Britannia Parking NTK received

MistyZ

Hi all.

I'm the keeper of a car which allegedly overstayed by 13 minutes and 21 seconds at Portswood Centre Car Park Southampton back in August. The car park provides free parking for 2 hours. I received an NTK back in August, it is, I think, POFA compliant and arrived within the correct time frame. I appealed using the Newbies' template, also within the correct time frame, appeal was denied, POPLA code provided by email on 14th September.

As the keeper of the vehicle, I complained to the land management company, CBRE, and they emailed back on 20th September saying they would contact Britannia to see if anything can be done to cancel the charge. There has been no confirmation that that has happened. Today I've received a Final Reminder from Britannia threatening Debt Recovery and an additional charge of £60 in the first instance of further action. Perhaps they have forgotten that an appeal has been made to them and rejected and also that, as they were informed, a POPLA appeal is in the offing.

It's all quite aggressive isn't it? Anyway, thanks to this incredibly helpful forum nothing the company does will come as a surprise. The final reminder prompted me to open this thread as I was going to anyway in readiness for running the POPLA appeal by you.

Meanwhile I'm going to get back to CBRE to ask what the outcome of their contact with Britannia was. Are Final Reminders common at this stage? I'm thinking I will not bother to contact Britannia to help them out with their admin ..... right thing (not) to do?

The_Slithy_Tove

Don't let the POPLA deadline pass you by. The POPLA code is already 3 weeks old, so you don't have a lot of time. Regardless of any other activity, get your POPLA appeal together and post it here for review.

Meanwhile, you could also put in a complaint to the BPA that you are being pursued for the alleged debt even while the appeal process is in play, which is contrary to their Code of Practice. Insist that they do something about it.

Coupon-mad

As the keeper of the vehicle, I complained to the land management company, CBRE, and they emailed back on 20th September saying they would contact Britannia to see if anything can be done to cancel the charge. There has been no confirmation that that has happened.

Meanwhile I'm going to get back to CBRE to ask what the outcome of their contact with Britannia was.

Yes, complain to the Managers first, of the Portswood Centre Car Park Southampton. ALWAYS exhaust the landowner complaint (and I mean exhaust it) before POPLA.

That does not mean ''asking what the outcome was''. It means ''why is this not cancelled yet, I am now being harassed, how dare you allow this?''.

Or have you already started POPLA?

MistyZ

Thanks for replying The Slithy and Coupon Mad.

I'm going to start compiling the POPLA appeal tomorrow and anticipate that it'll be good to go early next week. I've been doing a lot of reading but I realise it's not easy. I will email CBRE more forcefully as suggested tomorrow too. And also put in a complaint to the BPA at the same time.

The driver has a long term health condition which confers protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 so I reckon this in conjunction with Grace Periods needs to be the first point in the POPLA appeal.

Coupon-mad

The landowner complaint follow up is the urgent thing though, and not just ''asking how it went''.

MistyZ

Thanks Coupon-Mad, I get it. I'm doing the complaint right now.

Redx

MistyZ wrote: »

The driver has a long term health condition which confers protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 so I reckon this in conjunction with Grace Periods needs to be the first point in the POPLA appeal.

NOT IF THE POPLA APPEAL IS A KEEPER APPEAL AND THE DRIVER HAS NOT BEEN IDENTIFIED

think about it

either its a keeper appeal based on grace periods, no landowner authority or contract , signage , BPA CoP , grace periods etc

or its a driver based appeal where POFA2012 and NTK issues etc do not appear

POPLA have never ruled on the EA2010 and are unlikely to do so


they do rule on GRACE PERIODS with some success recently, so that may well be the strongest point

MistyZ

Redx, you've got me out of one of the circles I've been going round & round in. Message received & understood, thank you.

MistyZ

I have just spent the entire day from 6.30 am composing a POPLA appeal. Not in chunks, as is sensibly advised elsewhere on this board, but the whole damn thing. And at the end I was quite chuffed with it though doubtless it could be improved. Funny thing is, I started off by thinking that a little exaggeration might be required but quickly realised that on the contrary, the parking companies construct ruthless, barely legal traps to extort money with menaces and that stark reality should suffice to contest the charge as long as a little (actually quite a lot) of concentration and determination were employed.

Poured a glass of wine, checked emails. And lo, the company that manage the car park had replied to my most recent email confirming that 'on this occasion' they have arranged for the charge to be cancelled.

Well. Thank you so much for the help you've given me on this thread. Especially Coupon Mad who conveys how to be assertive without being OTT so very well. And of course before starting the thread I would probably have been a lamb to the slaughter without you all.

There again, do you think I should do the POPLA just in case? Or is the email from the management company proof enough that this process has ended?

LoneStarState

Hi MistyZ

You should receive an official letter from Britannia confirming the cancellation on their end.

Maybe contact POPLA to clarify about the appeal now the PCN has been cancelled. They're usually quite quick to respond to general queries.

That said, you could always add the landowner agent cancellation proof to your appeal and then use Britannia's own "proof" of the landowner contract which they would provide to shoot them down in your comments on operator evidence showing the landowner has ordered the ticket cancelled. They would likely no contest and if you've already prepared the appeal, then you may as well submit to POPLA as you've done the hard work already and if you haven't received the official Britannia letter.

Still waiting myself on the cancellation letter from Britannia since the start of last week so gives you an idea of how long they may take.

Another important point, once this is done and dusted and you're free from the scam invoice, maybe exercise your right to erasure as given in article 17 of the GDPR, under the DPA 2018. Britannia's privacy policy given in the link below claims that Britannia will store your personal data for up to SEVEN years after the "contractual relationship ends" and possibly longer if they carry out "enforcement" against you. I'm sure you wouldn;t want it held that long and more importantly that length of time for such data is wholly unreasonable (the data itself would likely become incorrect as well with such a passage of time).

https://www.britannia-parking.co.uk/CMS/Content/MainSitePDFs/69393784-b99d-425a-8a4b-fc76e291d2a2.pdf

LSS

Coupon-mad

Good point, how about killing 2 birds with 1 stone, by sending Britannia a data erasure notice under the GDPR now, and seeing what they reply with?

bpt@britpark.com

...is given as their DPA contact, when you download the service user data protection policy here:

https://www.britannia-parking.co.uk/Content/Policy