APCOA Penalty Notice

LDast

If it is a penalty notice and not a parking charge notice, the it does time out after 6 months. The likelihood of APCOA actually bothering to initiate a private prosecution in the magistrates court is about zero as, even if they were successful and the defendant was fined, the money does not go to APCOA but to the public purse.

However, in order to have both belt and braces, it is worth tying APCOA up and stringing out the whole process until it is too late for APCOA to do anything about it. So, a POPLA code is actually valid for 33 days, not the 28 shown in the appeal rejection letter. This mens that you can submit your POPLA appeal on day 32 with no problem.

In your POPLA appeal, you will include as many points of appeal as you can. Besides the fact that you only need to be successful on a single point, APCOA have to rebut each and every point you raise, the more you make APCOA have to dig around and produce their rebuttal to your appeal, the longer it can take. Try inserting a question in your POPLA appeal so that there is a chance that they or APCOA need to get back to you to clarify. String it all out.

goldstone12

Thanks very much for the help folks.  I will proceed as set out above.  I'll post back here with how it goes.

goldstone12

Coupon Mad commented above that APCOA may assume that I was the driver because I made the appeal to them.  I think that they have done this as I received a letter from them today which is the rejection of the appeal and which uses language like ' your parking session '.

Although I provided my contact details on my appeal I did not use any language to say that I was the driver.  And, in fact, I was not the driver and neither am I the keeper.

I'm hoping that this will work to my benefit. 

Can anyone make the appeal to POPLA or does it have to be the keeper ? 

If I can make the appeal I'll just state that I am neither keeper nor driver.  If the keeper has to appeal, then the keeper can make the same comment.  This might cause delay as APCOA have to figure out who to claim against.

Or, does this work against me ?  Are APCOA allowed to assume that the person who initially appealed was in fact the driver ?

Gr1pr

They can assume what they like, but ONLY a keeper that receives a PCN with their own details on it can appeal it 

If you are neither the registered keeper, nor the driver, you are a third party and no skin in the game, so the person named on the PCN should be doing the Popla appeal, nobody else , and should have done the initial appeal too

The keeper could have named the driver, but hasn't done, so the keeper is in the frame, not you, you are a stranger to the saga . If you appeal it to Popla as neither keeper nor driver, I believe that they won't accept it 

fisherjim

Why exactly are you doing this instead of the actual Keeper?

LDast

goldstone12 said:

Coupon Mad commented above that APCOA may assume that I was the driver because I made the appeal to them.  I think that they have done this as I received a letter from them today which is the rejection of the appeal and which uses language like ' your parking session '.

Although I provided my contact details on my appeal I did not use any language to say that I was the driver.  And, in fact, I was not the driver and neither am I the keeper.

I'm hoping that this will work to my benefit. 

Can anyone make the appeal to POPLA or does it have to be the keeper ? 

If I can make the appeal I'll just state that I am neither keeper nor driver.  If the keeper has to appeal, then the keeper can make the same comment.  This might cause delay as APCOA have to figure out who to claim against.

Or, does this work against me ?  Are APCOA allowed to assume that the person who initially appealed was in fact the driver ?

In what capacity were you appealing? To whom was the Penalty Notice addressed? If not in your name, in whose name did you try and appeal?

The PN would have been addressed to the keeper but you now say you were neither the driver nor the keeper!

In whoever's name the PN is, makes the appeal to POPLA. If it's not in your name, you can do all the work but it must be in the PN recipients name.

APCOA can only claim against the driver. Hopefully the driver is still unknown. This all going to get FUBAR'd if you're not careful!

goldstone12

Hmm.....the driver left the car at the station car park.  I picked it up later that day because the driver caught a train to go on holiday.    I called them, found out the details and was provided with the email which APCOA sent to confirm the parking details.  ( Now I think about that, APCOA obviously had the email address of the user of the app, which rather tells them who the driver was.) 

The penalty notice wasn't addressed to anyone, it was stuck on the car window.  The driver was on holiday so I submitted the appeal. I was careful in the appeal not to divulge who the driver was.

I have now received a letter from APCOA, addressed directly to me, which denies the appeal.  

Gr1pr

So you are not the keeper but were a driver, one of two drivers , you found the windscreen PCN NtD and appealed that NtD , so they are treating you as the driver that found the NtD and appealed it, so no postal notice 

This was not divulged at the beginning of this saga, back on page one 

Looks like you will be doing the popla appeal then, stringing the whole thing out past the 6 months deadline 

goldstone12

Gr1pr said:

So you are not the keeper but were a driver, one of two drivers , you found the windscreen PCN NtD and appealed that NtD , so they are treating you as the driver that found the NtD and appealed it, so no postal notice 

This was not divulged at the beginning of this saga, back on page one 

Looks like you will be doing the popla appeal then, stringing the whole thing out past the 6 months deadline 

Oh, I just assumed that the ' driver ' was the person who left the car and paid for the parking.  Is ' driver ' actually defined anywhere ?  I absolutely am not intensionally leaving out any detail in this thread.....I need you to have all the relevant info to be able to help me.  ( Although, as advised somewhere on this forum I am trying to leave out personal identifying information. )

My wife is actually the keeper of the vehicle.  It is not an unreasonable scenario that the ' driver ' brought the notice to one of us but I took on the job of submitting the appeal.  

But, isn't it even a bit more of a worry that they have the email address of the person who used the app to pay for parking? ( It is a very straightforward email address, clearly giving the name )

KeithP

goldstone12 said:

But, isn't it even a bit more of a worry that they have the email address of the person who used the app to pay for parking? ( It is a very straightforward email address, clearly giving the name )

Not really.

My wife often pays for the parking when I have driven us to the place.

Perfectly reasonable, and not unusual, for a passenger to pay for the parking.