POPLA appeal, euro car parks, Essex

splinter64 · 11 December 2023 at 8:10AM

Hi,

I received an NTK after vehicle was parked in a private car park and allegedly overstayed by about 15 minutes. I'm appealing as keeper and have reached the POPLA stage.

This is the second time I will have submitted to POPLA but I'm a bit less confident here because it is the more recent euro car park NTK which appears to be PoFA compliant (as discussed on the photos thread). I think there are still some problems with the NTK, and my appeal will include some of the other defences (landowner authority, ANPR etc) and I have some evidence of pretty poor signage.

The images in the NTK are a joke (just a number plate, no context, no timestamp). Is the quality of the evidence provided something that affects PoFA compliance? I think I remember seeing something in the BPA about what photos should look like.

In their response to my first appeal they state "it is the registered keeper’s responsibility to inform of the full name and UK Serviceable address within 28 days beginning with the day after the notice was given." It doesn't say anything about passing on the notice to the driver, but is it only the wording of the NTK that matters?

My other argument will be about grace periods. But they have me at a disadvantage here because I do not have the pay and display ticket and they have not told me when it was purchased (according to their clocks!). The NTK does not mention the fact a ticket was purchased at all (which seems pretty unfair, it just says there was not a valid permit). Their response to my appeal confirms that a ticket was purchased, but doesn't tell me the time. It also implies that the time of parking would start at the time they logged the vehicle entering, rather than the time that the ticket was purchased. But that's just wrong, surely! If car enters at 9.55 and then a ticket is bought at 10.00 for 3 hours, showing expiry at 13.00, then it would be weird to state that the car was only good until 12.55. This is similar to my case, where I think it is quite likely that 5 or 10 minutes of the "overstay" was at the beginning before the ticket was purchased. Is it likely that they will provide the P&D ticket details in response to my POPLA appeal? Can I demand it?

Thanks all!

Coupon-mad · 11 December 2023 at 5:10PM

It doesn't say anything about passing on the notice to the driver, but is it only the wording of the NTK that matters?

Yes.

You can see the missing words cited by POPLA Assessors this year, in POPLA Decisions.

And yes you can demand evidence of when the driver paid, and state that it would have taken the driver a few minutes to find a space, park, go and read the signs and then pay which was done in good time, given the size and how busy this car park usually is.
Blah blah...

splinter64 · 11 December 2023 at 5:37PM

Thank you. I suppose that could backfire on me if it turns out there wasn't a delay at the beginning but hopefully that's what the ticket will show.

This would also seem to require very good synchronisation between the P&D machine and the ANPR timestamp. Does anybody argue about that? Maybe with modern tech all the clocks are the same.

Something that I don't understand about PoFA is that there is a clause about the evidence that the PPC must provide (para 10), and it also says that the NTK must describe the facts that made the charges payable. But their NTK doesn't even describe the fact that a payment was made by the driver, which they knew.