Thankfully, in that original appeal the driver was never identified, and that is the key protection here.
Even with that “I would have paid the reduced amount” line, the appeal still came from the Keeper, not from a named driver. It complained about delay and broken systems instead of accepting that there was a valid contract or a breach. The “would have paid” sentence is only a hypothetical (“would have… if”), not “I accept I owe this”. It does not admit the charge is lawful, and it does not say who was driving.
If this ever reached court (highly unlikely), that sentence would just be background noise. It does not fix PoFA defects, it does not fix bad or missing signage, it does not give the operator legal “standing”, it is not a CPR 14 admission, and it does not prove who was driving. You can always explain that it was written early on, before proper advice, and was meant to show you were trying to act reasonably but were prejudiced by their delay.
The lesson to take away from this is never, ever, admit liability as Keeper and never say you “owe” or “would have paid” the charge. Keep everything framed as the Keeper only, with the driver remaining unidentified.
So, moving on, the alleged contravention was on 31/08/2025. For keeper liability under PoFA, a postal Notice to Keeper has to be delivered (“given”) within 14 days, so by 14/09/2025 at the latest. Their NtK is dated 15/09/2025. Even if you bend over backwards and assume it was posted that day by first-class post and deemed delivered two working days later (17/09/2025), that is day 17. It cannot create keeper liability.
On top of that, the front of the NtK itself is headed “Notice to Keeper (Postal – Non PoFA)”. They are openly saying they are not relying on PoFA. That alone kills any Keeper liability. Only the unknown driver could ever be liable, and the driver has not been identified.
Also, the Unity5 hybrid-mail “certificate of postage” actually helps you as the Keeper. All it shows is that the notice was queued with a mail consolidator at 11:34 on 15/09/2025 on a “2–3 day delivery” service, i.e. not first-class post. The two-working-day deemed delivery rule in the Interpretation Act is based on ordinary first-class post. Using a slower consolidator service makes their claimed deemed delivery date even less credible. Realistically, it probably entered the Royal Mail system on 16th or 17th, so it would be “given” around 18th–19th September (day 18–19). Either way, it is clearly outside PoFA.
Ignore TRACE. They are not a party to anything and have no standing.
If you want to draw a line, send UKCPS one final letter as Keeper only, along the lines of: your own notice is marked “Non PoFA” and was not given within 14 days, so you have no right to recover any sum from me as Keeper, I will not be naming the driver, and I will only engage again if you cancel or you issue a fully compliant Letter of Claim.
The real external escalation that actually matters is the CMA under the DMCC. That is where you bundle up the Non PoFA NtK, the 2–3 day hybrid-mail proof, the misleading PoFA-style threat “we may recover from you, the keeper, on the assumption that you were the driver”, and the snail-mail-only complaints process, and present it as a pattern of unfair and misleading commercial practice.
Bottom line: the PoFA timing and the “Non PoFA” label mean the Keeper cannot be liable, the hybrid-mail evidence strengthens that position, and nothing the Keeper has written so far has changed it.
This is the letter I would send to UKCPS:
Subjeect: Parking Charge Notice GCL167641 – Final response from registered keeper
Dear Sirs,
I write as the registered keeper of vehicle [VRM]. I refer to your “Notice to Keeper (Postal – Non PoFA) issued on private land” dated 15/09/2025, your later letter dated 14/10/2025 (the first notice that actually arrived at my address), my appeal of 12/11/2025, and my subsequent formal complaint sent by post which has not yet been substantively answered.
1. No keeper liability – Non PoFA and out of time
Your own document is headed “Notice to Keeper (Postal – Non PoFA)”. You have therefore chosen not to rely on Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 and you accept that you cannot create statutory keeper liability.
In any event, the notice is out of time for PoFA. The alleged contravention date is 31/08/2025. A PoFA-compliant notice must be delivered within 14 days of that date. Even on your own case, the earliest that your notice dated 15/09/2025 could be “given” is two working days later, 17/09/2025, which is day 17.
Your Unity5 hybrid-mail “certificate of postage” simply shows that the item was queued with a mail consolidator on 15/09/2025 for a 2–3 day service. It does not demonstrate first class post or delivery within 14 days. PoFA therefore cannot apply.
Accordingly, you have no lawful route to recover any sum from me as Keeper. Liability, if any, could only ever rest with the unidentified driver. No admissions are made as to that person’s identity.
2. Misleading statements about keeper liability
Despite expressly labelling the notice “Non PoFA” and issuing it out of time, you go on to threaten that if the charge is not paid and the driver not named, you “may recover from you, the keeper, on the assumption that you were the driver” and that the notice is “deemed to have been given” two working days after sending.
Outside PoFA there is no legal presumption that a registered keeper was the driver, and persuasive appellate authority has made it clear that courts must not simply proceed on such an assumption. Your wording is therefore a misleading statement of my legal position and of your entitlement to pursue me as keeper.
It is also inconsistent with the Private Parking Single Code of Practice, including clause 8.1.1(d). This has already been raised with the Competition and Markets Authority in a complaint under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and I reserve the right to expand that complaint with your latest correspondence.
3. Debt collectors
You state that the matter has been referred to TRACE Debt Recovery. TRACE are not a party to any alleged contract and have no standing. I will not communicate with them. Any further letters, texts or calls from TRACE or any other debt collector will simply be retained as evidence of unreasonable and aggressive conduct.
4. Future conduct, bulk litigators and potential proceedings
There is no purpose in any further routine demands. Unless you now confirm cancellation, the only proper next step would be a fully compliant Letter of Claim in accordance with the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims, followed (if you insist) by a County Court claim.
This letter puts you and any bulk litigation firm you decide to use on clear notice that there is and can be no Keeper liability for this “Non PoFA” and out-of-time notice. If you are considering instructing any firm to sue me as Keeper, you must provide them with a copy of this letter before they accept instructions, so that they fully understand the hopelessness of any Keeper-only claim.
If, despite this, a claim is issued against me as registered keeper in relation to PCN GCL167641, I will treat it as having no real prospect of success and as an abuse of process. I will promptly apply for summary judgment under CPR 24.2(a) and/or strike-out of the claim and will seek fixed costs in the sum of £750 pursuant to Practice Direction 45, Table 1(C) for an application for summary judgment under Part 24, together with the application fee of £313 and any further costs the court considers appropriate in light of your unreasonable conduct.
5. What I expect now
Unless and until I receive either:
a) written confirmation that PCN GCL167641 has been cancelled and that my data has been removed from all non-statutory systems (including debt collectors); or
b) a fully compliant Letter of Claim,
I will regard this matter as closed and will not respond to any further routine correspondence.
Yours faithfully,
[Name of keeper]
Of course you don’t have to follow up on the threat of summary judgment but I have recently had two successful applications with both receiving fixed costs of £750 plus the £313 application fee awarded and both are awaiting a costs hearing for the claimants unreasonable conduct, which will likely mean even more costs awarded.
I think it is time we start to get serious with these rogue firms. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is the regulator responsible for enforcing the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act). The DMCC created a new legal regime, and the CMA is the body empowered to implement, oversee, and enforce its provisions.
Put simply, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC) is a new law that lets the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) step in directly when businesses treat people unfairly, and the racket run by unregulated private parking firms is exactly the sort of thing it should be looking at. These companies now pump out over 40,000 “parking charge notices” a day – well over 14 million a year – each typically dressed up to look like an official fine and often backed by confusing signs, automatic number plate cameras and aggressive debt collection to push frightened motorists into paying.
Under the DMCC, the CMA can treat this as a consumer protection issue: it can investigate whether firms are misleading people about their legal position, adding bogus add-on fees, or making it deliberately hard to complain or appeal compared with how easy it is to pay. Because the sheer number of people being caught up in this system is staggering, the private parking industry is not a niche problem but a mass-market consumer harm, and the CMA now has both the legal tools and a strong public-interest reason to get involved.
Under the DMCC, if the CMA decides a firm has broken consumer law, it can:
• Investigate and issue legally binding directions to stop or change the behaviour
• Order compensation or other redress for affected consumers
• Fine the firm up to 10% of its worldwide annual turnover, plus daily penalties if it doesn’t comply
Crucially, the CMA can now do this directly, without having to go through a full court case first.
If you are prepared to be one of the first to do so, then simply go to the CMA website here and lodge a complaint:
Report a problem to the CMA (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tell-the-cma-about-a-competition-or-market-problem)
I just reported UKCPS about their failure to accept a complaint by email or webform with the following:
I wish to report what I believe is a systemic unfair commercial practice by UKCPS Ltd, a private parking company. I am not myself the recipient of a PCN from UKCPS, but I run a non-commercial website and advice service for motorists (Gullible Tree) and regularly see cases from consumers dealing with UKCPS.
UKCPS obtains keeper data from the DVLA and issues PCNs at scale. Their letters and website say recipients can pay or appeal online, by automated phone, or in writing. In practice, motorists report that the online and phone systems often do not recognise valid PCN references and vehicle registrations, making it impossible in those cases to pay or appeal by the advertised routes.
When motorists then complain or set out their dispute by email, UKCPS sends a template reply stating they “cannot accept Appeals, Transfer Liability or Complaints via email” and “will not enter into further correspondence via email”. Their “Contact us” page has no email address and no general webform, only a postal address and a statement that the office is not open to the public. The only way to complain is by post.
In several cases, UKCPS have instructed debt recovery companies while there is an unresolved dispute and while the motorist has been unable to access any functioning appeal or complaint channel.
This creates a structural imbalance: UKCPS uses DVLA data, standard letters and digital systems to demand money, but blocks electronic channels for complaints and insists on “snail mail only”. It is easy to pay and deliberately hard to complain. In my view this fails the DMCC standard of professional diligence and amounts to an unfair commercial practice, creating unjustified obstacles to exercising consumer rights.
The email wording and website design are clearly standard, not accidental, and likely affect many motorists. I understand the CMA will not resolve individual PCNs, but I ask you to log this as evidence of a potentially systemic unfair practice by UKCPS, consider whether their complaint and communication design is compatible with the DMCC consumer protection standards, and consider whether similar “friction and asymmetry” designs are widespread in the private parking sector.
If required, I can provide anonymised examples of UKCPS correspondence, their template refusal to accept complaints by email, screenshots of their website, and case summaries from affected motorists.
Please... do not send any extra ID. Especially anything other than a copy of the V5C. They do not need any extra ID. This is just their way of trying to frustrate you.
They already have the Keeper’s full name, address, VRM and PCN ref from the DVLA KADOE request. They were content that this was enough to identify the data subject when it suited them to chase money.
If any ID is ever provided in this context, V5C is the only ID that is required as it mirrors exactly the DVLA data they already used. But even that is arguably unnecessary here.
They plainly had “sufficient certainty” about the data subject’s identity when it suited them to demand money. It is weak for them now to pretend they suddenly need extra ID to answer a SAR.
Under UK GDPR they can only ask for “additional information” if they have reasonable doubts about the requester’s identity. That has to be proportionate. In this context, quoting:
• full name
• full postal address (matching their letter)
• the PCN reference
• the VRM
is more than enough for them to know exactly whose file they’re dealing with. Asking for “a valid form of identification” on top is obstruction rather than genuine verification.
Send the following with a redacted copy of the V5C showing ONLY the name, address and VRM. Redact everything else on there:
Subject: Re: Subject Access Request – PCN [ref]
Dear Data Protection Officer,
Thank you for your email.
You already hold my full name, postal address, vehicle registration and PCN reference as a result of your DVLA KADOE enquiry. You have used that data to write to me at this address about this exact Parking Charge Notice. You therefore had no difficulty identifying me as the data subject when you chose to pursue this charge.
In my Subject Access Request I have provided the same identifying details: my full name, my full address, the PCN reference and my vehicle registration. That is sufficient for you to locate my records and to be satisfied as to my identity. In these circumstances I do not accept that it is necessary or proportionate to demand any further identification as a condition of exercising my right of access.
For the avoidance of doubt, the name and address on my V5C match the details you have used. If it assists you, I am willing to provide a redacted copy of the V5C showing my name, address and vehicle registration only.
Please therefore process my Subject Access Request on the basis of the information already held by you and supplied in my original email. For the avoidance of doubt, the one-month time limit for responding runs from the date of my original SAR, not from any later date on which you decide you have enough information.
If you maintain that additional identification is required, please explain precisely:
• What specific, reasonable doubts you claim to have about my identity; and
• Why those doubts did not prevent you from obtaining and using my DVLA data to pursue this PCN.
If you continue to refuse to act on my request without adequate justification, I will raise this with the Information Commissioner’s Office as an example of an organisation placing unnecessary barriers in the way of a data subject exercising their rights.
Yours faithfully,
[Name]
[Address]
As it is your son who is the RK and the recipient of the PCN, either he has to do this or you can do it for him but it must be in his name. You CANNOT do it "on behalf of" him. Everything is done electronically and there is no need for wet signatures on anything. Everything can be signed by simply typing the full name. Nothing is posted. Everything is done via email.
The first thing that either you or your son must do is submit a Subject Access Request (SAR) to UKCPS and email it to the DPO. You can find the DPO email address in the Privacy section of their website.
I won't go into detail here and you can just Google on how to submit an SAR. You are asking for: all letters/notices sent, addresses used, DVLA enquiry log, photos/ANPR data, internal notes. That will show whether an NtK was ever actually generated and where it was sent.
At the same time you submit the following formal complaint to UPCPS to this email address: info@ukcps.net and CC yourself. As they Satte that they don't accept complaints by email, as a back up, send it by post to: City West Business Park, Building 3, Gelderd Road, Leeds, LS12 6LN. DO NOT use tracked or recorded delivery. Send it first class and get a free proof of posting certificate from any post office.
Subject: Formal Complaint and Request to Treat as Appeal – PCN [reference]
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing as the registered keeper of vehicle [VRM] to make a formal complaint regarding Parking Charge Notice [reference] and to require, in accordance with the Private Parking Single Code of Practice (section 11.2), that this complaint is treated as if it were an appeal.
The alleged contravention is stated as having occurred on 31 August. I did not receive any Notice to Keeper or other correspondence at the time. The first and only letter I have ever received directly from UKCPS is dated 14 October and did not arrive at my address until 5 November. There was no windscreen notice at the time of the alleged event, and no earlier notice or correspondence of any kind ever arrived at my address.
Upon receiving the 14 October letter, I attempted in good faith to deal with the matter by using the channels you specify. Your automated telephone payment line and your online system would not recognise my PCN reference or vehicle registration, preventing me from either paying or appealing. I then sent a written letter, by recorded delivery, on 8 November, which Royal Mail confirm was delivered on 10 November. That letter has been ignored and I have received no substantive response from UKCPS.
The next correspondence I received was from TRACE Debt Recovery, whose letter is dated 14 November and was delivered to me on 21 November. They assert that I must pay them and that there is no line of appeal. It is wholly inappropriate for debt recovery to be pursued while there is an unresolved dispute and while UKCPS have failed to provide any working or meaningful route to challenge the charge.
I confirm that the address on my V5C registration document is correct and up to date and was so at the material time. If UKCPS contend that any Notice to Keeper or earlier letter was sent, I put you to strict proof. The rebuttable presumption of delivery only arises if you can show that such a notice was properly generated and actually posted to the correct address. I therefore require you to provide:
1. The dates on which each Notice to Keeper or other letter relating to this PCN was generated.
2. The full address used for each such letter.
3. Evidence that each notice was issued for posting (for example, system logs, batch posting records, or equivalent).
4. Copies of all correspondence, notices, photographs, ANPR data and internal notes you hold in relation to this PCN and my vehicle.
In line with the Private Parking Single Code of Practice, section 11.2, this is a formal complaint which directly concerns the issue of a parking charge. It must therefore be treated by you as if it were an appeal. It is neither fair nor compliant with the Code to deny an appeal as “out of time” where your own failures in notification and system access have prevented me from receiving the original notice and from using your advertised appeal channels.
Accordingly, I require the following:
• Written confirmation that this complaint is being treated as an appeal under section 11.2 of the Private Parking Single Code of Practice.
• A pause on all collection activity and instructions to TRACE Debt Recovery to cease all contact with me while this complaint/appeal is under consideration.
• A full written response addressing:
– Whether any prior Notice to Keeper was generated and, if so, when and to what address.
– Why no earlier notice was ever received at my correct V5C address.
– Why your telephone and online systems failed to recognise my PCN and vehicle details.
– Why my recorded-delivery letter of 8 November has been ignored.
Unless and until you have provided the above information and fairly considered this complaint as an appeal under the Single Code, I do not accept that any appeal deadline has genuinely expired, nor that it is reasonable or compliant for UKCPS or its agents to pursue debt collection.
Please treat this as a formal complaint requiring investigation. I expect a full, reasoned written reply within 28 days, together with confirmation that all debt recovery activity has been suspended while this matter is properly considered.
Yours faithfully,
[Full name of Registered Keeper]
[Postal address]
[Email address]
[Vehicle registration]
[PCN reference]