Free Traffic Legal Advice

I am responsible for[/b] "either paying the fine/penalty amount or appealing upon receipt from the authority".", thats in the email I received from Arval with the aforementioned charge notice.

But you haven't received anything from "the authority", you've received a letter from your leasing company, in which they include a copy of a parking charge notice addressed to them.

As it is addressed to them, it is for them to respond to, the notice even tells them that:


You need to contact Arval and make sure they have indeed provided your name and address as the hirer of the vehicle, at which point APCOA should write to you directly.

Are you the registered keeper of the van? If so, the below is relevant.

As Newquay Airport is subject to byelaws, it is subject to "statutory control", and as such, not relevant land for the purposes of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act, meaning they cannot hold the keeper liable. You could therefore appeal along the lines of the below. If you are not the registered keeper (if it's a lease vehicle, for example), let us know as the approach will be slightly different.


Make sure this appeal is made solely as the keeper, do not reveal who was driving.

For a while Initial Parking used to claim the byelaws were just a 'draft' and hadn't been enacted, then for a while claimed they didn't exist at all. I have an open complaint with the British Parking Association about this. The wording of your PCN doesn't falsely claim that the Protection of Freedoms Act applies, which suggests the complaint may have worked... That said, if they do reject your appeal, I can support with a POPLA appeal.

If they do not know the driver they cannot send a Notice to Keeper because they have no legal powers to do so, only the airport owners can, not the private company.

This isn't quite right. They can't use the provisions of PoFA to recover charges from the registered keeper - they're perfectly entitled to write to the keeper in relation to the unpaid charge, they just can't rely on PoFA, nor claim an ability to do so (which they aren't). As for the airport owners, they can't issue a private parking charge and use PoFA to hold the keeper liable either, the rules around relevant land don't change based on who's seeking to recover the charge. They could seek to prosecute for a breach of byelaws, if applicable, but they won't.

Weirdly, having not really seen any such similar cases that I can recall, this is the second such example within 2 days: APCOA LHR T5 Short Stay Penalty - Meet & Greet

As above, once we've seen all the relevant documents (including your appeal and their response) we'll be better placed to advice.

Another point, which sounds like pedantry but isn't, you refer to 'we' throughout. From a legal perspective there is no 'we'. Your vehicle is registered to one individual. It is that person alone who is being pursued, and all correspondence, up to and including any court action, must be done by them/in their name.

The creditor may not pursue the keeper if at any stage prior to legal proceedings being commenced they are made aware of the driver's name and details for service.

Correct.

It will be hard for anyone to offer meaningful advice as to your chances of success, when you have told us nothing about the grounds upon which you relied in the first place, nor the evidence you presented to make your case for exceptional hardship.

No, I didn't say who the driver was. The appeal was sent solely as a keeper.

Good - in that case, if APCOA reject, I'd be minded to appeal on the grounds of PoFA and relevant land. This stands you in good stead for getting the charge cancelled with the least amount of fuss.

I assume APCOA would fairly assume the driver who exited is the same one as who entered.

As I was getting at above, it likely doesn't matter to APCOA if the driver who exited is different. Their position could reasonably be that the driver who entered the car park entered the contract with APCOA - in entering that contract, he agreed to ensure that the correct tariff was paid before the car left and that the car left within X minutes of payment being made. The fact that he passed responsibility for leaving the car park to someone else wouldn't matter.

In a similar way that if you order an item from a retailer online, and they pass responsibility for delivery to a courier who then loses your item, your recourse is against the retailer, not the courier.

Appeal made to APCOA (we all know how likely this is to succeed)

For future reference for airport tickets, had you come here before appealing, we could have advised you of an appeal that would have had a close to 100% chance of succeeding, but we cannot change the past.

Please show us the PCN you have received, and exactly what you submitted as an appeal.

I'm unfamiliar with the Meet & Greet at Heathrow, so I'm not entirely sure what has happened here - it seems unusual that you also have to pay for short-term parking when you are using the Meet & Greet car park? Is this a third party company providing the Meet & Greet service that is not associated with the airport?

Can you show us the actual document?