Well done. You won.
It is genuinely astonishing that an organisation purporting to offer quasi-adjudicative oversight can produce a communication so chronically malnourished in both clarity and basic literacy. POPLA’s little template reads like the work of someone who has never encountered logic, precision, or even the faintest whisper of professional standards.
“To inform you that the operator has withdrawn your appeal” is, in itself, a sentence so nonsensical it borders on farcical. The mental vacancy required to sign off a line that implies an operator can somehow retract an appellant’s submission is almost impressive. It is a level of incoherence that would embarrass a moderately talented GCSE student, yet here it is — proudly issued by a national appeals body.
The wording manages to be clumsy, misleading, and grammatically inept all at once. Nothing about it resembles the output of a competent, thinking adult. It gives the distinct impression that POPLA has no internal editor, no quality control, and certainly no one capable of reading their own material and noticing that they’ve drafted something bordering on illiterate.
Then there is the vacuous structure: a plodding, contradictory explanation stitched together with the grace of a malfunctioning chatbot. They lurch from patronising speculation (“If you have already paid…”) to inaccurate assumption (“the operator has reviewed your appeal and chosen to cancel”) without any logical sequence or even grammatical consistency. The letter is so inelegantly assembled it practically gasps for air halfway through the second paragraph.
But the most telling defect is conceptual: they cannot even articulate, in plain English, what has actually happened. Instead of stating the obvious — the operator cancelled the PCN — they produce this muddled nonsense, as though the events themselves are too complex for their own staff to grasp. It is hard not to conclude that whoever wrote this template either didn’t understand the process they were describing, or simply lacked the linguistic tools to express it.
In any professional environment, this would be sent back with tracked changes, red ink, and a suggestion that the author seek remedial writing support. At POPLA, it apparently becomes an official communication. And that, more than anything, is the real indictment: not just that the letter is clumsy and embarrassing, but that it passed through whatever passes for oversight within POPLA without a single person noticing how fundamentally shoddy it is.
In short: a depressingly clear window into the intellectual anaemia of an organisation that cannot even draft a coherent template letter — yet is entrusted with adjudicating matters that actually require comprehension.
In fact, I suggest you send the following email to POPLA at info@popla.co.uk and CC enquiries@flexibleresolutionservices.co.uk; info@trustalliancegroup.org and let us know the response you receive:
Subject: Formal Complaint – Incoherent and Unprofessional “Appeal Withdrawn” Correspondence
Dear POPLA Team,
I am writing to raise a formal complaint about the extraordinarily poor standard of the template email issued when an operator cancels a Parking Charge Notice before an appeal is assessed. The communication I received is so lacking in clarity, logic, and basic literacy that it calls into question the intellectual capability and procedural understanding of the person or team responsible for drafting it.
The phrase “the operator has withdrawn your appeal” is, on its face, nonsensical. An operator cannot withdraw an appellant’s submission, and no competent writer would use wording that implies otherwise. The fact that this has been adopted as standard text suggests that whoever authored it did not understand the process they were meant to be describing, or lacked the linguistic ability to articulate it accurately. Either possibility is deeply concerning.
The rest of the letter is equally inelegant. It is clumsily structured, contradictory in places, and written in such a muddled fashion that it reads like a hastily assembled paragraph from someone intellectually out of their depth. Basic sequencing, grammatical consistency, and coherence are all missing. The message lurches between confused hypotheticals and ill-fitting explanations, none of which reflect how the process actually works.
It is not merely embarrassing; it is an indictment of the level of internal oversight within POPLA. Any halfway competent professional would have sent this back for correction. Instead, it has been allowed to stand as an official communication from an organisation that claims to assess evidence, interpret procedures, and apply reasoning in a quasi-judicial setting.
If the standard of written communication is this poor, it raises a legitimate question: how can the public have confidence that POPLA is capable of the analytical, evidential, and reasoning-based work expected of an appeals service? A body that cannot draft a coherent template letter cannot reasonably be assumed to possess the competence required to evaluate appeals with fairness and intellectual rigour.
I request confirmation that this complaint will be logged and reviewed, and I expect a response addressing:
1. How this wording was approved;
2. Whether POPLA acknowledges that the current text is inaccurate, misleading, and grammatically deficient; and
3. What steps will be taken to correct the template and improve internal quality control.
I look forward to your prompt and considered response.
Yours sincerely,
[Name]