NTK from Private Road unloading - POPLA decisions now in.

ParkerstNick

So, with 2 cars with PCNs, and 2 identical very wordy POPLA appeals drafted, I uploaded the first to POPLA last night, day 27. Got a response already from ECP this morning! Are they having a laugh? It's a mostly standard 'evidence pack' and simply ignores the points I made in my appeal.
Here's the bit where they supposedly address my points:

"Statement: Mr XXXXX stated the following:
1. No parking event has taken place, only an unloading event, no parking charge can be issued.
2. The NTK does not meet PoFA 2012 requirements - the relevant land is not specified.
3. The operator’s road markings and signage are inadequate to form the basis of any contract for parking.
4. The parking charge has been issued based on ANPR equipment and operator signage that has been put up illegally.
5. The operator has failed to provide strict proof of landowner authority in compliance with the BPA Code of Practice.
6. As no parking contract has been formed the operator has unlawfully obtained personal details from the DVLA."

Here are their comments, and I can't see any relevance to the points I raised!

"-Section 18.3 of the British Parking Association’s (BPA) code of practice explains that signs “must be conspicuous and legible and written in intelligible language, so that they are easy to see, read and understand.
- Signage on site is clear, when parking on private land it is the driver’s responsibility to read the signage displayed and parked accordance with the terms and conditions as stated. Euro Car Parks have provided photographic evidence showing that the appellant remained at the site for 13 minutes (Figure 1)
- The signage clearly states the terms and conditions of parking, all drivers are required to adhere to the terms and conditions.
- Signage is visble when entering and inside of the car park and when entering private land it would be the driver’s responsibilty to read the terms and conditions and adhere to them. (Figure 2 – See Section 7).
- Any form of parking ticket or ‘notice’ is issued under the law ‘of trespass and Contract Law’. A driver who is invited (or chooses) to park on private land and use the car parking facilities and pays a fee/s does so under a contract (signage) with the car park operator. The parking contract sets out the terms that apply to the parking service, including the price.
- Figure 3 confirms that the NTK is PoFA compliant.
- Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems are effectively image processing and micro-processor devices with an internal reference clock based around a set of components referred to as the ‘Real Time Clock chipset’ or RTC. The chipset uses a quartz crystal reference source and will provide a reliable time reference dependant on a drift characteristic determined by variations in local camera temperature. High fluctuations in local ambient can cause the RTC to drift as much as 30 seconds a month and to counteract this an NTP server is utilised. The NTP server is effectively a computer situated in a control room and takes a reference time source from a GPS satellite and provides a hyper accurate time reference. All camera systems operated by ECP are configured to request a time synchronisation from the NTP on a sixty second basis. This ensures that all cameras have a universal time reference which is accurate to a few thousandths of a second. Cameras also report a ‘heartbeat’ to our back office environment, again on a sixty second basis, and this is used to establish camera operation; logs of these transactions from all cameras are retained for approximately six months. On capture of an ANPR read this is transmitted to a similar back office environment where the time difference between that tagged on the raw capture and the ‘real time’ of the servers is again tested.
- All ANPR cameras used by ECP are compliant under the home office approval framework as stated under NAAS/NASP.
- The car park in question is on private land and upon entering such land vehicles are subject to the terms and conditions of parking as shown on the signage. This signage quite clearly states that if your vehicle is in breach of the terms and conditions of the car park then a parking charge notice (PCN) will be issued.
- 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. Any vehicles found not adhering to the signage will be issued with a parking charge notice (PCN).
- Please be advised that there are a number of signs around the car park indicating the restrictions of the site and it is the responsibility of the driver to read them when parking.
- According to BPA Code of Practise 13.4 – car park operators should allow the driver a reasonable period to leave the private car park after the parking contract has ended; before enforcement action is taken. If the location is one where parking is normally permitted; the grace period at the end of the parking period should be a minimum of 10 minutes.
- Figure 4 shows the contract between Euro Car Parks and XXX Close."

So the points I raised:

1. No parking event has taken place, only an unloading event, no parking charge can be issued.

Not addressed or even mentioned.

2. The NTK does not meet PoFA 2012 requirements - the relevant land is not specified.

Not addressed or even mentioned.

3. The operator’s road markings and signage are inadequate to form the basis of any contract for parking.

This was mainly about forbidding signage, not addressed or even mentioned.

4. The parking charge has been issued based on ANPR equipment and operator signage that has been put up illegally.

Not addressed or even mentioned.

5. The operator has failed to provide strict proof of landowner authority in compliance with the BPA Code of Practice.

There are 7 distinct land titles and 3 separate landowners here. The single contract for the whole site seems to have been organised and signed by just one of those.

6. As no parking contract has been formed the operator has unlawfully obtained personal details from the DVLA.

Not addressed, and probably not really part of a defence, just included for ECP to note it's a consequence Ithat could be followed up on.

Their response is so staggeringly irrelevant that I can't really think of any useful response, as it's all so much completely useless b*ll*cks they've just copied and pasted.

I Intend to upload the 2nd car appeal to POPLA tonight, day 28.

Le_Kirk

Have you been asked by POPLA to comment on the PPC's response?  If so, do that (but be wary of the 2,000 character limit) and point out that if the PPC did not refute what you put in your appeal, they have accepted it and the appeal must be upheld.  You only have to win on one point!

ParkerstNick

As I have mentioned before, we had 2 cars involved at the same time so we submitted identical appeals/responses etc under the appropriate references. POPLA decisions have now been received - one successful, one unsuccessful.

Here is the appeal:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ybayep51tjs3um/POPLAAppeal.docx?dl=0

Here is PCP response:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nvjazyb4yc67a0b/MyResponse.docx?dl=0 

Here is our response:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nvjazyb4yc67a0b/MyResponse.docx?dl=0

Here are the decisions:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nkg572c365w4ojx/POPLADecision1.docx?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jjm477t7r3iafid/POPLADecision2.docx?dl=0

These decisions, even the successful one, seem inadequate in so many ways that it is difficult to know where to start.

Jenni_D

Where you don't start is considering paying the PCN for which the POPLA appeal failed.

ParkerstNick

Jenni_D said:

Where you don't start is considering paying the PCN for which the POPLA appeal failed.

Of course!. What I meant is I don't know where to start trying to understand how such a noddy organisation gets away with such bizarre, inconsistent and illogically-reasoned conclusions that somehow are allowed to masquerade as binding decisions. And even that is a rhetorical question!

Redx

ParkerstNick said:

Jenni_D said:

Where you don't start is considering paying the PCN for which the POPLA appeal failed.

Of course!. What I meant is I don't know where to start trying to understand how such a noddy organisation gets away with such bizarre, inconsistent and illogically-reasoned conclusions that somehow are allowed to masquerade as binding decisions.

I wouldn't spend any time worrying or wondering about how stupid the morons at Popla or parking companies are  !!

The sooner the new system happens the better , we can only hope that the new adr works properly with properly trained staff

Coupon-mad

This time next year we will have a real appeal service as long as someone wholly unsuitable doesn’t pitch for it and win, like Wright Hassall who ruined POPLA for an interim period, allegedly tipping off PPCs about what evidence they needed to add. 

WHOPLA was widely reported and appointing them to systematically clear the backlog of appeals by making consumers lose (allegedly) was one of the most anti-consumer things the BPA has ever done, bearing in mind the QDR/ZZPS connection.

It does worry me who might be currently pitching to run the Single Appeals Service, with the timeline suggested for this task looking like that’s likely to be currently under consideration this year.

deighton2002

>>POPLA decisions have now been received - one successful, one unsuccessful.

Could be the same with county court cases, just a lottery.  

None of the BPA rules I've seen mention double yellow lines, and I don't see what right there is to adopt standard signs with their own ad-hoc meanings.  Companies have attempted cases based on dropping passengers off on double yellow lines, which is of course often legal on public land, as with your case when your actions could be perceived the norm.  Judges seem to have both rejected and accepted such arguments at different times.

ParkerstNick

deighton2002 said:

>>

None of the BPA rules I've seen mention double yellow lines, and I don't see what right there is to adopt standard signs with their own ad-hoc meanings. 

The BPA CoP says that 'signage' (presumably including road markings) should conform to Dept. for Transport principles, so a motorist seeing DYL on a private road should, in the absence of any further explanatory plates (and there are none), be entitled to assume that they mean the same as those on a public road.

Fruitcake

In addition, 

Section 69 of Consumer Rights Act 2015 says:

69 Contract terms that may have different meanings
(1) If a term in a consumer contract, or a consumer notice, could have different meanings, the meaning that is most favourable to the consumer is to prevail.