Euro Car Parks PCN - finding landowner

kiss_me_now9

Vehicle was parked in a ECP car park for 12 minutes late at night a few weeks ago, forgot to get a ticket (as driver was picking elderly parents up. After about 5 or so minutes the driver realised they were in the wrong car park and was on the phone to them for the majority of the time trying to figure out where they were as they were visiting town and a bit lost). 

NTK has now been sent, addressed to my OH who is the RTK. 

OH and elderly parents are now insisting that the charge is paid as "rules have been broken" and "we'll end up having to go to court and pay a massive fine" (insert eye rolling here). They are all now in major panics about the whole thing but I know from you lovely lot on here that there is little to worry about if handled correctly. 

Plan A seems to be to contact the landowner and complain but I am not sure who that is as it's a large carpark in the centre of town, all I'm getting on google is redirection to the council website (it's definitely no longer a council carpark though it was many years ago I think). Is there any advice on where to find the owner of the land?
[Post edited for ambiguity]

GrumpyDil

I'll leave the regulars to comment but do make sure your parents and OH understand what you have received is a speculative invoice and can never ever lead to a fine, massive or otherwise. 

kiss_me_now9

GrumpyDil said:

I'll leave the regulars to comment but do make sure your parents and OH understand what you have received is a speculative invoice and can never ever lead to a fine, massive or otherwise. 

Trust me, I have tried every angle on it. Not an actual fine, not a legal charge, not a council ticket, everything. They see the big scary letters and threats and immediately want to pay it 'to stop the hassle'. My parents have even sent me the money to pay it already (I told them not to and will hold onto it for now, returning it later on). 

I think the hardest part of this could be making sure my OH doesn't pay it behind my back as it's addressed to him! 

Coupon-mad

First advice:

If picking someone up, ALWAYS just stop on street. Did you know that picking up or setting down passengers is what double yellow and single yellow lines are for?

You could also use a bay if it's evening and out of street restricted hours.

I would never drive past all the (perfectly allowed!) yellow lines and bays in a town and instead seek out any car park to collect a passenger (or to load/unload) something. Particularly never in the evening where almost every street bay or lines is likely free of restriction.

You cannot get a PCN for picking up passengers on yellow lines on street, and councils can't use cameras for parking enforcement. AVOID PRIVATE LAND.  

AVOID CAR PARKS.

Second advice:

Insist on doing an appeal in OH's name (NOT YOURS) to prove that the keeper (not driver) wins at POPLA.  This is vital because POPLA has recently shown that the NTK wording is deficient for keeper liability. 

DO NOT NAME THE DRIVER.

Easy peasy.

See the POPLA DECISIONS thread (recent ECP decisions posted) and the thread I started about NTK pictures, which shows you what's wrong with a ECP NTK.

Umkomaas

It's your OH who must deal with this as the NtK is addressed to the Registered Keeper. You can do the work on it, but always under the RK's name. Please read the NEWBIES FAQ Announcement, first post, to get things underway. 

Is there any advice on where to find the owner of the land?

I post this advice regularly, which hopefully will give you some ideas on trying to track down the landowner. 

1. Google searches

2. If a retail park, check on any signage which lists the on-site outlets

3. Ask retailers on the site if there is a managing agent

4. Ask retailers on the site to whom do they pay rent

5. Contact the local authority and ask who pays the non-domestic/business rate for the car park (some councils have a spreadsheet on their website)

6. Contact the local Valuation Office and ask if they know. They often have a website which might provide the information 

7. Contact The Land Registry and for around £3 they should be able to provide definitive detail

8. If you haven't already done so, give us the name of the car park/site/location, we may have seen other cases there. 

Fruitcake

kiss_me_now9 said:

GrumpyDil said:

I'll leave the regulars to comment but do make sure your parents and OH understand what you have received is a speculative invoice and can never ever lead to a fine, massive or otherwise. 

Trust me, I have tried every angle on it. Not an actual fine, not a legal charge, not a council ticket, everything. They see the big scary letters and threats and immediately want to pay it 'to stop the hassle'. My parents have even sent me the money to pay it already (I told them not to and will hold onto it for now, returning it later on). 

I think the hardest part of this could be making sure my OH doesn't pay it behind my back as it's addressed to him! 

Tell him you want separate bank accounts if you don't already have them so that he doesn't throw your hard earned money down the drain to fund the parking industry referred to as scammers, rogues, and bloodsuckers by MPs in open parliamentary debate.

1505grandad

".....to fund the parking industry referred to as scammers, rogues, and bloodsuckers by MPs in open parliamentary debate."
And a very profitable scam it is too for the unregulated industry (1.3.2023):-
https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/private-parking-on-course-to-be-billion-pound-industry
"Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said:
“If only the rest of the economy was booming like the private parking sector, perhaps we’d all be feeling more prosperous.
“Private parking looks set to be a billion pound-a-year business, if it isn’t already, with demands for up to £100 a time being sent out to drivers at the rate of more than one every three seconds."

kiss_me_now9

@Coupon-mad I actually wasn’t aware that it was legal to use the yellow lines (double or single in nature) for stopping to pick people up. I always thought double yellows was no stopping at all, and singles were no parking. In future I will use them rather than pulling into a car park! 

@Umkomaas the car park is the one in the article in my original post (Cheltenham North Place). It’s not linked to any local businesses, has no retail units attached to it. I will try the council to see if they know who owns it but I cannot see how a landowner who likely just gets passive income from ECP using their land would care about someone complaining about a PCN. It’s a horrible car park - full of pot holes and not maintained at all. Always half empty even on a busy shopping day as it’s double the rate per hour of the two NCP car parks it’s sandwiched in the middle of! 

I’ve read the NEWBIES thread multiple times but I must admit it is all pretty confusing to me - there’s a reason I didn’t do a law degree. However I will get re reading and hopefully it’ll click. 

Coupon-mad

Just do what I suggested in OH's name. Easy!

No risk.

kiss_me_now9

Right, baby is in bed and I've finally got an hour to sit down and sort this out. 

I just wanted to double check that the following is correct: 

1 - Appealing to the landowner in this case seems a bit pointless, as it's a carpark that's poorly maintained, likely has already been sold for housing land and is not directly linked to any retail/business that would care about poor publicity through me kicking up a stink wherever I can. 

2 - Using the template on the Newbies thread, an appeal is sent to the parking company via their website, making it clear that we do not know who was driving the vehicle and we wait for that to come back as denied, which will generate a POPLA code. 

I presume since my complaint is technically that the vehicle is deemed to have 'overstayed' as there is no payment for the 2 minutes over their grace period, so I would leave this bit in, but delete the part about the PDT machine (this car park is app controlled)

3 - Appeal at POPLA under deficient wording for keeper liability.

Coupon-mad

OH appeals and can use the appeal found in any NCP Gatwick thread. That wording fits.

There's one today but we won't link it because this forum works best when posters get confident on how to easily find & copy wording. Should take you 5 minutes of glancing down the titles of threads from the last 24 hours.