Total male bovine excrement from the incompetents at Britannia’s back office. They know perfectly well that—by their own admission—the NtK is not PoFA-compliant. Without the driver’s identity, a POPLA appeal would be unwinnable for them and they know it.
This little gem from them is rubbish:
“This Parking Charge is not POFA compliant, however, payment can still be sought under the old ‘implied-contract-with-the-driver’ rules used prior to POFA.
Under Contract Law there is a probability that the Keeper was the Driver if the Keeper does not nominate anyone else.”
A classic example of intellectual malnourishment by whoever authored it. Pre-PoFA “implied contract” doesn’t let an operator pursue the keeper; and there is no legal presumption that the keeper was the driver. The burden remains on the claimant to prove who drove. Hand-waving about “probability” is not evidence.
Anyway, they folded and cancelled the PCN. Quite right, too.
If it were me, I'd follow up with this:
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for confirming cancellation of PCN [reference]. Your own correspondence concedes the NtK was not compliant with PoFA. In the absence of admissible evidence of the driver’s identity, you had—and have—no viable claim against the keeper.
Should you ever try to repeat the exercise, I will simply refer you to the answer given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971).
Yours faithfully,
Ha! Respond to that with the following email:
Subject: Re: Parking Charge [Ref No.] — Your Admission of PoFA Non-Compliance and Misguided Assertions of Liability
Dear Britannia Parking,
Thank you for your latest communication, which makes for an entertaining — if entirely misconceived — read.
You have openly admitted that your Notice to Keeper is not compliant with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA). That should have been the end of the matter. The very purpose of PoFA Schedule 4 was to create a statutory mechanism by which the Keeper of a vehicle could be held liable in the absence of driver identification. Without compliance, no such liability can arise.
Instead of grasping this basic legal reality, you have attempted to dust off pre-2012 “assumed driver” arguments that have long since been rendered obsolete. This is not only intellectually dishonest but reflects a staggering level of procedural ignorance for an operator supposedly engaged in lawful enforcement.
Let me spell this out for you:
• There is no legal presumption that the Keeper was the driver.
• The Keeper is not obliged to name the driver.
• You cannot rely on PoFA where you have not complied with it.
• And you cannot simply pretend PoFA doesn't exist when it suits you.
Your attempt to rely on “probability” and vague assertions about contract law is not only speculative but legally worthless. Civil liability is not determined by guesswork, nor by who happens to be named on the V5C. Your bluster about “insurance certificates” is equally asinine — the courts do not compel production of insurance schedules to help parking firms scrape together driver identity, and even if you were handed such a document, it would prove nothing about who was driving at the material time.
As for your bold claim that “the identity of the driver does not affect the validity of the Parking Charge,” this is pure fantasy. Of course it does. The driver is the only party who could possibly have entered into any contract with you. You cannot pursue someone else merely because you’d prefer not to do the legwork.
In short:
• You’ve admitted non-compliance with the only statutory framework that could make the Keeper liable.
• You’ve put forward no evidence of who was driving.
• You’ve threatened irrelevant and legally baseless steps to create the illusion of enforceability.
• And you’ve exposed an alarming level of procedural ignorance in the process.
You now have two options:
1. Cancel the charge and reflect seriously on the competence of your legal strategy team, or
2. Proceed to POPLA where you can waste your money on an assessors confirmation of your case.
If you remain confused about how legal processes work, I'm sure your bulk litigator of choice will encourage you to waste even more money an a futile claim.
Yours faithfully,
[Your Name]