Help with POPLA appeal

Parkrunfan26

Hi all,

Hoping you can help. Our appeal to the parking enforcement company was rejected, so I am now preparing a POPLA appeal and would appreciate some affirmation that our proposed approach is sound.

Background

We received a PCN (Notice to Keeper/NtK) from Civil Enforcement for “Payment not made/permit not obtained…” at our local sports centre (please see the redacted copy of original PCN, below).

Original PCN (NtK) from Civil Enforcement_1.png

Original PCN (NtK) from Civil Enforcement_2.png

Although we provided evidence of gym attendance, leisure centre staff stated that they could not intervene and that we needed to appeal directly to the car park management company, Civil Enforcement.

We therefore lodged an appeal with Civil Enforcement without identifying the driver. Our appeal raised the following points:

• Insufficient photographic evidence: The NtK only showed small images that did not clearly identify our vehicle registration number and were not time-stamped. In addition, there is no photograph of the vehicle exiting the car park on Civil Enforcement’s PCN summary webpage (the relevant photograph is missing).
• Failure of the Permitly parking system: We explained that the Permitly system used by Civil Enforcement failed to correctly recognise the vehicle registration, despite the driver following the registration process presented by the system.

On arriving at the leisure centre, the driver used their smartphone to:

1. Scan the QR code located in the leisure centre reception area to access the Permitly parking system.
2. The driver entered the correct, full vehicle registration into the Permitly webpage.
3. The Permitly webpage failed to recognise the vehicle (see Figure 1);

Figure 1

4. The driver then removed the last three letters of the vehicle registration number, at which point the Permitly system displayed a photograph of our vehicle and asked: “Select if this is your vehicle.”

5. The driver selected the vehicle displayed by the Permitly system, because it was the correct vehicle – the correct make and model, time and registration number (see Figure 2). 

Figure 2

5. The driver then completed the parking registration process and requested an email confirmation of the parking event.

These steps were captured via screenshots on the driver's phone and were provided as evidence with our appeal. We also provided evidence confirming attendance at the gym at the relevant time.

Civil Enforcement rejected the appeal without addressing the issue of missing/insufficient photographic evidence. Instead, they offered to settle the matter at a reduced rate of £20 under “Annex F3 of the Single Sector Code of Practice” (see the redacted response from Civil Enforcement, below).

CE response.png

Next steps

We are of course in the process of escalating this to Leisure Centre management, but are now preparing a POPLA appeal and would really appreciate your views.

In particular:

1. Do you think the photographic evidence issue is a valid/strong POPLA ground, given that the available images do not clearly establish the vehicle registration/ missing exit photograph?
2. Is our argument regarding the Permitly system sound? Our position is that the PCN should not be enforceable where the motorist followed the registration process presented by the operator's own parking system, but that system failed to correctly recognise and record the vehicle.
3. Are there any relevant POFA, BPA Code of Practice or other legal/procedural points that we should add to strengthen the appeal?

Our overall position is that the PCN should be cancelled because the evidence does not adequately establish the alleged parking contravention and, more importantly, the driver appears to have made a genuine attempt to comply with the operator's parking requirements but was prevented from doing so correctly by a failure in the operator's own registration system.

Any advice or suggestions on how best to frame the POPLA appeal would be very much appreciated.

Coupon-mad

My suggestion is not to try POPLA and instead sit on your hands and ignore the letters until you get a court claim.

That evidence is great! That isn't a keying error, the driver selected the right vehicle.

But there is no point trying POPLA.

They don't apply any laws, not even the Consumer Rights Act 2015. They only apply the joke 'Joint Code' cooked up by the BPA & IPC in a cartel-like move a couple of years ago, which they dress up as "largely based on the 2022 DLUHC Code" but in fact they made over 30 clause changes, all of which were designed to work against consumer interests.

POPLA would uselessly just look to see if CEL offered to settle at £20 and the assessor won't understand that this is clearly NOT a keying error, with a system where you select your vehicle!