Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Private parking tickets => Topic started by: ConfusedD on March 09, 2024, 12:55:16 pm
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More pictures from the school
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Next time you go to the school, take some pictures of the signage and show us.
The school telling you that they cannot do anything about it and that you should contact the parking company is a "shrug off", especially as it is likely that it is the school that have contracted them in the first place.
Contacting Parking Eye will be about as useful as a poke in the arm with a sharp stick. They are only interested in one thing... your money. It is the school you should be complaining to about being invoiced for £100 by a third party, especially as you are probably charged by them for extracurricular activities anyway.
As always, Plan A is the best and simplest option. Perhaps go higher up the management food chain with your complaint to get more than a shrug off.
Today, I tried calling the school again and got hold of an email address. I've already sent an email explaining the mitigating circumstances. Also, I spoke with another parent who confirmed there's a 15-minute grace period for parking. I remember seeing it myself last year before paying the parking charge. Since we were just a minute over, I'm bit hopeful fingers crossed!!
Do we happen to have any recent templates or success stories with the ParkingEye company?
I've attached the pictures I took from the site last week for your reference.
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Next time you go to the school, take some pictures of the signage and show us.
The school telling you that they cannot do anything about it and that you should contact the parking company is a "shrug off", especially as it is likely that it is the school that have contracted them in the first place.
Contacting Parking Eye will be about as useful as a poke in the arm with a sharp stick. They are only interested in one thing... your money. It is the school you should be complaining to about being invoiced for £100 by a third party, especially as you are probably charged by them for extracurricular activities anyway.
As always, Plan A is the best and simplest option. Perhaps go higher up the management food chain with your complaint to get more than a shrug off. Plan B is appeal to PE and hope your "mitigation" pull at the heartstrings of a ruthless company that is only interested in how much they can squeeze out of you. Plan C will be an appeal to POPLA if/when Plan B is rejected.
Unless you can convince a POPLA assessor that their client, PE, have issued the PCN in breach of any law or BPA rule,, then that is doomed to failure too. But never mind. A POPLA loss means nothing in the scheme of things. You would then be in limbo until/when Plan C kicks in.
Plan C is a court claim. Recent history shows that for a single PCN PE will do on elf two things. They will either farm the claim out to external debt collectors, most likely DCBLimited. They will add £70 to the clam and send you a load of useless letters threatening all sorts of nasty things like a CCJ or bailiffs. It's just words and they are powerless to do anything in reality. Eventually they will bring in the other arm of their business, DCB Legal who will eventually send you a Letter of Claim (LoC) and then an actual claim. This is actually good because it is 99.99% guaranteed that f you defend the claim robustly using a template defence, they will, eventually, discontinue the claim and then it is over.
The other possibility is the PE will issue a claim themselves, without using a third party solicitor. This is also good because they have, in the last year, been adding £20 to the original £100 charge which is not allowed. They have been so successful adding the £20 charge because the majority of victims who have not discovered their website of the MSE parking forums end up paying out of ignorance and fear, that they have now increased the add on to £25.
Whatever you decide to do, if you are adamant that this is an unfair charge and ou are up for a fight that you have a good chance of winning, then follow the plans described above.
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Maybe a reminder to the school (assuming that they may have contracted the PPC to operate there) that they are jointly and severally liable for the actions of their agents may spur some recognition that the PPC don't just operate there without licence.
Also, a question about who is the monkey and who is the organ grinder in their contractual agreement with the PPC may induce a comment that is more than a shrug-off.
I'm not sure if I fully understand this, but I now have a contact email, whom I can email about my PCN, as I feel that asking for a minimum fine of £60 for parking for only 16 minutes is outrageous. However, I would appreciate some support on what to check about the contractual agreement.
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Maybe a reminder to the school (assuming that they may have contracted the PPC to operate there) that they are jointly and severally liable for the actions of their agents may spur some recognition that the PPC don't just operate there without licence.
Also, a question about who is the monkey and who is the organ grinder in their contractual agreement with the PPC may induce a comment that is more than a shrug-off.
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Remaining in the car irrelevant as a mitigating factor. By remaining for 16 minutes, the driver has exceeded any consideration period which should be a minimum of 5 minutes.
Can you get photos of the actual signage at the location?
Have you tried Plan A yet? Plan A is to contact the landowner (possibly the school in this instance) and asked them to get the PCN cancelled? That is by far the easiest method to make this disappear. Plan B will be an appeal to PE. They are unlikely to feel sorry for the driver or keeper (who can be liable as the NtK is PoFA compliant).
If Plan B fails, you then move on to Plan C which would be an appeal to POPLA where mitigation is not considered at all. POPLA will only consider legal points and breaches of the BPA Code of Practice (CoP) so you need to throw as many appeal points as possible at them. PE has to rebut all the appeal points. The keeper only has to win on one.
There are possibly other factors that can be appealed on such as signage. Having looked at the location in GSV, whilst the pictures are from May 2022, there does not appear to be any adequate signage at the entrance to warn the driver that they are entering private and controlled by an unregulated private parking company.
The BPA CoP section 19.2 states:
Entrance signs play an important part in establishing a parking contract and deterring trespassers. Therefore, as well as the signs you must have telling drivers about the terms and conditions for parking, you must also have a standard form of entrance sign at the entrance to the parking area. Entrance signs
must tell drivers that the car park is managed and that there are terms and conditions they must be aware of. Entrance signs must follow some minimum general principles and be in a standard format. The size of the sign must take into account the expected speed of vehicles approaching the car park, and it is
recommended that you follow Department for Transport guidance on this. See Appendix B for an example of an entrance sign and more information about their use.
A standard form of entrance sign must be placed at the entrance to the parking area. There may be reasons why this is impractical, for example:
• when there is no clearly defined car park entrance
• when the car park is very small
• at forecourts in front of shops and petrol filling stations
• at parking areas where general parking is not permitted
Thank you for your response.
We will head out today to take pictures, both at the location waiting area where the car was parked and at the entrance to the car park where the pictures was taken.
I tried plan A, but the school simply stated that they have no control over this, and its something we need to take up with the parking company. People parking there should either pay at the parking meter or via the app. There is no free parking, and clearly sitting in the car makes no difference.
I will appeal our Plan B to the PE, however if it progresses to pplan C worried that the discount amount will no longer apply.
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Remaining in the car irrelevant as a mitigating factor. By remaining for 16 minutes, the driver has exceeded any consideration period which should be a minimum of 5 minutes.
Can you get photos of the actual signage at the location?
Have you tried Plan A yet? Plan A is to contact the landowner (possibly the school in this instance) and asked them to get the PCN cancelled? That is by far the easiest method to make this disappear. Plan B will be an appeal to PE. They are unlikely to feel sorry for the driver or keeper (who can be liable as the NtK is PoFA compliant).
If Plan B fails, you then move on to Plan C which would be an appeal to POPLA where mitigation is not considered at all. POPLA will only consider legal points and breaches of the BPA Code of Practice (CoP) so you need to throw as many appeal points as possible at them. PE has to rebut all the appeal points. The keeper only has to win on one.
There are possibly other factors that can be appealed on such as signage. Having looked at the location in GSV, whilst the pictures are from May 2022, there does not appear to be any adequate signage at the entrance to warn the driver that they are entering private and controlled by an unregulated private parking company.
The BPA CoP section 19.2 states:
Entrance signs play an important part in establishing a parking contract and deterring trespassers. Therefore, as well as the signs you must have telling drivers about the terms and conditions for parking, you must also have a standard form of entrance sign at the entrance to the parking area. Entrance signs
must tell drivers that the car park is managed and that there are terms and conditions they must be aware of. Entrance signs must follow some minimum general principles and be in a standard format. The size of the sign must take into account the expected speed of vehicles approaching the car park, and it is
recommended that you follow Department for Transport guidance on this. See Appendix B for an example of an entrance sign and more information about their use.
A standard form of entrance sign must be placed at the entrance to the parking area. There may be reasons why this is impractical, for example:
• when there is no clearly defined car park entrance
• when the car park is very small
• at forecourts in front of shops and petrol filling stations
• at parking areas where general parking is not permitted
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We just found this parking charge notice, which we must have received last week, but it got tucked under the front door mat and went unnoticed. So, it's already been 9 days past due.
The PCN was issued for parking in Queens School South Bushey for 16 minutes.
This is where we go on a weekly basis to pick up our kid after cricket club. We usually pay for parking as we stay to watch the game, but that day we only did drop off and pickup. We parked in front of the building where others were also parked. My partner went inside to pick up the kid, and it took some time as he had to remove all the cricket gear. However, I was in the car the entire time outside the building, not in the parking bay.
Looking at the ticket, I assume the time is calculated since we entered the South Wing premises.
I would like to appeal based on the mitigating circumstances, as there were other cars parked in the front, and had I known the kid would take longer, I would have moved inside the parking area and paid.
The forum has been incredibly helpful, and everyone has been so kind to help me in the past. So, do you think its worth appealing?
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