Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Private parking tickets => Topic started by: parkingorbit on July 29, 2026, 04:05:48 pm
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Thank you for the reassurance. I will take no actions at this moment and wait for UKPCM to take their next steps (I suppose debt collection services as a first step). I will report back.
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You may also, maybe once UKCPM gives up, consider writing to them and to your management company stating that you have no legal obligation to display any sort of permit when your lease already grants you full access, but that you will consider doing so in future as a convenience to all parties and you will again defend any attempt to imply any sort of breach by not displaying one.
There are probably slightly better words than this but hopefully you see what I mean.
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In my opinion, the OPs 'taking part in the scheme' is not an acceptance of any contract.
The contracts (if there were any, which I doubt) would be individual contracts based on each occasion the vehicle came onto the managed land and parked - it's the act of parking and leaving the vehicle on the land which would form the basis of each contract. This is will be backed up by the wording on the NtK - that by parking the driver was deemed to agree to the terms.
The 'taking part in the scheme' argument is therefore irrelevant - it is nothing more than an act of 'community spirit'.
You may be able to use the recent 'open letter' from the CMA to your advantage by picking through it and seeing if there is anything which may benefit a defence if the need arises - this appears to be a clear case of the operator simply seeing the opportunity to charge a 'genuine tenant' £100 irrespective of the fact that the tenant does have 'the right to park a vehicle on the land'.
Front and centre should be the fact that a tenant has primacy of contract over the space meaning that you never need to form an additional contract (each time you use the space) with a third party (the parking operator) because your right to use the space is pre-existing.
Further, common sense dictates that the driver has no need of forming a further third party contract when forming that contract yields a driver nothing (because you have a pre-existing right) but gives the opposing party the sole right to issue you with a £100 charge. (This would probably fall foul of consumer legislation as well as it's clearly an massive imbalance in the contractual rights of both parties.)
On top of that, the parking operator would clearly have access to a database with all current / valid registration marks for permits which had been issued. They could have simply checked your VRM against their database in order to recognise that you have parked a permitted vehicle? (Assuming the permit states a VRM?)
The NtK is not POFA compliant so never reveal the driver.
This is highly unlikely to make it to Court but you may need to defend a Claim - it's pretty straight forward.
In the meantime, you could take the pi$$ a bit and write to the parking operator telling them to remove your space from their management scheme!
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The IAS upholds 4% of the appeals it receives, and I have never seen it uphold one on rights to park in allocated parking spaces under a lease.
If your lease esentially gives you unfettered right to park, a parking company can’t impose terms on something you already have a right to do. The “breach of the displayed terms” is nonsense.
You can display a permit as a convenience to you if you want, but it’s not a requirement.
The IAS is supposed to be operated by people with legal training, but we have never seen any evidence of that and doubt it very much.
In the absence of any help from management, you should assume you will receive a Letter of Claim followed by a county court claim. Most court claims get discontinued as long as they are properly defended, and you seem to have the basis for a proper defence.
I suggest you search the forum for similar cases, brought by UKCPM or others. I don’t recall any of them that are fully documented (ie that are documented to completion) going in favour of the claimant.
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I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. I very much welcome some advice. Thank you!
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Management didn't help... Basically their tone is: You knew the rules and broke them. We don't want to get involved.
Updated and added documents by modifying the original post (to keep it all nicely together).
Thank you!
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You are right on the options.
Please post up the rear of the PCN, your appeals, and the relevant sections of the lease.
On the face of it, they would have a hard time convincing a judge that there had been a breach of contract, but there are no guarantees. There also appear to be failings in the NTK for POFA compliance so as long as you haven't ID'd the driver that should be another defence point if / when it comes to a court case.
Have you tried the management co to get it cancelled?
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Operator: UK Car Park Management. Residential development, share of freehold, managed by a resident-director management company.
Hi! First time posting here. I would very much appreciate your help. I hope I provided the right amount of info. Thank you.
Timeline
- 7 May 2026 — PCN issued for no permit displayed.
- Late May 2026 — Appealed to the operator as registered keeper only (driver never identified).
- Early June 2026 — Rejected. Boilerplate.
- June 2026 — IAS appeal submitted with statements included in the 'my grounds' section.
- 29 July 2026 — IAS appeal dismissed. Text included for ref.
Undisputed facts
- The car was parked in space 5.
- No permit was displayed in the windscreen.
- Signage is present on site.
- I am the registered keeper. The driver has never been named.
- My partner is the leaseholder.
- We are both the legal occupiers of the property.
My grounds
- A1. No landowner authority. The space is expressly demised to the leaseholder. The management company's rights over it under the Third Schedule are limited to inspection and maintenance. My ground is the management company can't delegate an enforcement right, I believe, it never held.
- A2. Wrong land. The lease plan distinguishes the demised space from the common/amenity land. The operator's remit can only be the amenity land. Space 5 is not part of the common/amenity land.
- A3. No contract, no consideration. The leaseholder holds an unconditional right to use the space; nothing is offered in return for the permit condition.
- A4. Code breaches. Clause 14.1 requires written landowner (defined by the code also as legal occupier) authority before a charge is issued; they never obtained our authority. Note 3 warns against permit requirements that cut across lease rights.
- A5. No notice affixed despite the attendant being present. The PCN was only issued by post.
- A6. No care taken to verify permit presence. The permit was in the vehicle, visible if one looked by the side window on the floor. No care was taken by the attendant to verify the permit's presence. A timestamped picture by the neighbour does show the permit present in the car.
The operator's case
- B1. They accept the leaseholder "may have rights" over the space, but say a right to park doesn't exempt a vehicle from the site's parking management arrangements. The PCN was about non-compliance with the conditions in force, not about whether the leaseholder gave permission.
- B2. On authority: they act under a written agreement, the management company instructed the scheme, and they are not required to show motorists their commercial agreement. They assert the Code's authority requirement is satisfied.
- B3. On consideration: the charge isn't payment for parking rights, it's for breach of the displayed terms, and by parking the driver accepted those terms.
- B4. On my case law: each case turns on its own facts, none establishes a general exemption, and a permit requirement that doesn't remove the underlying right can be a reasonable administrative measure rather than a derogation from grant.
- B5. On the permit being inside the car: it wasn't displayed as required at the time of inspection, and continuous correct display is the motorist's responsibility.
The adjudicator's decision (dismissed)
Boiled down to five findings:
- C1. Partial documents: He accepted the space forms part of the leasehold property, but said I had supplied only extracts of the legal documents, so he had no way of knowing whether the right to park is unrestricted. Burden on me; not satisfied. Indeed, I submitted all extracts that were concerning the parking space, not the full document.
- C2. Head lease: The operator's contract is with the original lessor under the head lease, so absent proof the leasehold right is unrestricted, he wasn't prepared to accept the operator has no authority over the space.
- C3. Implied consent: He accepted that I may have some lease right but even in such case, because I had consented by taking part in the permit scheme I accepted the contract. On his reasoning, participating doesn't surrender the underlying right but does bind you to the scheme's "reasonable administrative requirements", and you can't take the benefit of the scheme and ignore it when it suits.
- C4. Authority is irrelevant to contract: The operator's relationship with the landowner doesn't affect a driver's ability to contract with the operator.
- C5. Photos show the vehicle parked without a permit displayed.
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Question
Basically - what now? Do I pay up or have a valid case? If I don't pay I suppose they will take me to court? How to prepare for it?
Documents
- PCN (both pages) (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1myGgrsbsbnA8qQvazRYfdem4NYHn0uTB/view?usp=share_link)
- Parking sign T&C (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CA9df8Yt2DtENK9qLhYjVI0XBVXpmiw2/view?usp=share_link)
- My evidence incl. lease, other proprety documents and photographic evidence (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OL7v8eINx9P-AIIRTz7mcbdw_fLGXlTo/view?usp=sharing)
- UK PCM evidence (https://drive.google.com/file/d/17D8QsuRWtaQ0riigeSIvzHnA8YQ7-5tm/view?usp=share_link)
- Full IAS Appeal (https://docs.google.com/document/d/15jjfCPEbRvT-ewKp8EWIZaSa7SSHNOIdwe64fhNMetU/edit?usp=share_link)
Thank you very much for any help.