Parking Charge Notice ( PCN ) for Heathrow Hilton Garden Inn terminal 2 (t2) from EURO CAR PARKS

StrawberryHeathrow

Alrighty guys so it should look something like this? Good to go simple as that?

Appeal Submission for Parking Charge Notice (PCN) [Insert PCN Number]

As the registered keeper, we wish to formally challenge this Parking Charge Notice (PCN) and request its cancellation on the following grounds:

Not Relevant Land – Statutory Control and Airport Byelaws

The land where the alleged contravention took place is not "relevant land" under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA). As such, the registered keeper cannot be held liable for the parking charge under POFA.

As we are the registered keeper of the vehicle, we are aware that POFA specifically defines relevant land as land that is not subject to statutory control. Airport land, including the land where this alleged incident took place at Hilton Garden Inn - Heathrow T2, is governed by airport-specific byelaws. This places it outside the scope of POFA, as land subject to statutory control is explicitly excluded from POFA’s definition of relevant land. The Notice to Keeper (NTK) issued does not comply with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA).

Coupon-mad

Who is 'we'?

Is the registered keeper a company?

You could add this to push the Assessor in the right direction:

POPLA please be reminded of the repeated mistake your assessors made several times in 2023 when another operator, NSL were wrongly misleading rookie POPLA Assessors that Stansted Airport was relevant land, and subject to the keeper liability provisions of the POFA.

Your Assessors initially fell for this lie, until a formal complaint was made re Code ref 4822223007 and Bethany Young of the POPLA Complaints Team apologised because Assessors had naively believed the operator and POPLA had got the law wrong.

She stated that Assessors would be re-trained, with her findings on 7/12/2023 being as follows:

"In the assessor’s rationale, they confirm they were not satisfied that the driver of the vehicle had been identified and subsequently concluded that the PCN complied with the provisions of PoFA. The assessor explained that they were not considering the appeal under byelaws, and I can see the appeal was assessed under contract law.
I fully accept that the assessor has incorrectly stated that the relevant land where PoFA is applicable includes any land which is subject to statutory control. You are correct that relevant land under PoFA excludes land subject to statutory control and the parking operator can only pursue the driver of the vehicle for the charge.

As per the complaint response you raised, the Airports Act 1986 indicates that Stansted Airport Limited, as an Airport Authority and Highways Authority, falls under statutory control. Whilst the assessor has not disputed this, it is evident they have incorrectly classified this as relevant land. This means that there has been a mis-assessment of your appeal.
I do apologise for this error and any resulting inconvenience that has been caused. I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Whilst we always strive to issue accurate and robust decisions, (we consider over 60,000 cases a year) there is always the potential for human errors to be made. I note this is a second instance where this has occurred and therefore, I have escalated this internally.

We will ensure that all assessors complete a further extensive training course on the applications of PoFA, specifically in respect of relevant land, to address this issue going forwards."

StrawberryHeathrow

Fixed it to ''I'' instead of ''we'' must have went wrong in the editing at some point…, so good to go in this variant? Sorry for asking so many times but I want to make sure everything is right and not send something wrong:

As the registered keeper, I wish to formally challenge this Parking Charge Notice (PCN) and request its cancellation on the following grounds:

Not Relevant Land – Statutory Control and Airport Byelaws
The land where the alleged contravention took place is not "relevant land" under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA). As such, the registered keeper cannot be held liable for the parking charge under POFA.

As the registered keeper of the vehicle, I am aware that POFA specifically defines relevant land as land that is not subject to statutory control. Airport land, including the land where this alleged incident took place at Hilton Garden Inn - Heathrow T2, is governed by airport-specific byelaws. This places it outside the scope of POFA, as land subject to statutory control is explicitly excluded from POFA’s definition of relevant land. The Notice to Keeper (NTK) issued does not comply with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA).

POPLA please be reminded of the repeated mistake your assessors made several times in 2023 when another operator, NSL were wrongly misleading rookie POPLA Assessors that Stansted Airport was relevant land, and subject to the keeper liability provisions of the POFA.

Your Assessors initially fell for this lie, until a formal complaint was made re Code ref 4822223007 and Bethany Young of the POPLA Complaints Team apologised because Assessors had naively believed the operator and POPLA had got the law wrong.

She stated that Assessors would be re-trained, with her findings on 7/12/2023 being as follows:

"In the assessor’s rationale, they confirm they were not satisfied that the driver of the vehicle had been identified and subsequently concluded that the PCN complied with the provisions of PoFA. The assessor explained that they were not considering the appeal under byelaws, and I can see the appeal was assessed under contract law.
I fully accept that the assessor has incorrectly stated that the relevant land where PoFA is applicable includes any land which is subject to statutory control. You are correct that relevant land under PoFA excludes land subject to statutory control and the parking operator can only pursue the driver of the vehicle for the charge.

As per the complaint response you raised, the Airports Act 1986 indicates that Stansted Airport Limited, as an Airport Authority and Highways Authority, falls under statutory control. Whilst the assessor has not disputed this, it is evident they have incorrectly classified this as relevant land. This means that there has been a mis-assessment of your appeal.
I do apologise for this error and any resulting inconvenience that has been caused. I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Whilst we always strive to issue accurate and robust decisions, (we consider over 60,000 cases a year) there is always the potential for human errors to be made. I note this is a second instance where this has occurred and therefore, I have escalated this internally.

We will ensure that all assessors complete a further extensive training course on the applications of PoFA, specifically in respect of relevant land, to address this issue going forwards."

Coupon-mad

Maybe add this before you mention the NSL lie:

The Airports Act 1986 indicates that Heathrow Airport Limited, is an Airport Authority, Highways Authority and a 'statutory undertaker' under the Civil Aviation Act 2012, thus the entire site falls under statutory control.

The Hotel is at Terminal 2 so the whole area indisputably falls outside of 'keeper liability' under the POFA 2012. This is despite Euro Car Parks (unlawfully and misleadingly) citing the POFA on the back of their NTK which the Assessor must disregard and please report to the Lead Adjudicator, as yet another consumer protection lie from this rogue sector.

This untruth has been exposed before by the POPLA complaints team in a very similar case re another operator. My case is the same, with the added complication of no consideration period being afforded to the driver, who will not be named. This isn't a no-stopping zone or a place where parking is prohibited, so there was no time in 2 minutes to have agreed any terms (POFA calls it a 'relevant contract') before the driver left.

Then: 'POPLA please be reminded of the repeated mistake your assessors made…'

(Ideally also screenshot an official map from the Airport website or byelaws and embed that image into the appeal word document before saving it as a single PDF and uploading it as your appeal, choosing OTHER' & filling in the boxes).

pluspad

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81985091#Comment_81985091

Appreciate the questions. My project is definitely not intended to support bringing airport land within PoFA. I would be strongly opposed to it being used that way.

The reason I started it is the complete opposite. At the moment these cases pop up one at a time in these forum threads as appeals, complaints, debt collector letters etc... As we all know, that makes it easy for operators and regulators to treat them as isolated misunderstandings. When it reality, they probably number in the hundreds of thousands. The point of the site is to collect structured examples so that repeated wording, claims and repeated debt collection patterns can be shown more clearly.

Long term, I am hoping for the data to be used only in a consumer protection/regulatory context. Supporting complaints to bodies such as the DVLA, ICO, BPA/IPC, CMA, MPs etc...

The site is currently run by me as an independent project. I am not connected to any parking operators, debt collectors, legal firms or any other entities connected to PPC's. I'm just someone who has been through this issue myself and realised the need for concrete data around PPC practices if there is any possibility of them being held accountable. I am a software developer of 25+ years and am just using what I know to try and make a difference.

If the wording on the site gives any impression that it could be used to argue for extending PoFA to airport land I genuinely want to fix that, because that is not the purpose. I would really appreciate your thoughts.

akc1970

I got the PCN after dropping a friend off at the Hilton Garden Inn Heathrow, and was at the entrance for no more than 2 minutes. I spoke to the hotel and managed to get the PCN cancelled. I got sent the pictures of the signs from the hotel, and there was one by the hotel entrance door saying "Have you paid for your drop-off charge?" which I thought meant the usual Heathrow Drop-Off charge (which I paid) - that sign has nothing to indicate that it's a different "drop-off" charge.