Euro Car Parks POPLA appeal: Evidence comments

The_Leopard

I've reduced down the rebuttal points to the following and it's just under 2000 characters now. I am really unsure about the landowner authority point and whether it is a pertinent point or not or whether I should use the characters instead to focus upon the signage.
Misleading signage plan/lack of signage provided by ECP

·      Sign MSPD3 is impossible to see for a driver entering the car park. It would only be possible to see on foot. The 2 images that ECP have provided of this sign have been taken from a) the pedestrian pathway, on foot, and in a standing, uninterrupted position. And b) from a distance that appears to be approximately 1 metre. This is not an accurate representation of what a customer could see. Once in the car park, it is obscured behind the M & S Food Hall sign 

·      Sign MSPD3 inaccessible to the public in the deliveries area

·      Signs marked ‘x’ and ‘DB1’ are outlining the terms of conditions for disabled drivers specifically and relate to blue badge restrictions 

·      Sign MSPD1 is repeated twice in the entire car park. Only two observable signs outlining their terms and conditions for parking in a car park of this size is not aligned to the BPA COP 19.1: “In all cases, the driver’s use of your land will be governed by your terms and conditions, which the driver should be made aware of from the start. You must use signs to make it easy for them to find out what your terms and conditions are”. EPC’s signs are a) not positioned to be seen from the start of parking and b) presented in such a way that it makes it easy for a customer to find out what the terms and conditions are. ECP have not provided an image of this sign

Ambiguous terms and conditions/unclear signage

·      The headline in red in the largest font, “1 hr free parking for customers via refund” is ambiguous. Hence the driver believing that this was in addition to the 1.5 hour limit which EPC have highlighted in figure 2 which is written in a smaller font a colour that isn’t prominent

·      ECP are ambiguous in their rebuttal points stating that “all drivers are required to adhere to the maximum stay on site” yet their signage relates to a maximum period of parking. The driver would not have been aware that they were ‘on the clock’ from the moment they entered the car park

Landowner authority

·      The agreement is not with the landowner. M&S lease this land and do not own it

·      Of 74 parking spaces 37 are allocated to M&S. ECP have not provided the plan agreed with M&S in their agreement

·      They have not evidenced that the driver parked in one of these spaces only that the vehicle passed their camera

·      Figure 7 provides a Google image from ECP that illustrates that they are not responsible for all of the car park

Coupon-mad

Looks as good as you can make it and the point about only some of the spaces being M&S spaces is worthwhile.

Umkomaas

I've reduced down the rebuttal points to the following and it's just under 2000 characters now. 

I make it 2,511 characters. 

The_Leopard

Umkomaas said:

I've reduced down the rebuttal points to the following and it's just under 2000 characters now. 

I make it 2,511 characters. 

Thanks Umkomaas. Without spaces it is 1994 - do POPLA require it with spaces included? If so, it's 2438 and I need to cut some more!! I've read through the newbie thread and can't see if it specifies on there, but no doubt I've missed that!

Le_Kirk

Landowner authority
·      The agreement is not with the landowner. M&S lease this land and do not own it
·      Of 74 parking spaces 37 are allocated to M&S. ECP have not provided the plan agreed with M&S in their agreement
·      They have not evidenced that the driver parked in one of these spaces only that the vehicle passed their camera
·      Figure 7 provides a Google image from ECP that illustrates that they are not responsible for all of the car park

This could become this: -

Landowner authority
·      Agreement is not with landowner.  M&S lease this land
·      Of 74 parking spaces 37 allocated to M&S. ECP not provided plan agreed with M&S in the agreement
·      Have not evidenced that driver parked a paces only the vehicle passed the camera
·      Figure 7 provides Google image from ECP that illustrates they are not responsible for all the car park

Redx

The_Leopard said:

Umkomaas said:

I've reduced down the rebuttal points to the following and it's just under 2000 characters now. 

I make it 2,511 characters. 

Thanks Umkomaas. Without spaces it is 1994 - do POPLA require it with spaces included? If so, it's 2438 and I need to cut some more!! I've read through the newbie thread and can't see if it specifies on there, but no doubt I've missed that!

It's 2000 characters or less in total , even invisible ones , characters include spaces , carriage returns ,full stops etc , try to avoid as many irrelevant characters as possible and as seen in the last reply , make each point more concise too

Figure 7 could become fig7 for example

The_Leopard

Thanks all... I've cut it back from over 5000 characters so I'm sure I can lose 400 odd more! I'll do so and submit to POPLA today

Coupon-mad

The_Leopard said:

Umkomaas said:

I've reduced down the rebuttal points to the following and it's just under 2000 characters now. 

I make it 2,511 characters. 

Thanks Umkomaas. Without spaces it is 1994 - do POPLA require it with spaces included? If so, it's 2438 and I need to cut some more!! I've read through the newbie thread and can't see if it specifies on there, but no doubt I've missed that!

You just needed to search the NEWBIES thread (control & F on your own keyboard) for 2000.   

Of course any character count includes spaces.   I'm not going to add yet more words to the NEWBIES thread spelling out stuff like that and other stuff like 'does 14 days mean working days?' (when I read that one, I want to scream...).    These timelines and restrictions are what they say they are; characters are all characters.  Days are all days.

Just cut down your sentences and remove repetition.

The_Leopard

Just received the outcome from the POPLA appeal. Unsuccessful. Interestingly the rational says “the operator has also provided a system printout, which shows the vehicle was registered at that car park on the day in question, along with any payments made. The printout shows that the vehicle was not registered with a payment. I can also see that other payments were made at the site in the day in question”. Firstly, there was no printout shared with me in the operator evidence and secondly, a payment was definitely made and I have access to proof of this. There are many other reasons stated such as plenty of signage (clearly hasn’t paid any attention to the fact that these signs are indicating that blue badge holders still have pay and not relevant to the case) and that whilst I have to prove M&S don’t own the land (when I’ve requested a landowner contract) the operator doesn’t have to provide a full contract and an excerpt of some text is fine supposedly from a contract is fine!!

Anyway, I won’t be paying anything. Thanks for the help I received from this board, much appreciated.

D_P_Dance

PoPLA is ah irrelevance, all that matters is what a judge decides in court.