Sensible questioning or costly barrack-room lawyering: which?

Redx

If ECP take this to court a judge might take a dim view of you not going to popla for ADR before it getting to court
I doubt that m and s own the car park , so if m and s fob you off try and get the landowner or managing agent details from them
A landowner or managing agent complaint was and still is your best option for a cancellation

Cark

Further update. CEO email.com appears to be having a minor breakdown of its own. Every attempt at searching for Marks & Spencer's CEO has ended in a lengthy list of the irrelevant. The website's first search option is  "Company/Organisation name begins with", but in response to inputting the letter 'M', the results delivered are most notable for the CEO of the Automobile Association and Aberdeen Airport. It's possible both may come in useful at some time in the future but not right now.

MistyZ

Think this is what you're after:
steve.rowe@marks-and-spencer.com

Though there is a chance that M&S are not the landowner, despite this car park apparently serving that store only.  Are you 100% sure the car park doesn't serve other outlets?

Castle

An appeal to POPLA will force ECP to produce:-
1) A copy of the contract with the Landowner
2) Dated pictures of the signs
3) Proof that the vehicle was parked in excess of 90 minutes, (no account of the two grace periods seemed to have been made)

MistyZ

Castle said:

An appeal to POPLA will force ECP to produce:-
1) A copy of the contract with the Landowner
2) Dated pictures of the signs
3) Proof that the vehicle was parked in excess of 90 minutes, (no account of the two grace periods seemed to have been made)

For sure.  Worth appealing to POPLA.  But I hear that landowners have an easier time cancelling PCNs prior to that stage.

Cark

MistyZ said:

Think this is what you're after:
steve.rowe@marks-and-spencer.com

Though there is a chance that M&S are not the landowner, despite this car park apparently serving that store only.  Are you 100% sure the car park doesn't serve other outlets?

MistyZ: you are a star. Thanks so much for that information.

In regard to the land ownership question, I have checked with the area planning authority and it's clear that the 8,900 squ ft "shop" (as the planners describe it) is situate on land owned by Marks & Spencers. M&S mde much of the fact that the store was not actually a 'sho[p' when it opened in December 2015; it was offering quote "4,100 lines as well as an in-store bakery and in store cafe".

M&S purchased the site and premises from the Co-operative Society. The location is at the corner of a row of shops/stores of similar size, all fronting onto a busy main town centre road; a smaller road, leading off from that main road, curls around the M&S corner site and continues on as a narrower road running parallel to the main road and behind M&S. All the properties/premises in that row have their own extensive rear plots, each walled-off from the other. Because of the hard boundaries between each one, there's no sharing of amenity amongst the different shops/stores. So yes, the M& S car park is indeed for customers of the M&S store, though there's nothing to stop anyone from parking there and not shopping at the store at all.  The signage says merely"Welcome to M&S. Please follow the conditions below to avoid parking charges while you shop with us."

MistyZ

Okay, I see why you're sure it's an M&S car park .... but, hey, just in case .... you could phone the council and ask who pays the non-domestic rates for that car park - that would nail landowner for definite.  Of course that could mean hanging on the line forever OR you might get lucky within 10 minutes.  I'd give it 10 minutes myself.  

Cark

Right MistyZ. I'll follow up tomorrow with a call to the Council.

I presently have a query still outstanding with the friendly Planning Officer I've been dealing with, it being that the District Council has  insisted that  a rival supermarket in the same town centre as M&S must be mindful that "any variation in (its) car park must receive the prior written approval of the local planning authority. Reason: to ensure the proper functioning of the car park servicing the supermarket and the town centre."

I'm quoting from the Council's response to a request in June 2010 by that rival supermarket to reduce the stipulated 2 hours free parking allowance. That response highlighted the fact that the Council was concerned not so much about the fortunes of the supermarket itself but about ensuring sufficient town centre parking spaces and town centre parking durations attractive enough to encourage in-bound visitor spending to the benefit of the local economy as a whole.

The Council's concern was first expressed in a restrictive covenant imposed on that supermarket under Section  52 of the Town & Country Planning Act 1971 back in July 1986, when planning permission was granted for the then new development on the basis its car park had to be available to the public "for the first two hours free of charge or on terms not more onerous than those applicable to such of the Council's car parks situate in the town centre as may be subject to differential charges which discourage long term parking."

Given the fact that Euro Car Parks -- which has also acquired the private parking contract for that same rival supermarket -- attempted unsuccessfully at the end of last year to change the parking terms such as to restrict parking availability to the supermarket's customers only, and disbar the general public, it seemed to me that this example of a cavalier disregard for planning rules merited further enquiry, hence why I am trying to establish with the Council's Planning Department if the M&S car park has a similar restrictive planning covenant in force.

In the case of the other supermarket, EuroCar Parks changed the signage to suit the change of parking conditions; the Council has made it take the signs down and put the original ones back in place.

Hopefully the person I'm dealing with in Planning can pass me on to someone in the Revenue dept who can confirm the identity of the NDR payer.

Cark

Castle said:

An appeal to POPLA will force ECP to produce:-
1) A copy of the contract with the Landowner
2) Dated pictures of the signs
3) Proof that the vehicle was parked in excess of 90 minutes, (no account of the two grace periods seemed to have been made)

Thank you for that information: it puts the POPLA route into a quite different perspective as I hadn't imagined so much information could be sought from the claimant.  The "dated pictures of the signs" would in our case have to be accompanied by written proof of when the process of changing the M&S car park signage began, what it involved, and when it was completed -- this because at the moment, my wife and I are still of the firm belief that we were not wrong (and certainly not deranged) in thinking we saw signage allowing us to park there for 2 hours on a day when EuroCar Parks has -- finally! -- said was only 1 hour 30 minutes.

Obviously, no-one here can advise on a specific case, nor would I expect them to: the help and advice is appreciated more than I can say. I think it may be best, at this time, for me to exercise individual judgment and follow the advice to contact the CEO directly and seek a waivering of the claim. Now that MistyZ has helpfully come up with an email address for Steven Rowe, contact/communication should be that much quicker-- and if he declines to assist, then I presume I could still go the POPLA route i(unless there's a time limit of some sort, which has now run tou?)

(I'm mindful, now, of RedX's observation about the negative impression I might make, as a defendant, if I fail to pursue the POPLA route. Huh. Decisions, decisions. But yes, I am trying, seriously, not to let this get at me. I think the doc would kill me if I did. A lot of people have done so much and worked so hard to help me actually survive this stroke, it'd be a shame if it was all for nought because of the pressure of a situation such as this.)

nosferatu1001

OP - please dont take this the wrong way, btu your writing style is very verbose. It takes a long time to point out pertinent facts, and its easy to get lost. 
Writing concisely isnt easy, but is helpful