Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hilarious. Reply with the following...

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Subject: Re: Pathetic Attempt at Damage Control – PCN #[REFERENCE]

Dear Britannia Parking,

Thank you for your recent response to my formal complaint — a response so staggeringly inept, so devoid of legal coherence, that it deserves to be preserved in a glass case as a masterclass in how not to respond to a regulatory breach.

Let’s be clear: I informed you, plainly and politely, that your Notice to Keeper was non-compliant with Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA), and that as such, you had no lawful basis to pursue the registered keeper for payment. Instead of acknowledging your error, you doubled down with a letter dated 26/02/2024, brazenly claiming that you had the right to recover the charge from me under PoFA.

This is not a minor mistake. It is a knowing and deliberate misstatement of statutory law — a textbook breach of paragraph 8.1.1(d) of the Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice (PPSSCoP), and of Clause C1.1 of your KADOE contract with the DVLA. You do not get to falsely threaten people with keeper liability under legislation you have utterly failed to comply with. That’s not “non-ideal training”; it’s misrepresentation. You should be grateful this is merely being escalated to regulators and not challenged before a judge.

And yet, with astonishing audacity, your response tries to salvage this mess with the tired, wheezing argument that you can “still pursue the driver under the old implied contract theory.” Do you truly not grasp how pathetic this is?

This desperate fallback has been booted out of court more often than a politician dodges a question. Judges are no longer tolerating operators like you clinging to it like a rubber ring on a sinking ship. You’re not clever. You’re not persuasive. You’re just repeating obsolete nonsense and hoping nobody notices. Spoiler: we notice.

Then comes your pièce de résistance — the absurd fantasy that you’ll ask a judge to “review the insurance certificate” to magically identify the driver. Have you any idea how the civil court process works? The court will not embark on a speculative fishing expedition on your behalf because you couldn’t be bothered to gather proper evidence. This is small claims, not a psychic hotline.

You compound your embarrassment by stating: “Not quoting PoFA does not mean the charge was incorrectly issued”. Let me explain this in words short enough for your compliance team to be able to digest: if you don’t meet PoFA requirements, you don’t get keeper liability. If you claim you do—when you don’t—you’ve misrepresented the legal position. You cannot have it both ways. Your claim fails at the starting gate.

Your conduct reeks of opportunism, ignorance, and contempt for both regulatory compliance and the public you routinely mislead. You are an embarrassment to the industry — and that is no small feat.

Let me make this simple:

• Cancel the charge
• Issue the formal apology you owe
• Reflect seriously on the astonishing incompetence that led you to send such a response

Failure to do so will result in a formal complaint to the DVLA and BPA, including a copy of your unintentionally hilarious letter — a document so riddled with legal and logical fallacies it could be used as a training tool, were it not so embarrassing.

I look forward to watching you try to explain this to your trade association.

Yours sincerely,

[Your Name]

That response is risible. So much so that I'd be minded to file a formal complaint about their conduct, to complaints@britannia-parking.co.uk.

Here's a suggestion. I've knocked it together fairly quickly so others may suggest improvements. You could also attach a copy of that letter to your complaint for clarity.

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Subject: Formal Complaint, PCN #[REFERENCE]

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to make a formal complaint about your correspondence in respect of PCN #[REFERENCE], which amounts to a breach of the Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice (PPSSCoP) and, by virtue of this, your KADOE contract with the DVLA.

Following receipt of your PCN, I appealed as the registered keeper, pointing out that due to your failure to deliver a Notice to Keeper within the relevant period of 14 days as required by Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act (PoFA), you are unable to recover the charge from me as the keeper. You responded with a letter dated 26/02/2024, which is attached, claiming to be notifying me under PoFA that you have the right to recover the charge from me as the keeper. This is a clear breach of the PPSSCoP and the KADOE contract for the following reasons:

1. Breach of the PPSSCoP
Section 8.1.1 of the PPSSCoP states:

8.1.1 The parking operator must not serve a notice or include material on its website which in its design and/or language:

d) state the keeper is liable under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 where they cannot be held liable.

In my appeal, I explained that Britannia had failed to serve a notice compliant with the requirements of PoFA, having given the notice outside of the relevant period of 14 days. You then responded on 26/02/2024 with the attached letter, claiming the ability to recover the charges from me under PoFA. This is a deliberate misrepresentation, and a breach of 8.1.1 of the PPSSCoP.

As per Annex H of the PPSSCoP, this constitutes at least a Level 1 sanction for non-conformance.

2. Breach of the KADOE Contract
Clause C1.1 of your KADOE Contract with DVLA states:

The Customer shall ensure that signage, terms and conditions of service for parking customers and correspondence with data subjects comply with the Law and with the requirements of the ATA’s Code of Practice or Conduct.

By knowingly and falsely claiming compliance with PoFA, you have failed to comply with the terms of your KADOE contract, bringing into question your suitability to have access to sensitive registered keeper data.

As a result of these serious failings you should:

• Confirm that the parking charge has been cancelled and that no further action will be taken
• Explain why your correspondence falsely claims the ability to recover charges under PoFA when you are, or ought to be, fully aware this is not true
• Issue a formal apology

I expect a thorough response to my complaint within 14 days. Following your response, I reserve the right to escalate this matter to the British Parking Association, and the DVLA.

Yours etc...

Why did you wait until the 8th to send the formal complaint. They are required to acknowledge or respond to a formal complaint within 14 days. When 14 days are up, if you've not yet had a response to the formal complaint, come back and remind us.

You have until 19th April to submit a POPLA appeal. In the meantime, do bit of your own research on the forum for other POPLA appeals to get an idea of how to structure it.

Have you checked this out?



However, as the Notice to Keeper (NtK) is not PoFA compliant, that is always going to be your main point of appeal. If the issues is due to what is known a "double dip" where the middle two ANPR photos have not been scrutinised, they will have also breached your GDPR by unlawfully requesting your DVLA data.

They are required to check all ANPR data for what is, in this case, "orphan images" which would have confirmed that the vehicle was not on site for the duration that are claiming. This is a breach of the BPAIPC Private Parking Single Code of Practice (PPSCoP) section 7.3(d) which states:

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Photographic evidence must not be used by a parking operator as the basis for issuing a parking charge unless:
d) images generated by ANPR or CCTV have been subject to a manual quality control check, including the accuracy of the timestamp and the risk of keying errors.

Note 1 to that section goes on to state:

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NOTE 1: The manual quality control check for remote ANPR and CCTV systems is particularly important for detecting issues such as “double dipping”, where image camera systems might have failed to accurately record each instance when a vehicle enters and leaves controlled land...

By having failed to comply with the PPSCoP Britannia has therefore breached the KADOE contract with the DVLA and should be reported to them for this breach. Also, you should sue them for breach of your GDPR under the Data Protection Act 2018 and should claim damages and compensation.

You have obscured some important information... We need to see all the dates and times.