Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Private parking tickets => Topic started by: PigJouster on July 03, 2024, 09:09:57 am
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A parking company apologising, you might want to print and frame that!
Good to see they've seen sense. Keep a copy of the email, but that should be the end of the matter. Good result!
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Hi all,
Thank you all for your help so far.
The driver has just received the email copied below from Horizon. It seems they either only investigated the booking reference after rejecting the appeal, or someone with a better grasp of the law made them look into it.
Does the driver need to consider anything else at this point, or is this the end of the matter?
Either way, you are all amazing for the help you provide. Thanks again.
Dear Appellant,
Parking Charge Notice: xxxxxxxx
Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding the above Parking Charge Notice.
Thank you for contacting us and bringing this to our attention.
We have investigated this further and can see that you did make payment to park. Unfortunately, due to the high volume of vehicles in the car park that day, the client informed customers to use the overflow car park but did not inform us of this.
Please accept our since apologies for this . I can confirm the Parking Charge has now been cancelled in full and no further action is required.
I can confirm the Parking Charge Notice has now been cancelled and no further action will be taken in this matter.
Please note that once the Parking Charge Notice is cancelled the contact details are removed from the Parking Charge Notice and will not be retained for any purpose or shared with third parties. We are, however, required to retain images and appeal correspondence for a period of 2 years by DVLA and the BPA and are not therefore able to delete these from our system. You can review our privacy policy at https://horizonparking.co.uk/privacy-policy/ or you can request that a copy is sent to you in the post by contacting us at the address below, if you have any queries regarding your data.
Yours sincerely,
Appeals Department
Horizon Parking Ltd
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As long as the selection "I paid for parking" is not construed as admittance of being the driver, this should be won at POPLA
Possibly, but do we know what the text of the appeal was? That may have been more explicit.
The text of the appeal was the invoice number and parking booking reference only.
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As long as the selection "I paid for parking" is not construed as admittance of being the driver, this should be won at POPLA
Possibly, but do we know what the text of the appeal was? That may have been more explicit.
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A POPLA appeal has to cover as many points as possible. The operator must respond and rebut each and every point. The appellant only has to win on a single point.
As long as the selection "I paid for parking" is not construed as admittance of being the driver, this should be won at POPLA. The burden of proof lies with the operator to show that the person they are pursuing was the driver. If the driver has not been identified then the the keeper cannot be liable for the PCN because the NtK is not compliant with PoFA.
The POPLA appeal should list all the points that are being relied on and then each point should be expanded and explained as to why the keeper (or driver) is not liable.
For example, the first points in the POPLA appeal should be:
(1) Failure to adhere to the requirements of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA)
(2) The operator has not shown that the individual who it is pursuing is in fact the driver who may have been potentially liable for the charge
Other points should include, but not limited to:
(3) Inadequate signage leading to failure to adhere to PoFA 2012 and breach of the BPA Code of Practice
(4) No evidence of landholder authority
(5) Failure to comply with the BPA CoP General Principles for ANPR
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Please tell us that you only appealed as the keeper and didn't reveal the drivers identity, inadvertently or otherwise, in your appeal?
Had you used the following as your appeal, it would have been cancelled:
This is an appeal by the registered keeper - No driver details will be given. Please do NOT try the trick of asking for driver details in order to get around the fact your NtK does not comply with PoFA. As there is no keeper liability, therefore, liability cannot flow from the driver to the keeper and so, is an automatic win at POPLA. Please cancel the notice or issue a POPLA code at which point you will auto withdraw.
Only the (hopefully) unknown driver is liable for the PCN. The unknown driver and the known keeper are separate entities in civil law and there is no legal obligation for the known keeper to identify the unknown driver. The only way that the known keeper can be liable for the PCN is if Horizon issued an NtK that complies fully with the requirements of PoFA.
Horizon have not issued an NtK that complies with the requirements of PoFA and as long as the driver remains unknown, they have nowhere to run with this. So, is the driver still unknown?
If you have revealed the identity of the keeper to have also been the driver then you have made things so much more difficult for yourself.
So, you need to start preparing your POPLA appeal. The POPLA code is actually valid for 33 days, not the 28 stated on the appeal rejection letter.
Please show us what you intend to put in your POPLA appeal before you send anything. POPLA will only consider relevant law and the BPA Code of Practice (CoP) to determine whether the PCN was issued correctly. Mitigation is not considered at all.
You should start to swat up on PoFA (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/9/schedule/4/enacted), BPA CoP (https://www.britishparking.co.uk/write/Documents/AOS/NEW%20Redesigned%20Documents/Version91.2.2024Highlight.pdf) and the CRA 2015 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/contents).
Thank you for your detailed reply.
I believe they filled out the appeals web form as per the screenshot below, with 'I am' as 'DVLA keeper' and 'Appeal reason' as 'I paid for parking'-
(https://i.imgur.com/wsmABa9.png)
As for the POPLA appeal, they were just going to resubmit the evidence that they had pre-paid for the allotted time slot as it seems as though that evidence was not accepted/looked at by Horizon Parking. They do not have any previous experience with the appeals process.
Thanks again for your input.
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OP,
the PCN number and car registration are still visible on both the front and back of the PCN.
Look at the "How to pay" sections with a black background (2 of).
I think that they sneakily do this on purpose, as quite a few people miss it (i almost did on my now cancelled Horizon PCN)!
Many thanks, totally missed that! :-\
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Please tell us that you only appealed as the keeper and didn't reveal the drivers identity, inadvertently or otherwise, in your appeal?
Had you used the following as your appeal, it would have been cancelled:
This is an appeal by the registered keeper - No driver details will be given. Please do NOT try the trick of asking for driver details in order to get around the fact your NtK does not comply with PoFA. As there is no keeper liability, therefore, liability cannot flow from the driver to the keeper and so, is an automatic win at POPLA. Please cancel the notice or issue a POPLA code at which point you will auto withdraw.
Only the (hopefully) unknown driver is liable for the PCN. The unknown driver and the known keeper are separate entities in civil law and there is no legal obligation for the known keeper to identify the unknown driver. The only way that the known keeper can be liable for the PCN is if Horizon issued an NtK that complies fully with the requirements of PoFA.
Horizon have not issued an NtK that complies with the requirements of PoFA and as long as the driver remains unknown, they have nowhere to run with this. So, is the driver still unknown?
If you have revealed the identity of the keeper to have also been the driver then you have made things so much more difficult for yourself.
So, you need to start preparing your POPLA appeal. The POPLA code is actually valid for 33 days, not the 28 stated on the appeal rejection letter.
Please show us what you intend to put in your POPLA appeal before you send anything. POPLA will only consider relevant law and the BPA Code of Practice (CoP) to determine whether the PCN was issued correctly. Mitigation is not considered at all.
You should start to swat up on PoFA (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/9/schedule/4/enacted), BPA CoP (https://www.britishparking.co.uk/write/Documents/AOS/NEW%20Redesigned%20Documents/Version91.2.2024Highlight.pdf) and the CRA 2015 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/contents).
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OP,
the PCN number and car registration are still visible on both the front and back of the PCN.
Look at the "How to pay" sections with a black background (2 of).
I think that they sneakily do this on purpose, as quite a few people miss it (i almost did on my now cancelled Horizon PCN)!
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Fixed links
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Hi all, we'd be grateful for any assistance with the below -
Driver paid online for parking at the London Excel Centre, and received confirmation emails and invoice PDF from bookings@aeroparker.com for parking on the 25.05.2024, from 10:30 until 21:00 -
(https://i.imgur.com/HkcFEG1.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/ce6FkwK.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/VnfLaW8.png)
When the driver arrived at the venue (later than expected due to multiple delays)- members of staff in hi-vis vests from Excel where directing traffic due to the roadworks mentioned in the email. Driver was asked if they had pre-paid for parking, to which they replied 'yes', and where directed to one of the roundabout exits and told that another staff member would direct them where to park. Driver then queued with other cars waiting to park, and was directed to a spot by another staff member in hi-vis. Driver had the email ready to show but was not asked to produce it.
After the event, driver returned to their car and left before the booked time had expired.
On 25.06.24, they received a PCN letter from Horizon parking, noting that the PCN company was different from the booking company -
(https://i.imgur.com/hS2JQJz.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/8W0jl4H.jpg)
They immediately went to the website stated and submitted an appeal using the form on the website as they believed this was a simple mistake and the evidence that they had paid for that time slot was straight forward, attaching the confirmation emails and invoice PDF.
On 01.07.24 they received an email stating that their appeal was not successful -
(https://i.imgur.com/2Krq1Ap.png)
They are now assuming that they will need to appeal again through POPLA, please can you advise how they should proceed?