East Midlands Airport - VCS LTD - Petrol Station

Half_way

East Midlands Airport Bye- laws here, complete with boundary6 map on last page 

https://assets.live.dxp.maginfrastructure.com/f/73114/x/2de75e178f/ema-byelaws-31st-july-2025.pdf

Would be interesting to see if VCS can be encouraged to trot out the we beleive the bye laws to be out of date and not valid nonsense, even more so as these are dated 31st July 2025

iWindmill

Their response despite me adding the map from the bylaws showing that the petrol station is within thenboundaries:

"The Fuel Station at EMA is a separate site from the airport estate roadways. The PCN complies with POFA. A copy of our authority to manage parking on this site was supplied as part of the IPC audit process and is available solely to the Adjudicator for their perusal. "

Half_way

the petrol station site, as well as the roadways is in the area the bye laws apply to, three areas can also be patches of land with trees, the DHL customer drop off point and attached small car park area,   paths such as the airport trail and so on, anything and anywhere within the red line on the map even the aero park/museum at the top of the hill as you approach (or leave)  castle donington

iWindmill

How should I respond to this? I'm beginning to feel like a parrot here saying the petrol station is within the boundaries where the bye laws apply multiple times

Or shall I just submit the case to adjudicator ? 

doubledotcom

If that is their prima facie case, you should respond with the scorn it deserves:

The operator’s attempt to carve the Fuel Station out of East Midlands Airport as some kind of magical PoFA island is as ridiculous as it is revealing. It betrays either a total failure to grasp the most basic concept of “relevant land”, or a deliberate effort to mislead in the hope that no one notices.

For the avoidance of doubt, the petrol station is not floating in legal limbo. It sits squarely within the EMA airport boundary – the same red-lined area on the map where the byelaws apply to everything: roadways, car parks, drop-off bays, footpaths, bits of scrubland with a few trees, the DHL customer drop-off and its little car park, the airport trail, and yes, right up to the aero park/museum on the hill as you approach or leave Castle Donington. The law does not stop and start depending on whether you are next to a fuel pump, a tree, a portaloo or a taxi rank. If it is inside the red line, it is land subject to airport byelaws and therefore not “relevant land” for the purposes of Schedule 4 of PoFA. End of story.

So when this operator pompously asserts, “The PCN complies with POFA”, what they are really announcing is that they have not read, or have not understood, the part of PoFA that excludes land under statutory control – or, worse, that they hope the Adjudicator has not. PoFA keeper liability simply cannot apply on byelaw land. You cannot “comply” with PoFA on land where PoFA is, by definition, inapplicable. Dressing up this fundamental error as confident legal certainty does not make it less wrong; it just makes the claim look even more mendacious.

The line about their “authority to manage parking on this site” being “supplied as part of the IPC audit process” and “available solely to the Adjudicator” is equally laughable. That is not evidence; it is a black box. A contract that the appellant is not allowed to see, that conveniently exists only in some secret IPC vault, is about as persuasive as a child insisting “my homework is perfect but you’re not allowed to look at it”. It also sidesteps the real point: even if they did have a cast-iron contract to manage the fuel station, that would not and could not magically strip the land of its byelaw status or transform it into “relevant land” under PoFA. Their “authority” spiel is nothing more than a smokescreen to distract from their complete failure to grapple with the actual legal test.

In short, the operator’s position is a mess of self-serving fiction: they pretend the petrol station has somehow been teleported outside the airport boundary, pretend that PoFA applies where it plainly does not, and then try to hide behind a secret contract no one is allowed to inspect. It is difficult to decide whether this stems from incompetence or cynicism, but either way, their PoFA and “separate site” assertions deserve to be given precisely the weight they merit: none at all.

Umkomaas

I’d be copying the correspondence to the DVLA and ask that they investigate this misrepresentation of the PoFA compliance VCS claims to have.

I’d wait for the VCS response to @doubledotcom’s suggested letter, then send everything to the DVLA. 

ccrt@dvla.gov.uk
(and)
KADOEservice.support@dvla.gov.uk 

Send identical bundles to each email address. 

Coupon-mad

Have you already put in a map proving it is within the Airport boundary?

Personally I'd continue replying every time, making VCS dance like a puppet on a string!

iWindmill

Coupon-mad said:

Have you already put in a map proving it is within the Airport boundary?

Personally I'd continue replying every time, making VCS dance like a puppet on a string!

Yep

 Yes I have, and my earlier post from today was their response. Mind blown. 

Coupon-mad

Have fun pulling their strings. 

iWindmill

The most frustrating thing about IAS system now is that at first I was able to copy and paste my draft response from Word/here straight into response box - this no longer works and I have a feeling they've disabled the ability for me to copy + paste and they're trying to make my life more difficult with the appeal by having to type everything.