Car Parking - Parking Charge Notices (PCN) - merged topic / ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[JayMac]

If the APCOA^▸ (Car parking company used at GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) - controlled stations in the area) jobsworths slap a ticket on me. What would be the 'offence'? (I use that term loosely, I played the ignoring the threatening letters game once before for parking just on a white line. Don't really want to do it again.)

Can't comment on car park season tickets but do know a little about Parking Charge Notices.

If APCOA PCN you under Railway Byelaws then there are a lot of hurdles to overcome. However, they have to get the PCN right for it to be valid. Even then a parking charge issued under the Railway Byelaws can still be challenged and beaten. Advice from other forums such as pepipoo or moneysavingexpert should be sought.

If instead they issue a standard PCN (speculative invoice) then the advice now is not to ignore the letter chain. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 change the game as far a Private Parking Companies (PPC) are concerned. There is now an independent appeals service - POPLA (Parking on Private Land Appeals) for all PPCs who are members of the British Parking Association. Decisions of POPLA are binding on the PPC, but not the driver/registered keeper, who can still refuse to pay the PCN leaving the PPC to resort to the County Court.

You have to appeal to the PPC first. This is always best done in the third person ("the driver of the vehicle...") so no liability is admitted. No point making things easier for the PPC. PPCs can now legally chase the Registered Keeper of a vehicle regardless of who was driving. Best appeal point is that the charge is punitive and doesn't reflect the actual loss suffered by the PPC and/or landowner. PPCs rarely allow any appeals so the next stage is POPLA. Specifically request in your appeal to the PPC that, if it is declined, they issue a POPLA code so you can appeal using the independent appeals service.

Appeal to POPLA on factual points, don't bother with mitigating circumstances. An almost sure-fire guaranteed win at POPLA is to appeal the charge as not being a genuine pre-estimate of loss. Following other forums I've not seen a driver/registered keeper lose at POPLA on this point.

Best thing about POPLA? Each appeal to them costs the PPC ^27+VAT^▸ (Value Added Tax) and costs their trade body, the BPA, somewhere in the region of ^100 although this second cost is coming down. Costs the driver/registered keeper nothing except time.

Should you be ticketed on railway or private land then the best places to go for advice are:

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=163

[JayMac]

From the Parking Prankster blog:

MET Parking deceive motorists for years. DVLA^▸ (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) stick fingers in ears and make la la la noises

One dogged motorist has unearthed a scam MET Parking have been operating for several years on the Chiltern railway.

Chiltern Railway car parks are railway property and railway byelaws apply. This means that drivers can be fined for breaching the byelaws, and that the fine is backed by statute. The flip side is that the Protection of Freedoms Act (POFA) 2012 schedule 4 does not apply as the car parks are not 'relevant land'; this means that the keeper is not liable - only the driver is. 'I was not driving' is an absolute defence, as long as you can prove this, or the judge believes you on the balance of probabilities if the proof is not conclusive.

However, MET Parking have been issuing huge numbers of tickets, trying to deceive the motorist that keeper liability applies when it does not. Obtaining money by false pretences is a criminal act.

One motorist realised something fishy was happening after he had successfully appealed several tickets to the independent appeals service, POPLA. When he tried to appeal a subsequent ticket, MET Parking said they had withdrawn the right to use POPLA as the ticket was issued under the railway byelaws. The motorist pointed out that this was not what the original charge said, and has been fighting to find the true situation ever since.

He asked the DVLA to investigate. After a few false starts they finally shifted reluctantly into gear, and found that MET Parking were acting incorrectly by stating keeper liability applied. They found that 1025 tickets had been incorrectly issued at the West Ruislip car park since 1 October 2012, which is when POFA 2012 commenced. Of these, 589 were still outstanding, which MET Parking then cancelled. Another 90 had been cancelled following appeals. However, the remaining 346 had already been paid, and the DVLA refused to make MET Parking refund the motorists.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. MET Parking have around 20 car parks on the Chiltern line alone, so the number of incorrectly issued tickets is likely to be tens of thousands, which means that MET parking may have trousered ^1,000,000 under false pretences.

The DVLA have to share responsibility for this mes up. Although they told the motorist they only knew of this situation in January 2014, this has turned out to be a lie; freedom of information requests showed they were dithering about what to do back in July 2013, and were fully aware what was going on.

They continued to pass on keeper information to MET parking without attempting to police the situation at all. Although in the past parking companies have been suspended from access for stating that keeper liability applied when it did not, the DVLA have of late taken a more business oriented approach to these transgressions. They now prefer to keep their snouts in the trough and the money flowing in, whatever the parking companies do. Wheras it seems that the DVLA feels a motorist can be penalised ^100 for being 1 minute late or have a wheel an inch over a line, the same does not apply for parking companies. Obtaining money under false pretences is perfectly acceptable as long as the parking company keeps the money rolling in. This cannot be right. The DVLA cannot keep absolving themselves of the responsibility to police the sector; there needs to be a balance, which currently is sadly lacking.

Both the BPA Ltd and the DVLA initially tried to bury this complaint and it was only through perseverance that anything happened at all.

The situation remains unresolved, with thousands of motorists out of pocket. It is a sorry state of affairs that civil servants can have such blatant disregard for the rights of motorists and are prepared to turn a blind eye to dodgy goings-on on an industrial scale.

If you have paid a parking ticket to MET Parking at a railway car park between 1 October 2012, and January 2014 then you should write to MET Parking for a refund. If they refuse, then the case officer at the DVLA you need to get in touch with is Liz Symods. If you feel your MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) should be made aware what has been going on, then http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/ is a good reference site.

MET Parking
PO Box 64168
London
WC1A 9BE
Elizabeth.Symons@dvla.gsi.gov.uk

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

[JayMac]

From the Daily Mail:

Rail commuters are hit by up to 40,000 bogus parking fines: 'Pirates' accused of demanding money from commuters using the wrong law

• ^100 fines handed out when drivers outstayed permitted period at car parks belonging to Chiltern Railways
• MET Parking Services was using the wrong law to issue the parking tickets
• Company also issues fines on behalf of McDonald's car park users
• Firm, which manages car parks on line between Marylebone and Birmingham, admitted that 1,025 tickets were incorrectly issued
• DVLA^▸ (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) earns ^10m a year from private parking firms for right to access its database

Parking ^pirates^ are accused of issuing thousands of bogus penalty notices to travellers using railway station car parks on a busy commuter line.
Fines of ^100 a time were handed out when drivers stayed beyond the permitted period at car parks belonging to Chiltern Railways. But MET Parking Services was using the wrong law to issue the tickets, and is now accused of demanding money under false pretences from as many as 40,000 commuters.

The firm, which manages car parks on the line between Marylebone and Birmingham, admitted that 1,025 tickets were incorrectly issued and that 679 still outstanding at the beginning of the year were cancelled. The tickets were issued using a law introduced in 2012 which banned the use of wheel clamping on private land, but allowed the owners to issue penalty notices. However railway car parks are covered by different byelaws.

Commuter Trevor Carvey took on MET after receiving a ticket in Ruislip, Middlesex. He used the Freedom of Information Act to discover MET was using automatic number plate recognition cameras to identify drivers via the DVLA database, then pursue them for payment ^ often with the threat of court action. ^MET and Chiltern have been using completely the wrong law to police these car parks,^ he said. ^Thousands of people have been given tickets under false pretences and they should be getting their money back.^

Mr Carvey said his attempts to persuade the British Parking Association (BPA) to take action against MET have been ignored. Last week the Mail revealed how MET also targeted McDonald^s customers with ^100 penalty notices for staying too long in its restaurant car parks. MET chased motorists using a debt recovery firm that has been declared ^unfit^ to operate by the Office of Fair Trading and a firm of solicitors shut down last year because of ^dishonesty^.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has promised an inquiry into cowboy parking firms following revelations in the Daily Mail. He said that the firms should be prosecuted if found to be breaking consumer protection laws.

Hospitals are under pressure to sack ^pirate^ parking squads after it emerged more than three quarters of NHS trusts use them to police their car parks.

Alex Shipp, who runs the Parking Prankster website, said up to 40,000 tickets may have been wrongly issued in Chiltern^s car parks. He believes the 1,025 tickets admitted to relate only to Ruislip between October 2012 and January this year. However MET is thought to have made the same mistake at all 21 of Chiltern^s car parks over the same period. ^We need a full investigation. The DVLA and BPA should require that all the motorists involved are properly compensated,^ he said. ^There is a very strong case to argue that this is a fraud and something the police should be looking at.^

The DVLA earns around ^10million a year from private parking companies for the right to access its computer database. A spokesman said: ^It is not within our powers to instruct private parking companies to offer refunds.^

A Chiltern Railways spokesman said: ^MET Parking manages all Chiltern Railways car parks. We work closely with them to ensure that our parking policy is fair and communicated clearly.^

MET refused to comment.

[Btline]

These scandalous fines, dished out by modern day highwaymen, are completely bogus.

Simply put all letters in the bin. The fines are not legally enforceable in any way. Besides, they cannot prove who was driving the car!

[JayMac]

These scandalous fines, dished out by modern day highwaymen, are completely bogus.

Simply put all letters in the bin. The fines are not legally enforceable in any way. Besides, they cannot prove who was driving the car!

You've obviously not read up on the Protection of Freedoms Act (POFA) then? Private parking tickets are enforceable in the civil court if they are correctly issued and the charge represents a genuine loss to the landowner. The Private Parking Companies (PPC) rarely get them right though. Nowadays the general advice is to keep all paperwork just in case the PPC decides eventually to issue court proceedings. Plus, prior to court there is always the option of defending a PPC Parking Charge Notice (PCN) through the private parking industry's independent appeals service, POPLA (Parking On Private Land Appeals). This costs the PPCs ^27+VAT^▸ (Value Added Tax) for every appeal made, whether the motorist/registered keeper wins or loses. Even if the motorist/registered keeper loses at POPLA, the PPC still has to go to court to get any money, if the motorist/registered keeper still doesn't pay the charge. Plus, another reason not to ignore tickets/letters is that under the POFA the PPC doesn't have to know who was driving, they can legally pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle to which a PCN was issued.

Finally, in the case of most railway car parks, the POFA does not apply as they are not 'relevant' land. Railway car parks are almost always covered by Railway Byelaws. A driver (if identified) can be issued a penalty charge or prosecuted for certain parking contraventions on railway land. This is a criminal prosecution and not a civil matter.

MET Parking at Chiltern stations were allegedly issuing private parking tickets under POFA on land to which the Act did not apply. An underhand tactic in my opinion (and one carried out by other PPCs at other railway stations), as it is much harder for PPCs to issue Byelaw compliant tickets as the scope and 'offences' under Railway Byelaw 14 is much more limiting.

[Btline]

...if... the charge represents a genuine loss to the landowner.

And that is exactly why it is unenforceable! No parking fine ever fits that description. Even if you paid nothing, the most they have lost out on is the cost of a normal parking ticket. But if you overstayed by 10 mins, there were other spaces available (so no loss of revenue), or were 1 inch over the white line, they've got no chance.

You also have never entered into a contract with them, etc.

As I said - ignore them, after sending you a fake solicitor's letter, they will realise you are not gullible, get bored and stop.

[JayMac]

Until they issue a County Court Claim. And many more PPCs are doing just that now. It's a numbers game for them. Some pay up because of the fear of court, some pay up after pre-court mediation and others, who've ignored everything that came through their letterbox and failed to respond to the County Court Claim, end up on the wrong end of a default judgement and subsequently find they have a CCJ on their credit file.

That's why you shouldn't ignore. That is old advice. Beat them at their own game and cost them money. Appeal first to the company. They'll almost always refuse your appeal reasons. But they must then issue you with a code number so that you can take your appeal to POPLA.

Then appeal to POPLA with the almost sure fire guaranteed winning point that the Parking Charge does not represent a genuine pre-estimate of losses. You win and the Private Parking Company is ^27+VAT^▸ (Value Added Tax) worse off.

Better to be pro-active than ignore. A County Court Claim takes much more effort to defend, even if the claimant is on shaky ground when attempting to justify their claim. And if your defence is not carefully prepared you may well lose - you're at the whim of the judge on the day. Also if you ignore everything that comes through your letter box you run the very real risk of having your credit worthiness adversely affected.

Since the introduction of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 the best advice is... Do not ignore a Private Parking Ticket.

Help can be had from the following:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=163&_ga=1.84403546.230261067.1387655725
http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showforum=60
http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.parkingticketappeals.org.uk/

All of the preceding refers to parking on private land. If you are issued a ticket for a byelaw contravention in a railway car park, then seek advice. That can still be done through the links above and you should get help finding out if you are being penalised under the byelaws. If a PPC has issued a ticket in a railway car park and they mention the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 on the ticket there's a good chance they have no standing to bring a claim. On the other hand, if the ticket mentions Railway Byelaw 14, then it's worth seeking out that specialist advice.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Hmm. 

I have to say, Btline, that your rather simplistic 'bury your head in the sand and ignore everything they send you' approach is, at best, poor advice, and, at worst, bad advice. 

Readers of this topic: please note the guidance offered by my colleague 'bignosemac'.  He is not a lawyer, but he has studied the subject in great detail.

Chris from Nailsea. 

[Btline]

Apologies, never heard of that latest act.
If it costs the bully boys money then I'm all for appealing to POPLA.

Obviously it's a good job Btline always pays for his parking... 

[wilki]

Has anyone had any success appealing the car park tickets at Twyford station recently?

cheers

[JayMac]

Welcome to the forum wilki 

Is this a general query or do you have a Parking Charge Notice from APCOA^▸ (Car parking company used at GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) - controlled stations in the area) that you are looking to appeal against?

[Chris from Nailsea]

Indeed - welcome to the Coffee Shop forum, wilki. 

My colleague bignosemac, who is not a lawyer but is, in my opinion, rather more useful than some of them (me being tactful!) may well be able to help with your enquiry. 

[wilki]

Yes I have a parking notice for not parking in a designated space

[JayMac]

Was this a window ticket? If so then wait for the Notice to Keeper to arrive. Don't ever admit to being the driver. Refer to the driver in the third person in all correspondence.

Appeal first to APCoA stating the charge doesn't reflect a genuine pre-estimate of loss (GPEOL). Don't bother with mitigating circumstances. Also, check the signage is clear and unambiguous at the site and that it matches the information on the ticket and Notice to Keeper. This is most likely a Parking Charge Notice (or speculative invoice) issued under the auspices of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, but there is a chance that it may have been issued under the Railway Byelaws. Check all wording on signs and correspondence carefully.

If (or more likely, when) APCoA turn down your appeal you can then appeal to an independent body called POPLA (Parking on Private Land Appeals), again on the grounds that the charge is not a genuine pre-estimate of loss. This appeal point alone nearly always wins at POPLA.

Another appeal point to consider if APCoA are claiming the right to pursue the vehicle keeper under POFA is whether the car park is on railway land. If it is then Railway Byelaws apply and the Protection of Freedoms Act doesn't apply. What that means is they have no legal right to pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle. That's why it's important never to name the driver.

More comprehensive advice on POFA and on how to word appeals can be gained by posting a new topic on the following forum:

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showforum=60

There's a wealth of information there on how Private Parking Companies operate. They are rarely interesting in managing car parks. Their business model relies on extortionately charging motorists for any, and every perceived indiscretion. Regardless of whether that indiscretion has caused any financial loss to the operator or land owner.

Keep all correspondence received and copies of correspondence sent. Use email and letter only. Don't correspond by phone.

[wilki]

thanks