Euro Car Parks ANPR Stay Plus Grace

lworbey

I recently parked in a leisure centre car park in Stevenage and the allowed time to park was 3 hours. I parked for this amount of time but it was a busy day and with the time taken to find a space and the time to leave I was picked up by the camera as having been there for 3 hours 12 minutes and 8 seconds.

I read the advice on here and sent the standard response, not admitting the driver and asking for extra time allowed:

"If the allegation involves an alleged overstay of minutes, your evidence must include the actual grace period agreed by the landowner. If you fail to evidence the actual grace period that applies at this site or suggest that only one period applies, this will be disregarded as an attempt to mislead. In the absence of evidence, it will be reasonably taken to be a minimum of twenty minutes (ten on arrival and ten after parking time) in accordance with the official BPA article by Kelvin Reynolds about 'observation periods' on arrival being additional and separate to a 'grace period' at the end."

I assume this means I am within the 3 hours and 20 minutes extra?

I have had a reply that does not make any reference to an agreed grace period and just states:

"Having carefully considered the evidence provided by you we have decided to reject your appeal for the following reasons:
- The car park is operated by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) - cameras capture an image of vehicles entering and leaving the car park and calculate their length of stay.
- Parking at the above site is limited to 180 minutes/hours.
- On entry to private land it is the responsibility of the driver to check for signage and ensure that your vehicle has been correctly parked.
- Your vehicle was parked longer than 180 minutes/hours, therefore the notice was issued correctly and remains payable.
- Euro Car Parks do not need to provide evidence of who was driving the vehicle, it is the registered keeper's responsibility to inform of the full name and address within 28 days beginning with the day after the notice was given. If the full amount remains unpaid, under Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 ('the Act'), Euro Car Parks have the right subject of the Act to recover from the keeper of the vehicle at the time it was parked so much of that amount which remains unpaid."

I assume I can appeal to POPLA now stating that I was within the 3 hours plus the 20 minute grace period? How successful is this approach? What wording should I use in my appeal?

Any help is much appreciated, thank you!

Coupon-mad

You need to search the forum for POPLA split grace periods as there is a certain way of wording it that seems to help even the worst Assessor get it.