POPLA appeal letter - staff member - hospital car park

Le_Kirk

Just mentioning it does not cut the mustard - you have to sit them down side by side and go through each with a fine-tooth comb and find the differences.

Tugay44

Sounds like more hassle than its worth!

I'll just paste the template points and hope for the best.

Coupon-mad

No. NHS COMPLAINT FIRST. This is really important to do first.

When you lose at POPLA you can no longer use the weight of a complaint.

Tugay44

How should I word my complaint to the hospital?
"I have a contract with you by way of paying £40 a month for parking facilities. This is not right or lawful."?

Coupon-mad

No, that's too weak on its own.

And it is not your complaint, it's your wife's, as at NO time must the driver be given away, and they cannot assume, not even for a staff member. Regardless of surname of the complaints, there are lots of staff members, so the driver is NEVER identified.

Talk about the NHS Car Parking Principles (Google them) and how is is unacceptable that the Trust as CLOSED sections of the car park yet is allowing its contractor to fine staff members for not being able to find a parking space, especially while spaces are removed. Clearly this is an unfair contract term and ticketing of staff vehicles displaying permits should have been suspended until this issue is resolved.

Food for thought here in an email I saw this week from a legally-qualified contact of mine who doesn't post on this forum:

Just a couple of thoughts:-

Even low-cost airlines manage to find car parking spaces for their pilots and cabin crew. Not because they want to: it’s because with employees starting work at all hours, they have to. It’s a commercial decision: make sure your staff can arrive on time, or face chaos and ultimate oblivion.

For hospitals it’s 100 times more important, obviously. What are the doctors and nurses supposed to do when all the spaces are taken? Turn round and go home?

To justify the parking charge, the NHS Trust and the parking firm have to prove it’s: a) commercially necessary, in order to deter staff from parking outside the designated spaces; b) not extravagant or unconscionable.


a) Commercially justifiable?

The doctors and nurses only park in non-designated spaces when there is no alternative.

Firstly: you can’t deter a person from doing something if they have no choice. It’s just not going to work.

Secondly, even if it were possible to deter them, it couldn’t be done without disrupting the shift change-overs and risking patients’’ lives.

Deterrence, in these circumstances, is inappropriate, ineffective – and dangerous.


b) Unconscionable

The fault lies entirely with the NHS Trust by failing to provide enough spaces (which even Ryanair is able to do) ; it is unconscionable that they (either by themselves or through their agents) should penalise their own staff for their own failings.

Read the NHS Car Parking Principles and get the rk to put in a strong complaint.

Meanwhile, diarise 30 days from the rejection letter, as a POPLA appeal must go in by day 32 at the very latest (no, it's NOT just 28 days as the POPLA website says, there is leeway but only days).

Tugay44

Thanks.

I've stupidly missed the popla appeal time on one, my own mistaken date. It's about 40 days now. For this one I guess I have to pay the 100? Or still worth a hospital appeal?

I do however have 2 more which I'll (my wife) will write to the hospital about. How does "she" word it in terms of pronoun and names?

Can she say "as a staff member with a permit, paid for you should not be doing .......X...y....z"?

MistyZ

Tugay44 wrote: »

Thanks.

I've stupidly missed the popla appeal time on one, my own mistaken date. It's about 40 days now. For this one I guess I have to pay the 100? Or still worth a hospital appeal?

I do however have 2 more which I'll (my wife) will write to the hospital about. How does "she" word it in terms of pronoun and names?

Can she say "as a staff member with a permit, paid for you should not be doing .......X...y....z"?

This is no ordinary 'landowner complaint'. The driver has a parking permit in order to attend work. I would imagine that the type of work the driver does most definitely requires punctuality and that leaving the premises to drive around the area looking for alternative parking is not a realistic scenario, hence the piece Coupon_mad posted. I am sure at least some of that is useful even if you choose to re-phrase it.

You are right, the complaint has to be from the Registered Keeper and while the staff permit must feature, there is still no need to name the driver.

There are such strong grounds to complain vigorously to the hospital. They can cancel these PCNs. This mess is not of your making.

Coupon-mad

For this one I guess I have to pay the 100?

Errrrm...no...! You need to read more threads if you think people pay just because they didn't do POPLA. What do you think happened with:

- PCNs before POPLA existed? (clue - no, we didn't pay, pre-2012), and
- all the millions of PCNs issued by IPC firms, who don't offer POPLA!

No-one PAYS.

Flipping heck no. Why do people post that at least once a week here, I could cry with frustration that people are so easily led up the garden path by a PPC scammer.

Tugay44

Thanks, however as soon as I mention the permit and the tickets I need cancelling, I'll have to give the reg to prove I have said permit. Which automatically gives my Identity to the hospital.

Le_Kirk

How are they going to take any action (cancel the PCNs) if they don't know the car and you in order to check out that the car has a paid for permit to park?