Total Parking Solutions

Mquamo

Hi All,

I have received a 'Final Demand' letter from Total Parking Solutions for a 'Partial Payment' contravention. The letter has the VRM stated as well photographic evidence of the entry and exit times via ANPR. The letter states that my time to appeal has expired and I must pay the charge of £90.

For background info, I arrived at the car park at 10:17am but the queue for the parking meter was ridiculous and I had 3 young children with me. I downloaded the RingGo app that was displayed on the parking meter so I could make the payment via my phone. My mobile signal was really poor and by the time i had settled the children, installed the RingGO app and made payment it was an hour or so later. There is no function on the app to set the arrival parking time in the past so i could only make the payment from the time i was inputting my card details.

I'd happily pay the hourly charge for the additional time spent in the car park but refuse to pay the £90!!

How do I appeal the parking charge?

Thanks

Coupon-mad

You seem to have missed time to appeal unless the first postal PCN wasn’t more than 28 days ago?  You don’t get only a final notice. 

No paying even when your appeal gets rejected.

Appeal anyway and complain to the landowner like the NEWBIES thread tells you, not saying who was driving but stating you were an occupant of the car and what happened and that RingGo doesn’t let you set parking in the past, which is actually shocking as that would cause a PCN every time!

And with that evidence and experience, we need you to send that personal experience and evidence by email to Government and urge them to include a requirement in the new law to ensure any payment methods can be backdated in time to the time the car went past the cameras or everyone will get a PCN.

What I am talking about is this and there is only 3 weeks left to respond:

Please comment on the government consultation concerning parking charges and complain to your MP about the proposal to allow fake add on debt recovery costs.

Government Consultation re private parking charge levels, August 2021: PLEASE BOOKMARK THIS THREAD — MoneySavingExpert Forum

We are calling for everyone to do a full and robust response by email to the MHCLG, attaching evidence of what happened to you and what you think is wrong about £100 charges and fake debt recovery ‘fees’ that no PPC actually incurs or pays. 

We also need people to contact their MP to ask questions about why the MHCLG appear to have performed a U-turn on their March promise to cap parking charges, and why instead they propose to fund the race to court at £70 a time from victims

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78517562/#Comment_78517562

To anyone reading this: PLEASE DO THIS IF YOU WANT CONSUMER VOICES TO OUTWEIGH THE PARKING INDUSTRY’S GREED. WHICH SEES THEM TRY TO CLAIM MORE THAN THE LAW ALLOWS, FROM A REGISTERED KEEPER,

I just looked at the POFA Explanatory Notes (part of the legislation):

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/9/notes/division/5/1/3/3

221.Paragraph 4 provides that the creditor has a right to recover unpaid parking charges from the keeper of the relevant vehicle if the conditions set out in paragraphs 5, 6, 11 and 12 are satisfied. The creditor is not obliged to pursue unpaid parking charges through this scheme and may seek to do so through other means but they may not use the scheme provided for here to secure double recovery of unpaid parking charges (paragraph 4(6)), nor will they have the right to pursue the keeper, as opposed to the driver, of the vehicle where they have sufficient details of the driver’s identity. The right to reclaim unpaid parking charges from the vehicle keeper does not apply in cases where the vehicle has been stolen before it was parked, (paragraphs 4(2) to (3)), or in certain circumstances where the vehicle in question was a hire vehicle (paragraph 4(7)). The creditor may not make a claim against the keeper of a vehicle for more than the amount of the unpaid parking related charges as they stood when the notice to the driver was issued (paragraph 4(5)

D_P_Dance

Have you complained to your MP?  

Mquamo

Thank you for the responses.

I have emailed to complain to the landowner and appealed as recommended. I'll keep you posted!.

I will be reviewing the links posted above regarding the government consultation and complaining to my MP.

Thanks again

Mquamo

Four years later, BW Legal have re-emerged with this case and issued a Letter of Claim.

In response, I used the template found in Post #2 of the Newbies thread to reply to BW Legal.

They have now come back to me — their response is below. Could you please advise on the best way to proceed?

Good Afternoon, Thank you for your contact. The Parking Charge issued is for the sum of £70.00 and our additional costs amount to £54.00. The additional cost of £54.00 represents the nature and type of work undertaken by debt recovery agents in the collection of the balance of the unpaid Parking Charge. Our Client is satisfied that you remain liable for the cost of the PCN and the costs of debt recovery, due to non-payment of the charge in question.  Debt recovery costs are contractually agreed by the motorist when visiting the car park. They only apply when the opportunity to pay the parking charge has expired and the parking company has been forced to commence debt recovery activities. Such contractual costs are recognised by the courts as covering debt recovery activity between the expiry of the parking charge notice and the commencement of litigation, including pre-litigation correspondence.   The fees we charge our clients for our services are subject to VAT. However, these are separate and distinct from contractual debt recovery costs recoverable by our client from the motorist. The Charge you have been issued with represents the breach of a core term within the parking contract which was formed when your vehicle entered and remained on private land in excess of the grace period and subsequently breached when you  made partial payment for your vehicle. Furthermore, in 2015, the Supreme Court case of ParkingEye v Beavis confirmed that the parking charge was not about loss, but a legitimate charge to deter motorists from breaching the contract under which they are permitted to use the car park.  We have placed the account on a 30 day hold to allow you time to seek advice from a third party, please contact us before the hold expires on 24 August 2025. Should you have any further queries, please contact our office on 0113 487 0430. If you have any further issues or new questions that you would like us to assist you with, we kindly request that you use the contact options below to submit a new query. You can also log into our Customer Portal by clicking here, and go to the Contact History of your account to view the contact. Yours sincerely, BW Legal

Coupon-mad

Mquamo said:

Four years later, BW Legal have re-emerged with this case and issued a Letter of Claim.

In response, I used the template found in Post #2 of the Newbies thread to reply to BW Legal.

They have now come back to me — their response is below. Could you please advise on the best way to proceed?

Good Afternoon, Thank you for your contact. The Parking Charge issued is for the sum of £70.00 and our additional costs amount to £54.00. The additional cost of £54.00 represents the nature and type of work undertaken by debt recovery agents in the collection of the balance of the unpaid Parking Charge. Our Client is satisfied that you remain liable for the cost of the PCN and the costs of debt recovery, due to non-payment of the charge in question.  Debt recovery costs are contractually agreed by the motorist when visiting the car park. They only apply when the opportunity to pay the parking charge has expired and the parking company has been forced to commence debt recovery activities. Such contractual costs are recognised by the courts as covering debt recovery activity between the expiry of the parking charge notice and the commencement of litigation, including pre-litigation correspondence.   The fees we charge our clients for our services are subject to VAT. However, these are separate and distinct from contractual debt recovery costs recoverable by our client from the motorist. The Charge you have been issued with represents the breach of a core term within the parking contract which was formed when your vehicle entered and remained on private land in excess of the grace period and subsequently breached when you  made partial payment for your vehicle. Furthermore, in 2015, the Supreme Court case of ParkingEye v Beavis confirmed that the parking charge was not about loss, but a legitimate charge to deter motorists from breaching the contract under which they are permitted to use the car park.  We have placed the account on a 30 day hold to allow you time to seek advice from a third party, please contact us before the hold expires on 24 August 2025. Should you have any further queries, please contact our office on 0113 487 0430. If you have any further issues or new questions that you would like us to assist you with, we kindly request that you use the contact options below to submit a new query. You can also log into our Customer Portal by clicking here, and go to the Contact History of your account to view the contact. Yours sincerely, BW Legal

Do nothing EXCEPT the Public Consultation this month. See below...

Responses to BW Legal and their ilk are futile, except to tell them if you move house but that's obviously common sense.

Await the claim form if it comes.

Search the forum for that tired old template reply you got (choose a line with unusual words from it) and you'll see. Some case end up with a claim form and some don't. Either way these cases are beatable and cost nothing/no CCJ risk.

BW Legal admit in this template letter we've seen hundreds of times before, that behind the scenes the PPC pays them money "our costs" for successful cases:

"our additional costs amount to £54.00. The additional cost of £54.00 represents the nature and type of work undertaken by debt recovery agents in the collection of the balance of the unpaid Parking Charge. Our Client is satisfied that you remain liable for the cost of the PCN and the costs of debt recovery, due to non-payment of the charge in question."

...completely contradicted here where they pretend one 'DR fee' (the B2B one) isn't in any way linked to the one they rinse from consumers AND despite calling the £54 "our costs" above, they then say they are actually "contractual costs" owed to their client. Errrr... tell us another. Which is it then?!

"The fees we charge our clients for our services are subject to VAT. However, these are separate and distinct from contractual debt recovery costs recoverable by our client from the motorist."

However those fees are clear NOT 'separate and distinct' if the industry makes money from consumers paying the equivalent or more, including the VAT element (which is illegal to recover from the 'debtor' under HMRC rules).

Await the claim then use the Template Defence. Also read the new MSE Guide linked at the top of the page to corroborate our advice. The new Guide was fact-checked by me and has been cleared by Martin Lewis to be the official Guide to fighting private parking charges.

It has just been sent to almost 10 million people in the MSE weekly email yesterday.

They also drew the recipients' attention to the current Public Consultation. Look:

This month, we need you: PLEASE bookmark this thread below and do the government's Public Consultation if you haven't done it yet. Their proposals are wrong. We must stop them.

See this thread: -

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6617396/parking-code-of-practice-consultation-8-weeks-from-11th-july-2025/p1

We need every poster to come back & complete this vital Consultation before the deadline! Just 2 weeks left but please don't rush it. You can do some then save it and come back to it as you have time.

We understand that you may need some pointers. It looks laborious, we get that.

So to try to help, I've written some guidance on that thread.

Any questions on the Consultation please ask - on the dedicated thread - but I've covered up to question 20 already in that first post, openly telling everyone what I'm going to put and/or what sort of evidence you might wish to use for your response, if you agree with what we'll be saying from our experience.

Whilst your answers must of course be your own, there are vital points to safeguard motorists interests to make, that many people may not think of without our guidance because we see cases every day and we know the legal background. However, people like you have lived & breathed the intimidation, greed and unfairness first hand so your voice is needed!