hours, but the ANPR clocked me staying 9 hours 37 minutes.

I would acknowledge I overstayed, and would be willing to pay something, but £100 seems very steep considering the car park only charges £1 per hour to park there. I considered asking the business who owns the car park to intervene but my visit that day was not at their business, and I was just using the car park as it was the only one in the area.

My PCN was sent to me on 15th Jan, so time is running out to appeal I think.

I don't want to give in to these cowboys but am at a loss what would be the best course of action in my case, from everything I have read on the forums.

Any advice anyone can offer me would be very gratefully received indeed.

pogofish

Get yourself into the Newbies Sticky - It explains what to do and lays-out your remaining options.

Redx

if you received the pcn on 15th jan 2018 then you are too late to appeal it as you only had 28 days to do so

a landowner cancellation is best , regardless

you wont get away with stating that £100 is a bit steep, the £100 maximum has been in place since 2012 or earlier, and in 2013 the advise was to appeal, not ignore (this is when I started helping family members and friends in similar circumstances)

you can try the appeal template on the PE website, but if they say its timed out, then there are no further appeal options

bear in mind that the BEAVIS case put paid to your argument about £100 being "a bit steep" , 2.5 years ago

ps: your statement about "christmas last year" cannot be true, it would have been at least the xmas before that , ie:- xmas 2016 - for it to have got this far

Quentin

There is no advice here to name the driver to the PPC

The advice here throughout is to never reveal who was driving!

The_Slithy_Tove

Redx wrote: »

bear in mind that the BEAVIS case put paid to your argument about £100 being "a bit steep" , 2.5 years ago

Quite the opposite, in fact. Because this was a car park where you pay for the time, BEAVIS works in the OP's favour. The Court of Appeal said that £100 was too steep in such a situation.

46. The terms of use of the car park need, therefore, to provide a disincentive to drivers which will make them tend to comply with the two hour limit. That is afforded by the parking charge of £85. It would not be afforded by a system of imposing a rate per hour according to the time overstayed, unless that rate were also substantial, and well above what might be regarded as a market rate for the elapsed time, even if the market rate were in some way adjusted to take account of the benefit to the driver of the first two hours being free.
47. It seems to me that the principles underlying the doctrine of penalty ought not to strike down a provision of this kind, in relation to a contract such as we are concerned with, merely on the basis that the contractual provision is a disincentive, or deterrent, against overstaying. When the court is considering an ordinary financial or commercial contract, then it is understandable that the law, which lays down its own rules as to the compensation due from a contract breaker to the innocent party, should prohibit terms which require the payment of compensation going far beyond that which the law allows in the absence of any contract provision governing this outcome. The classic and simple case is that referred to by Tindal CJ in Kemble v Farren (1829) 6 Bing. 141 at 148: “But that a very large sum should become immediately payable, in consequence of the non-payment of a very small sum, and that the former should not be considered a penalty, appears to be a contradiction in terms, the case being precisely that in which courts of equity have always relieved, and against which courts of law have, in modern times, endeavoured to relieve, by directing juries to assess the real damages sustained by the breach of the agreement.”

The_Slithy_Tove

Quentin wrote: »

There is no advice here to name the driver to the PPC

The advice here throughout is to never reveal who was driving!

But the keeper had received an LBC, so better to reset the clock a bit, and avoid an actual court claim (which will be hugely bothersome to defend), bearing in mind PE are better than most for adhering to POFA for keeper liability.

Quentin

The_Slithy_Tove wrote: »

But the keeper had received an LBC, so better to reset the clock a bit, and avoid an actual court claim (which will be hugely bothersome to defend), bearing in mind PE are better than most for adhering to POFA for keeper liability.

You missed that the op mistakenly says that following advice on this forum the keeper (spouse of the OP!) named the OP as a way of dealing with a lbcca!

That's NOT advised here at all!!

That just means his wife now has the bother of dealing with this without any possibility of pofa defence!

The_Slithy_Tove

Quentin wrote: »

That just means his wife now has the bother of dealing with this without any possibility of pofa defence!

Which would you prefer: defend a court claim, using POFA (which with PE may not be a good defence) as well as all the normal points
or: go through the appeals and POPLA process without the benefit or POFA.

Personally, I'd take my chance with the latter, especially with Beavis not counting in a paid-for car park. Check out Point #6 of this POPLA appeal.

The_Deep

Given that so many PPCs have deficient signs, dodgy contracts, getting their timing wrong on documents, invalid/expired contracts, etc., Pofa is not a magic bullet. I would say the OP and wife are now in a better place.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]This is an entirely unregulated industry which is scamming the public with inflated claims for minor breaches of contracts for alleged parking offences. [/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Parking Eye, Smart and a smaller company have already been named and shamed, as has Gladstones Solicitors, and BW Legal, (who take hundreds of these cases to court, and nearly always lose), who have also been reported to the regulatory authority. [/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The problem has become so rampant that MPs have agreed to enact a Bill to regulate these scammers. Watch the video of the Second Reading in the HofC recently.[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]http://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/2f0384f2-eba5-4fff-ab07-cf24b6a22918?in=12:49:41[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]and complain in the most robust terms to your MP. With a fair wind most of these companies may well be put out of business by Christmas.[/FONT]