Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Private parking tickets => Topic started by: gentleman_ on December 16, 2025, 01:36:36 pm
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The parking operator will ALWAYS emphasise how good their position is while ALWAYS down playing your position - that is 100% part of their statistical game play.
Remember that this is an unregulated business.
You are a legitimate customer whose train was slightly delayed - ask yourself why they would want to charge you £100 for that 20 minute delay? Do you think £100 is a fair price for 20 minutes parking in Chippenham?
The claim of being able to charge you £100 comes from an unfair term or condition in a consumer contract - the law protects you against that but the parking operator will NEVER admit that at this stage as it is not in their interest to do so.
There will be other inadequacies in their case if the matter progresses and we will beat them on those as well.
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Thanks,
I have the evidence but Napier Parking enphasises that they're not affiliated with any trains or train companies, and it's a car park that albeit close to the train station might be used for other purposes. I believe they are in a stronger position than I am, and since I apparently gave away my best line of defence I fear I'll go through a process that it will end up in me paying the charge plus extra.
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Below is some evidence for you.
The link will show you a jpeg of your late running train.
https://ibb.co/fzgd8YJ3
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Been looking around, and it seems that the additional cost varies between £150 and £200
If I were in a strongest position I would definitely challenge, but in the current situation and also giving the identity of the driver away, I don't think it's worth it. At least for me.
Napier Parking seems to be in a decent strong position for this charge, I believe I don't have a strong ground. I will actively avoid anything that is managed by this company in the future considering is one of the worst, and this time I'll pay 60.
You are over analysing this.
You are in a stronger position than you believe - your exposure to the wording on the various letters is causing you a certain amount of panic - this is what the parking operator wants.
The parking operator manages a car park next to a railway station - it is therefore likely that, from time to time, a train might be delayed and a driver suffers a slight overstay. This is very much 'the nature of the business' in running such a car park. If the operator gives you no route to amend your parking time then you already have a massively strong defence.
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Been looking around, and it seems that the additional cost varies between £150 and £200
If I were in a strongest position I would definitely challenge, but in the current situation and also giving the identity of the driver away, I don't think it's worth it. At least for me.
Napier Parking seems to be in a decent strong position for this charge, I believe I don't have a strong ground. I will actively avoid anything that is managed by this company in the future considering is one of the worst, and this time I'll pay 60.
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1. I pay £60 now
2. I pay £100 after IAS rejects my appeal (they almost certainly will)
3. The matter will be escalated to court, with the possibily of paying over £300 in case I lose.
Where did you get the £300 figure from? This seems unlikely to me.
Having been in your situation a few times, in all honestly it is probably less hassle to pay the £60. The court process is simple, but also long and drawn out. But for me it's not just about money. It's the principle. I consider that if I give them £60 they will use this to fund their scam, approaching new landowners citing all their successful operations, sending more threatening letters to other marks. Each £60 probably funds the harassment of another 10 people. Some of these will be people who would never even think of checking a forum and discovering the truth. Perhaps older people who would always assume that this kind of thing is legitimate.
If everyone took every "ticket" all the way to court, these bottom-feeders would very quickly go out of business. So i see it as my duty to challenge each one, personally.
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You have already identified yourself as the driver, so there is no value in arguing about keeper liability or PoFA. Napier do not need PoFA if they can pursue you as the driver on a contractual basis.
On the face of it, their paperwork and the signage are at least broadly aligned. The sign makes it clear that the “duration of stay” is calculated from the point of entry to the point of exit, and it states a £100 parking charge for breach of any term. The NtK then alleges an “overstay of paid for parking session” and relies on ANPR entry and exit times to calculate the total stay. So the NtK is not obviously pursuing a different basis from the sign; it is applying the sign’s “time on site” model.
However, there may still be mileage in a contract-based challenge, but it is fact-dependent and it is not a technical PoFA point. The strongest potential angles are:
1. Incorporation and prominence of the key term. If the entry-to-exit timing term was not sufficiently prominent at the entrance and/or was not reasonably readable before you became committed to parking, you can argue that this key term was not properly incorporated into any contract.
2. Unfairness and lack of a reasonable means to perform the contract. Your central point is that you paid for four hours and only overstayed by around twenty minutes, and the payment system apparently jumped from four hours to twenty-four hours. If, at the material time, there was no reasonable mechanism to extend the session or pay the additional time, and this was not clearly explained on the signage, you can argue that the way the terms operate is unfair because it exposes a consumer to a £100 charge for a modest overrun when the consumer has no practical way to comply.
3. Authority and standing. Even if you were the driver, Napier still have to have proper landholder authority to offer parking on those terms and to enforce charges in their own name, and they must prove the vehicle was in the part of the site covered by their signage and contract.
If you want to run this as a contract dispute, the focus should not be “PoFA” but evidence. You need photos of the entrance signage, the payment machine/app screen showing the tariff options at the time, and the terms displayed on-site. The argument then becomes: the key terms were not properly brought to your attention and/or the payment system and terms were not fair or transparent because you could not reasonably pay for the small additional time needed.
Napier usually use the utter incompetents at Gladstones to issue their claims, which means you can guarantee that they will not comply with CPR16.4(1)(a) which always leaves the claim open to a strike out.
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yes, parked exactly there
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so to clarify you were parked in the car park directly next to Sainsbury's?
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Do you think I could win, considering I stupidly identified myself as the driver and i'm out of the reasonable grace period of 10 minutes?
Napier will most definitely take the matter to court, so my options are:
1. I pay £60 now
2. I pay £100 after IAS rejects my appeal (they almost certainly will)
3. The matter will be escalated to court, with the possibily of paying over £300 in case I lose.
I think I have put myself in a position where there's a considerable chance of me losing the claim?
Forgive my english, but I'm not native and jargon such as this is difficult for me. I understand you're trying to help me and I really appreciate this, I'm not being ungrateful. I just think my chances to avoid the charge are rather slim.
(https://i.postimg.cc/k4tS8Xjs/IMG-20251217-130009.jpg)
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Thanks for all your responses and your patience. I had no prior idea on how these private car park work.
I'll guess I'll suck it up and pay the fine.
Dear Gent, this can all be a bit confusing at your first time, as most people who receive something like this assume that it is a genuine fine rather than an attempt to extract money from you by a band of crooks.
The folks of this forum can be a bit spiky but are superb at helping people in your situation, if provided with all the info they need.
So, please post up the original ticket, any signs at the location (you posted one but there is probably one at the entrance too) and any other correspondence you have had. Preferably as scans of the original doc.
In my opinion it is highly unlikely that you will end up having to pay them anything, even though you have potentially identified the driver. This type of scam is intended to cream money off those who don't know it's a scam, and if you stand your ground you will most probably be successful.
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What “fine”? I’ll give you £100 for every occurrence of the word “fine” you can show us in any correspondence you’ve received.
All you have received is a speculative invoice for an alleged breach of contract by the driver from an unregulated private parking firm,
Why would you just pay an invoice if you think you don’t owe any money?
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Thanks for all your responses and your patience. I had no prior idea on how these private car park work.
I'll guess I'll suck it up and pay the fine.
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Station Hill Car Park, Chippenham (postcode SN15 3QQ) is not a railway station car park on railway land. It is therefore treated as ordinary private land rather than land under railway byelaws. In practical terms, it is “relevant land” for the purposes of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.
In this case, however, you have already identified yourself as the driver. That means the usual “keeper liability” arguments under PoFA (i.e. whether the notice is fully PoFA-compliant so liability can be transferred from an unknown driver to the keeper) is neutralised, because the operator no longer needs to rely on PoFA to pursue the driver.
This is still why the location matters. “A train station car park” is not enough, because many car parks next to stations are not actually part of the railway estate. Some are railway land (byelaws apply and the operator’s powers, wording, and enforcement route are fundamentally different), while others are separate private sites (a contractual parking charge model). Until the exact site is identified, we cannot reliably determine which legal framework applies.
Location also matters for authority and standing. Even where the driver has been identified, a private parking operator can only enforce charges if it is authorised by the landholder (or someone with sufficient proprietary interest) to manage parking and to issue and enforce parking charges in its own name. That varies by site and sometimes by different areas of the same wider complex. Without the precise location, we cannot sensibly assess whether Napier’s contract covers the relevant land, whether it had authority to issue charges there, and whether it has standing to sue.
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SN15 3QQ
Not a station car park on railway land.
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Didn't realise you needed an exact location. I'm sort of new to all this, I am definitely keen to listen to you or I wouldn't have come here in the first place.
This happened in Chippenham, Wiltshire, station hill carpark
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Take your tin-foil hat off and tell us the location. “A train station” is worthless information if you want advice on how to deal with this.
They already know you are low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree and likely easily intimidated into paying up out of ignorance and/or fear. There is very little chance of this being concluded with the IAS.
The most likely way this will successfully be won is if they try to issue a county court claim which is easily defended. However, if you are not prepared to follow the advice you receive here, even though you already proverbially shot yourself in the foot, then there is some information we need to know, such as the location.
No one is scouring the internet to find your case so they can report back, with whatever your imagination thinks they can possible use against you.
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Had no idea about the identity of the driver, unfortunately.
It happened at a train station car park on a Saturday, not very busy at the time of arrival or departure
I arrived at 9:06 in the morning and left at 13:27
Paid my parking space at 9:14 for 4 hours
The option for payment longer than 4 hours is 24 hours which seemed a little excessive.
is this any help?
(https://i.postimg.cc/0yChV1n5/napier.png)
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FUBAR
What is the location of the alleged contravention?
Don’t be stupid and assume just because the utterly corrupt kangaroo court that is the IAS rejects your appeal that you have to pay it. The appellant is not bound by any decision the IAS makes.
Whilst you probably threw away the best defence point by blabbing the identity of the driver, you still have other defences. However, until you give us more detail, especially the location if it involved a train station car park, it is not possible to assist you much more than this.
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Essentially, then, you identified yourself as the driver in your appeal. This closes a number of angles for you.
If the PCN doesn’t comply with the requirements of the legislation- and it probably doesn’t - then liability could not have been transferred from the unknown driver to the registered keeper.
But we are where we are.
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Thanks for the quick response.
This is the response to my appeal
Thank you for your appeal received on 09/12/2025 regarding the above detailed Parking Charge.
We have reviewed the case and considered the comments that you have made, together with the evidence that
we are holding. Our records show that the Parking Charge was correctly issued as your vehicle was parked in
breach of the clearly displayed Terms and Conditions of Parking.
This is an ANPR controlled car park. Our signs inform motorists that the duration of your stay is calculated from
the point of entry to the point of exit. Our records show you paid for 4 hours and remained within the car park for 4
hours and 20 minutes. It is the driver's responsibility to ensure they cover the whole duration of their stay.
We are therefore unable to cancel the Charge as it was issued correctly. Your options now are as follows;
- Pay the Parking Charge at the rate of £60.00 by 30/12/2025. We must advise you that once this settlement rate
passes it may not be offered again or further extended. If 14 days passes the full amount of £100.00 is payable by
13/01/2026. Payment options are contained later in this document.
You have now reached the end of our internal appeals procedure.
PLEASE DO NOT PAY THE CHARGE IF YOU WISH TO APPEAL FURTHER. PAYMENTS ARE ACCEPTED IN
FULL AND FINAL SETTLEMENT.
- Make an appeal to the IAS - The Independent Appeals Service (www.theIAS.org) provides an Alternative Dispute
Resolution scheme for disputes of this type.
And this is what I said to them
Hi,
in regards to my recent parking fine, my train has been delayed by 20 minutes, and the total stay in the car park is 4 hours and 20 minutes.
Considering I paid for the time I was supposed to stay and I overstayed a minimum amount of time I ask to lift the charge.
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Key questions;
Has the driver been identified in the appeal?
And, where is the location? Is it railway property?
Best to post up the PCN covering only personal details.
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You should also search the forum for
Napier
to inform yourself.
They aren’t well known but have appeared here before nonetheless.
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https://www.ftla.uk/private-parking-tickets/read-this-first-private-parking-charges-forum-guide/
If nothing else, please follow the advice above and show us what you’ve received and, importantly, what you’ve said to them.
This information should give us an angle on how to advise you.
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Good morning all,
first, I tried the first level appeal with Napier parking directly and got rejected, so now I should appeal with www.theias.org.
I paid for 4 hours, my train was delayed by 20 minutes and I stayed a total time in the car park for a time of 4 hours and 20 minutes.
I believe I have good grounds for appeal, but I know that often parking tickets for overstaying and train delay got rejected. However, the options to pay are jumping form 4 hours to a full day, and I didn't need a full day.
I have proof of delay and a successful train ticket appeal (which reimboursed me only 0.97 pence, but it should be proof of train delay)
If I loose this appeal, will I be forced to pay £100 instead of £60
I know the IAS is terrible and 94% of the requests with them results in a declined appeal.
What should I Do?