ECP / POPLA REJECTION. Keying error help.

Redruby521

Mum received NTK / PCN from ECP in Oct 2025, step-dad was the driver. Breach was identified and recorded as: no valid pay and display ticket/permit purchased. Step-dad used ticket machine to purchase 2hr stay (£2.60) and duration of stay was 26 minutes. Stepdad was/is adamant that he entered full VRM, however the ticket only printed the first 4 digits. 

The initial PCN appears PofA compliant - mum has subsequently not named the driver. 

Appeal was submitted with evidence of parking ticket and bank transaction. Appeal rejected with reasons:

Having carefully considered the supporting evidence provided by you, Euro Car Parks (ECP) have decided to reject your appeal for the following reasons

• The site is operated by an Automatic Number Plate Recontion (ANPR) system and patrolled by ECP employees.
• When purchasing a pay and display ticket or mobile payment session, payment is required for the full duration of your stay and the full and correct vehicle registration mark. Signage at the site clearly details the terms and conditions that you must adhere to.
•   Your appeal states that you purchased a pay and display ticket or mobile payment session, however, after checking the providers mobile payment and/or pay and display machine audit reports for your stay, there are no transactions for the vehicle registration mark which would suggest there has been a "major keying error" when purchasing a pay and display ticket/mobile payment session.
• ECP can confirm the parking charge notice has been issued correctly and the £20.00 administration fee is now due as per the British Parking Association Code of Practice. Failure to pay the £20.00 administration fee within 14 days from the date of this letter the parking charge notice amount will revert back to the original amount due when the appeal was logged.

Once the payment of the £20.00 administration fee has been received within 14 days from the date of this letter, the parking charge notice will be closed and considered settled.

We believed the above to be ambiguous, contradictory and misleading and also not clear the charge was for a reduced admin fee due to them ‘suggesting’ a keying error. 

We appealed to POPLA. Admittedly, the appeal was lacking detail and was relatively weak as we hadn’t found the forum by this time. Simply stated that the ticket was purchased and provided proof of the transaction and ticket with first 4 digits of VRN printed. Argued that it must be a printing error rather than a keying error.

ECP submitted this response along with other evidence: 

This location is managed by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology which takes a picture of the vehicle entering and exiting the site, these pictures are timed and therefore the duration of the stay can be calculated. All vehicle registration numbers are then matched against the data produced by the various means of paying for parking and a list of registration numbers where no payment has been made or where the motorist has stayed longer than the period paid is produced. After requesting vehicle keeper details from the DVLA, a Notice to keeper is sent to the keepers of the vehicles on this list. As a consequence, at ANPR locations there will be no PCN issued to the windscreen neither will there be photographic evidence of the windscreen supplied in operator evidence packs. Parking Charge Notice was issued to vehicle MH18XXX for breach of terms and conditions: No valid pay and display/permit was purchased at Crown Street - Bolton, Crown Street, Bolton, Greater Manchester, BL1 2RU. The car park operates a ANPR camera-controlled operation. Statement: The appellant states that they have paid for parking ticket on the day in question. • Section 18.3 of the British Parking Association’s (BPA) code of practice explains that signs “must be conspicuous and legible and written in intelligible language, so that they are easy to see, read and understand.

• Signage on site is clear, when parking on private land it is the driver’s responsibility to read the signage displayed and parked accordance with the terms and conditions as stated. Euro Car Parks have provided photographic evidence showing that the appellant remained at the site for 27 minutes. (See Section titled - Copy of Notice to Keeper (NTK) sent to the registered keeper’s address (FRONT)

• The signage clearly states the terms and conditions of parking, all drivers are required to adhere to the terms and conditions stipulated on site.

• Signage is visible when entering and inside of the car park and when entering private land it would be the driver’s responsibilty to read the terms and conditions and adhere to them. (See Section titled - Signage location plan, images of signage on site and images of vehicle) Also, please note the time and date stamped images of the signage on site (Jan 2025)

• Any form of parking ticket or ‘notice’ is issued under the law ‘of trespass and Contract Law’. A driver who is invited (or chooses) to park on private land and use the car parking facilities and pays a fee/s does so under a contract (signage) with the car park operator. The parking contract sets out the terms that apply to the parking service, including the price.

• Figure 1 confirms that the NTK is POFA compliant.

• Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems are effectively image processing and micro- processor devices with an internal reference clock based around a set of components referred to as the ‘Real Time Clock chipset’ or RTC. The chipset uses a quartz crystal reference source and provides a reliable time reference dependant on a drift characteristic determined by variations in local camera temperature. High fluctuations in local ambient can cause the RTC to drift as much as 30 seconds a month and to counteract this an NTP server is utilised. The NTP server is effectively a computer situated in a control room and takes a reference time source from a GPS satellite and provides a hyper accurate time reference. All camera systems operated by ECP are configured to request a time synchronisation from the NTP on a sixty second basis. This ensures that all cameras have a universal time reference which is accurate to within thousandths of a second. Cameras also report a ‘heartbeat’ to our back-office environment, again on a sixty second basis, and this is used to establish camera operation; logs of these transactions from all cameras are retained for approximately six months. On capture of an ANPR read this is transmitted to a similar back-office environment where the time difference between that tagged on the raw capture and the ‘real time’ of the servers is again tested.

• All ANPR cameras used by ECP are compliant under the home office approval framework as stated under NAAS/NASP.

• The car park in question is on private land and upon entering such land vehicles are subject to the terms and conditions of parking as shown on the signage. This signage quite clearly states that if your vehicle is in breach of the terms and conditions of the car park then a Parking Charge Notice will be issued.

• On entry to private land, it is the responsibility of the driver to check for signage and ensure that your vehicle has been correctly parked. Any vehicles found not adhering to the signage will be issued with a Parking Charge Notice.

• Please be advised that there are a number of signs around the car park indicating the restrictions of the site and it is the responsibility of the driver to read them when parking.

• The Site is operated by an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system and patrolled by ECP employees.

• Cameras capture an image of vehicles entering and leaving the car park and calculate their length of stay on site.

• The Protection of Freedoms Act (POFA) does not alter the principle of driver liability. What it does do, is to allow proceedings against the registered keeper for unpaid parking charges when the landowner or their agent, the parking operator does not know who the driver was at the time.

• The creditor/operator must follow the procedures set out in POFA Schedule 4 to achieve the benefits of keeper liability.

• I can confirm there are 2 machines on this site - Pay by Phone, and RingGo on signage. I can also confirm that we have not been advised by any other customers using the site on this day that there were issues with the pay and display machines

• As the driver failed to enter their full registration while making the payment is a breach of the code terms and conditions of parking and failure to purchase a valid pay and display ticket: • The appellant was given the opportunity to pay £20 for a period of 14 days as it is advised in section 17.4 of the BPA Code of Practice: • By appealing to POPLA the opportunity to pay £20 is no longer available, the full amount for the PCN is payable. 

They also submitted to POPLA photos of their signage and “record of payments” showing partially redacted VRNs/payments of other customers with mums reg showing only 4 digits. 

I could not see anywhere in their submissions of signage that full VRM was required. The record of payments did not specify any method of payment / highlight whether this was the same payment machine or online/app payment - I argued both these points in my comments which were not taken into account.

POPLA response was received today and appeal was unsuccessful. Mum has quite bad anxiety and is perimenopause and said she won’t cope with the stress of letters and thought of going to court. For me, it’s the principle alone that would stop me backing down against injustice and immoral abuse.

POPLA Assessor supporting rational for decision

The terms and conditions of the car park are listed on the signs and state that payment is to be made. The relevant tariffs are listed, and warning is given that failure to comply will result in a PCN of £100 being issued. The appellant raises that they purchased a ticket and displayed this in the windscreen. The evidence of the ticket provided by the appellant confirms that a fee was paid, but this was made against the incomplete registration MH18. It is important that a motorist enters their full vehicle registration when making payment, to allow the system to calculate if the correct fee has been paid against the amount of time the vehicle spends within the car park, which is captured and calculated by the cameras. If the correct registration is not entered, and no payment can be located for the specific vehicle that is parked, the system will identify that a breach has occurred due to failing to pay, and a PCN is issued. The appellant provided this same evidence to the parking operator, and the Appeals Charter was considered. The Appeals Charter is a statement within the Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice which details how certain circumstances should be handled by the parking operator. This details when a parking charge should be cancelled, and when a parking charge should be reduced to £20, when an appeal is based on an error or mitigating circumstances. Clause F.3 of the Code lists specific circumstances where a parking operator must reduce a PCN to £20, subject to appropriate evidence being provided to allow them to claim back costs that they have incurred for having to send the PCN out, due to the motorist’s error. Such as if a driver has paid the tariff or registered their vehicle but they have swapped characters, have digits missing or have entered the wrong registration completely. In this case, the parking operator reduced the charge to £20 as per the requirements of the Code. This offer was rejected, as an appeal was raised with POPLA, leaving the full charge amount now due. Although the fee paid did cover the full parking duration, as it was not made to the correct registration, it was not a valid payment. As such, I conclude the charge was issued correctly, and the appeal is refused.

When it gets to submitting defence / WS - are there any particulars from this case that I can emphasise that are likely to have weight if it gets to court? 

e.g: I think their initial appeal rejection letter was lacking any detail about the breach. They only provided any evidence at POPLA appeal stage. 

Ticket was purchased with reasonable belief that full and correct VRN keyed. Nevertheless, it is not clearly indicated in their photos that full VRN is required. Nor does their evidence of other payments prove the fault was due to keying error and not machine error.

Any guidance on arguments in our favour while we await the letter to claim please? Thank you in advance.

Coupon-mad

"When it gets to submitting defence / WS - are there any particulars from this case that I can emphasise that are likely to have weight if it gets to court? "

Nope because whilst you will get a court Claim Form (and will use our template defence: easier than POPLA!) the case will never "go to court".

To see why not, and why a claim is what you want, read the DCB Legal thread by @Umkomaas & read any of the 782 outcomes.

🙂

Redruby521

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81896843#Comment_81896843

Thank you! I will go in search of the thread right away! X