Horizon Parking and Epping Forest

delabc

There's something strange. I can't find the 19 August or 12 August MSE Tips emails in my inbox but I've got 5 August and earlier. I'm still subscribed. And if I search for MSE Tips the 19 August and 12 August emails come up. They're not in my junk folder. I'll keep investigating.

Coupon-mad

Must be in All Mail but not the inbox for some reason.

delabc

I've solved the mystery of the missing emails. They were in a folder in the inbox called "Updates" which I didn't know existed. It didn't appear as a folder at the top of my Gmail inbox alongside Primary, Promotions and Social. It was hidden under Categories. As to why only my last two weekly MSE emails were placed in that folder and not previous ones, apparently "Gmail's algorithms are constantly evolving". Who knew? Now I just need to find a way of making sure that future MSE emails go to my Primary folder as they did before.

delabc

I've asked the City of London Corporation why Horizon were referring in their Notice to Registered Keeper to parking on private land and quoting POFA 2012, when this is land owned by the City, but I haven't had a reply yet. If this is indeed public land does this invalidate the Parking Charge altogether as we should have been issued with a Penalty Charge instead?

Gr1pr

Nothing "invalidates" a private parking company invoice 

It may well be unenforceable,  but only a judge can decide the outcome,  in civil court 

The parking company are trying to invoke civil law,  same as Apcoa and VCS at airports 

All it probably means is that Horizon should not be quoting POFA2012,  or trying to mislead victims 

delabc

I have now received a new PCN as the driver, dated 26 August but received 1 September, 6 days (4 business days) later. This is exactly the same as the original PCN addressed to the keeper and confirms a systematic practice of dating the letter at least 2 days before the posting date. This is why I have suggested an assumption of 5 days between the issue date and the date of service in my response to the MHCLG consultation.

Using the 2 days after the stated issue date as the date of service, I now have until 25 September to submit a fresh appeal. I will take my time to compose this but I expect that it will include the following (with grateful thanks for all your help):-

1. There was no valid contract between me and Horizon Parking as there was no acceptance of an offer by me and no consideration took place.

2. Alternatively, any alleged contract was frustrated by the inability of the RingGo phone app, which was the prominently displayed method of payment stipulated by Horizon, to download and register my details. The alternative phone number was in very small print which could not be read from a distance and, in any case, would have taken even more time with no guarantee that this would work any better than the app.

I have now found some evidence to support my wife's original appeal of mitigating circumstances, namely two SMS messages from RingGo within our visit period with a 6 digit verificaton code in response to my attempts to enter my mobile phone number. Both times these were entered but the app refused to go any further. Do you think that I should use mitigating circumstances as a backup as I have this fresh evidence?

Hooray! I have now completed my submission to the MHCLG consultation. I took far longer than I expected and there is no way that I would have been able to do this if I were not retired and was working 12 hours a day, including the commute, as I was when I was a wage slave. Similarly, I would have probably just paid the £60 parking charge and written it off as bad luck, whilst cursing the unfair and corrupt parking companies. This is how the whole parking industry works as a gravy train for the PPCs.

I will post my comments on the consultation on the correct thread.

delabc

Just starting to draft my first stage appeal. Your template first stage is quite brief and I'm not sure it's appropriate in my case as I have already disclosed that I was the driver (before I knew about this forum). Can I start by questioning Horizon's credentials in issuing a PCN? I have had confirmation from the City of London Corporation that the car park is on land owned by them and that they have entered into a contract with Horizon to outsource the parking functions. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but surely they should be issuing Penalty Charge Notices, not Parking Charge Notices, as the City of London is the enforcing authority under the TMA 2004? Horizon's letter still refers to "this private land". Although the PCN is addressed to me as the driver, not the keeper, the letter says that "the Registered Keeper details of this vehicle have been requested from the DVLA through the reasonable clause criteria of pursuing an outstanding Parking Charge."

delabc

My draft appeal to Horizon is shown below. Unfortunately the screenshots that I inserted into the Word document have not come out in the copy and paste here, but you will get the gist from my text. If anyone has any suggestions for improvement I would appreciate them. I fully expect my appeal to be turned down but at least I will have tried.

I deny any liability for the charge and will robustly defend any action you take to enforce it. I deny that there was any contractual agreement between me and Horizon Parking limited.

The circumstances of my visit to Connaught Waters car park are as follows.

My wife and I had been visiting our son in Buckhurst Hill and as it was a beautiful Spring day we decided to go for a walk in Epping Forest. We entered the Connaught Waters car park with the full intention of paying the parking charge and going for our walk. The car park was quite full and we drove around trying to find a space. We parked in one which was quite restricted and then we noticed a car leaving so we moved to their space which was wider. All this took at least 5 minutes, probably more. We then saw the notice board which prominently said that payment had to be made on the RingGo app. We are not from the area and neither of us had the RingGo app on our phones so I then tried to download the app. This took several more minutes which I presume was due to the mobile signal not being very strong. The City of London Corporation, who run Epping Forest, warn on their website "Please be aware that mobile reception in car parks can be patchy".  After eventually finding the app on Play Store, downloading the app and then opening it I clicked on "Register" and entered my email address, mobile phone number and a password and then clicked on "Next" but this just resulted in the phone going back to the Register screen. I again put in my email address, mobile phone and password and clicked on “Next” with the same result. I tried several more times and on two occasions received SMS messages from RingGo. Screenshots of the messages are shown below. The first one timed at 15.41 said “Sorry we can’t park you”. The second one timed at 15.43 provided a 6 digit veification code which I entered but the app refused to go any further. Eventually, we realised that all this was taking time and we decided to give up and leave the car park. We were disappointed because we had been looking forward to a walk in Epping Forest and the parking experience had ruined our day.

The screenshots provide evidence that we tried and failed to download and activate the app during the time we were in the car park from 15.29 to 15.48. You will notice on the second screenshot that when we got home I also tried again with a strong mobile signal, backed up by excellent wifi, to activate the app and received five more messages from RingGo with 6 digit verification/security codes over a 34 minute period between 17.07 and 17.41. I was still unable to register at that time, but I think I was successful later in the evening. The following day I tried to download the app on my wife's phone at home, again with an excellent signal, and got to the page asking me to enter a six digit code which would be sent via a SMS message. This code never arrived after 30 minutes and I tried again, this time asking for the code to be sent via email but this never arrived either.

 

We have not been able to revisit the car park as we live some way away but my son has kindly sent me a photo of the notice board. The instruction to pay using the RingGo app is prominently displayed and I notice that in the small print beneath there is a telephone number. We did not see this on the day we visited as we were some way away from the notice board and it was buried in the small print but even if we had I would probably have decided that we had already wasted enough time and that there was no assurance that talking to a robotic voice would have been any more successful.

Horizon has previously cited as evidence, when the registered keeper (my wife) appealed against the charge, that other motorists were parked on the same car park at the same time as us and successfully paid on the RingGo app but this is totally irrelevant to my case as they would have already had the app on their phones and registered their details before they entered the car park.

My son has told me that there is a CCTV camera covering the whole car park, from which you should be able to see that we never left the car for the whole time we were in the car park.

The above is provided as background to my appeal, rather than mitigating circumstances, as you obviously do not take mitigating circumstances and the obviously unfair nature of your claim into account when judging an appeal, despite fairness being a fundamental principle of contract and common law in the UK.

My appeal is as follows:

1. I deny that a contract was formed between me and Horizon Parking Limited. A valid contract requires the following elements:

(i) An offer

(ii) Acceptance of the offer

(iii) A consideration

(iv) Intention to create legal relations

You say that I entered into a contract with you merely by entering the car park and stopping in a parking space. As regards the offer, there has to be a clear understanding of what is offered and the terms and conditions of the offer. The notice board on site under the tariff of fees merely states that “terms and conditions apply”. There may have been some statement of these terms in the section of the notice board headed as “Paid Parking” but these are in very small print which would have been impossible to read from my position in the carpark. I also find them impossible to read on the photo of the board which my son has kindly sent to me. To the extent that an offer was made I did not accept it and therefore there was no valid contract in place. Quite clearly, under contract law no party can unilaterally claim that a contract is in existence merely by another party entering a space. Otherwise shopkeepers could claim that every shopper who entered their premises had entered into a contract. Any claim that a contract was in existence in these circumstances would be unlawful and/or unenforceable.

2. If a contract between me and Horizon Parking Limited was in place (which I strongly deny) it was frustrated by the impossibility of my making a payment via the RingGo app for the reasons stated above. It is your choice to use RingGo for payment in this car park and it is not my fault that it was impossible to download it, register and make payment within the 19 minutes (less than 14 minutes from when the car was in a parking place) that I was in the car park. It is your responsibility, if you choose to use a parking app for payment to ensure that it  is reliable in allowing users to download, register and pay on the app. Although other motorists were able to pay when they already had the app on their phone, there is ample evidence (look on the Trustpilot website) of motorists having similar problems to me in downloading and registering on the RingGo app. Some recent examples are shown below:

14 September 2025

“This company is an absolute scam.
Trying as we speak to register for the app. Ring Go doesn’t send verification emails or sms codes like it says will.
Their objective is to fine you. It doesn’t want you to pay….
Screen recorded the whole process for proof and will be contacting my local MP”

10 September 2025

“Literally cannot register; receives an error partway through the process, tells me to retry, warns me of my rapidly diminishing SMS requests that are in fact just a swathe of verification codes because of needing to repeat the process.”

26 August 2025

“Truly awful app, I avoid car parks with this app, just stuck in a cycle of register, account linked error, delete account, register, account linked error, delete account, register, account linked error, delete account, register, account linked error, delete account, register”

26 August 2025

“I still have not managed to log in after so many attempts. We went to Epping Forest for the first time yesterday and were at the point of coming home when a lovely man offered to use his log in. My thanks to him. I am now back home trying to register using my Internet but still no luck. Clearly Ringgo has little interest in its customers or it would seek to improve its offering. Sadly there are still some companies out there who don't care!”

delabc

I decided not to include the question of whether this is private land. I'm pretty sure that City of London have placed the Epping Forest infrastructure into a charitable trust and this probably enables them to say that it is relevant land as defined in POFA 2012. As the City contains the highest concentration of legal minds per square foot on the planet it would be surprising if they had got this wrong!

James_Poisson

I am sorry and i don't mean to be unkind, but all that waffle will be totally ignored it's a waste of your time.

They will just say the signs are plentiful and clear pay up.

PPC's rarely take notice of appeals, and all those mitigating circumstances will fall by the wayside.

Your assumptions also that the City of London know what they are doing is disregarding the simple fact that motorists are seen as an easy target for any load of old pony they come up with.

These car parks are under bylaws as has been said above Airport Authorities, and Train Operating Authorities try the same old con using free (to them) contractors to try to enforce what they should be enforcing themselves but that cost them money.

If the bylaws have been be revoked ask for the revocation notices to be evidenced at POPLA.

Bylaw parking fines when enforced through the proper way are dealt with in court and the exchequer banks the proceeds not some scummy PPC that banks it as profit.

The parking details clearly laid out by the City of London website mentions "Penalty Charge Notices" at least two times and that this is enforced using ANPR. 

But ANPR is banned for use by authorities in car parks as High Wycmbe Council found out to their cost in 2017 when the DVLA revoked their KADO contract.

The council had invested heavily in the system, attempting to operate the car parks under contract law like private operators, but this was deemed unlawful, and the system was a failure, leaving fines uncollectable and leading to widespread free parking.

You seem to be far too trusting of authority.

These parking details are a mishmash of confusion:

https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/green-spaces/epping-forest/car-parking-at-epping-forest

But even putting all this aside, if the signage looks like the photo below I think POPLA would throw it out on lack of signage anyway, it is pitiful nowhere does it conform to the Joint COP at all, no contract could be formed with Horizon: