Help please - have i made a mistake?

You have made a mistake, yes but you can still recover.

Please read the Newbies Sticky carefully to inform yourself properly and see where to go now.

BPA member, so you should have been given a PoPLA code. If that is the case then you should construct a PoPLA appeal using all the template points available to you from post 3 of the NEWBIES. Post your draft here for checking before you submit it.

It sounds like the driver may have overstayed a series of parking periods by a small amount each time. Is that the case? How is that worded on the NTK?
I believe in theory that this should attract series of PCNs, one for each parking period, but I'm not an expert in this.

You can upload your (redacted) NTK to a web hosting site then post the URL here, but change http to hxxp. Someone here will then change it back to a live link so the regulars can have a look at it.
I favour postimg.cc but other web hosting sites such as tinypic are available.

The BPA CoP allows two grace periods of 10 minutes each. I don't believe you would get away with 31 minutes unless you were prevented form say leaving due to a traffic jam or similar.

You can try to correct your error when you make your PoPLA appeal, but I doubt it will be accepted by the assessor.

I think you will be better concentrating on the other appeal points that are available. You should get photos of the site entrance, and any signage, especially if they are damaged, obscured, placed high up in such a way that a driver would not see them.

What was the location of the car park, and again, what happened when you complained to the landowner?

I'd argue that the grace period applies to EACH period of parking.
So eg, driver feeds the meter and gets a new P&D ticket when the previous one runs out (presuming this is allowed):
So in between tickets 1 and 2 there is, say, a 5 minute period of non-payment.
In between tickets 2 and 3 there is, say, a 6 minute period between ticket 1 ending and ticket 2 being purchased.
and so on.
As long as each period in between tickets ending/starting is brief it's reasonable to say that the grace period should apply to each period of parking - the point of the grace period is to allow a driver time to find a space, park, queue up at the machine, return to the car, queue to get out etc. So in your scenario there might have been a queue at the machine which delayed you paying. I'm not sure the full 10 minutes is applicable to this scenario because it's meant to cover a driver finding a space, reading the signs, queuing at machine etc, whereas in your case it's just the queuing and returning to the car. Is this ANPR? Does the 30-odd minutes include time spent leaving after the last period of parking? Again, something the grace period is supposed to provide for.



Also, if they were to win, they must credit against their charge what was paid, so you need to tot up what driver paid and point out that this should be deducted. Otherwise it's double recovery.

exact chronology as follows:

entered carpark at 11.21
bought first ticket at 11.32 (yeah 11 mins i know! - it was raining and we sat in car)
ticket expired at 13.32
bought new ticket at 13.47 (no idea why it was 15 mins after previous ticket expired)
Expired at 14.47
left car park at 14.53

am i fooked or was i acting reasonably?

Then you WERE driving? Stop obsessing over trying to turn it back away from being the driver, seeing as PP use the POFA it makes no odds and you have said you were driving and you were.

Continue that way like everyone else does who did the same (we get this same question every week).

No-one is fooked v PP, everyone has a case, not sure why we are even discussing this straightforward PP case that is covered in the NEWBIES thread.