Although they claim to be relying on Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act to hold you liable as the keeper, they have issued the notice too late to be able to do so!
You can therefore appeal as the keeper, not revealing who was driving with the below:
Dear Sirs,
I have received your Parking Charge Notice (Ref: ________) for vehicle registration mark ____ ___, in which you allege that the driver has incurred a parking charge. I note from your correspondence that you claim to be able to hold me liable under Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 ("The Act"), but this is not true. You have failed to deliver the notice within the relevant period of 14 days as required by paragraph 9(4) of the Act.
Date of parking: 23/02/25
Date of issue: 06/03/25
Date of presumed service under 9(6) of the Act: 10/03/25
Days elapsed: 15 days
There is no obligation for me to name the driver and I will not be doing so. I am therefore unable to help you further with this matter, and look forward to your confirmation that the charge has been cancelled. If you choose to decline this appeal, you must issue a POPLA code.
Yours,
If appealing online, be careful there are no drop down/tick boxes that cause you to identify who was driving, and keep a close eye on your spam folder for their response. If they do not respond within 28 days, chase them.
They have also misrepresented their position by claiming PoFA compliance when they have not complied. This warrants formal complaints to Smart (followed by the BPA) and the DVLA. However, I would recommend waiting until they respond to your appeal. The reason I say this is because we had a similar case recently, where Smart doubled down in their appeal response. If they do the same here, it makes your grounds for complaint even stronger, so I recommend waiting to see if they do the same again. We can then draft you up suitable complaints.
The other case I refer to, for reference, is here: Smart Parking Charge Advise for Appeal (https://www.ftla.uk/private-parking-tickets/smart-parking-notice-to-keep-appeal-advice/msg59602/#msg59602)
You need to show the front of the Notice to Keeper (NtK) also. Do not redact any dates and times. I see that in July last year it was still 2 hours free parking. You now need to find out exactly when that was changed. Without seeing the from of the NtK, we cannot verify whether Smart parking have fully complied with all the requirements of PoFA to be able to transfer liability from the unknown (o them) driver to you, the known Keeper.
The actual date you received the NtK is irrelevant... for now. What is relevant is the date of the alleged contravention and the date they issued the NtK.
If the material change to the terms and conditions was within 4 months of the alleged contravention and they did not clearly have prominent signs notifying users of the car park of these changes then they have breached the PPSCoP section 3.4 which states:
"Where there is any material change to any pre-existing terms and conditions that would not be immediately apparent to a driver entering controlled land that is or has been open for public parking, the parking operator must place additional (temporary) notices at the site entrance for a period of not less than 4 months from the date of the change making it clear that new terms and conditions/charges apply, such that regular visitors who might be familiar with the old terms do not inadvertently incur parking charges.
NOTE: Examples of material changes can include introduction of parking enforcement where none has previously applied, introduction of time-limited free parking, or reductions in the time limit within which free parking is available. Given the need to avoid confusion and clutter at entrances the test is whether the fact that a change has been made is clearly signalled to drivers on entering the land and the nature of the change is clearly displayed thereafter – it may also be necessary to install repeater notices depending on the scale of the premises."