Recived a PCN for parking in a car park over the 3 hour limit.
I appealed stating i wasnt the driver, i advised them i didnt need to name the driver to them and they cannot pass the charge to me as the keeper.
They have come back with the following:
Thank you for your appeal.
This Parking Charge is not POFA compliant, however, payment can still be sought under the old
‘implied-contract-with-the-driver’ rules used prior to POFA.
Under Contract Law there is a probability that the Keeper was the Driver if the Keeper does not
nominate anyone else.
Britannia Parking have made no assumptions as to the identity of the driver. We have written to you
as the vehicle’s keeper to inform you of any outstanding contraventions against your vehicle. If you
inform us of the driver’s details, we will pursue them for the Parking Charge. Please be aware that
the identity of the driver does not affect the validity of a Parking Charge.
In addition, should this Parking Charge reach court proceedings, we will put in a request to the
judge that the insurance certificate for the vehicle to reviewed as evidence, to determine who was
able to drive the vehicle at the time of the contravention.
We have placed the Parking Charge on hold for 14 days to allow for you to send this information.
Please be aware due to awaiting for additional evidence your appeal response may exceed our 28
day deadline.
Please email your additional evidence to parkingcharges@britpark.com referencing your Parking
Charge Number and Vehicle Registration or send it to our registered head office address in Poole.
Any advice please? Thanks.
Ha! Respond to that with the following email:
Subject: Re: Parking Charge [Ref No.] — Your Admission of PoFA Non-Compliance and Misguided Assertions of Liability
Dear Britannia Parking,
Thank you for your latest communication, which makes for an entertaining — if entirely misconceived — read.
You have openly admitted that your Notice to Keeper is not compliant with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA). That should have been the end of the matter. The very purpose of PoFA Schedule 4 was to create a statutory mechanism by which the Keeper of a vehicle could be held liable in the absence of driver identification. Without compliance, no such liability can arise.
Instead of grasping this basic legal reality, you have attempted to dust off pre-2012 “assumed driver” arguments that have long since been rendered obsolete. This is not only intellectually dishonest but reflects a staggering level of procedural ignorance for an operator supposedly engaged in lawful enforcement.
Let me spell this out for you:
• There is no legal presumption that the Keeper was the driver.
• The Keeper is not obliged to name the driver.
• You cannot rely on PoFA where you have not complied with it.
• And you cannot simply pretend PoFA doesn't exist when it suits you.
Your attempt to rely on “probability” and vague assertions about contract law is not only speculative but legally worthless. Civil liability is not determined by guesswork, nor by who happens to be named on the V5C. Your bluster about “insurance certificates” is equally asinine — the courts do not compel production of insurance schedules to help parking firms scrape together driver identity, and even if you were handed such a document, it would prove nothing about who was driving at the material time.
As for your bold claim that “the identity of the driver does not affect the validity of the Parking Charge,” this is pure fantasy. Of course it does. The driver is the only party who could possibly have entered into any contract with you. You cannot pursue someone else merely because you’d prefer not to do the legwork.
In short:
• You’ve admitted non-compliance with the only statutory framework that could make the Keeper liable.
• You’ve put forward no evidence of who was driving.
• You’ve threatened irrelevant and legally baseless steps to create the illusion of enforceability.
• And you’ve exposed an alarming level of procedural ignorance in the process.
You now have two options:
1. Cancel the charge and reflect seriously on the competence of your legal strategy team, or
2. Proceed to POPLA where you can waste your money on an assessors confirmation of your case.
If you remain confused about how legal processes work, I'm sure your bulk litigator of choice will encourage you to waste even more money an a futile claim.
Yours faithfully,
[Your Name]
Thanks, will reply and let you know.
As soon as i read "This Parking Charge is not POFA compliant" i was thinking why the hell are they still pursuing?!
So, does this merit a complaint to the BPA?
For what it is worth, yes. Personally, I can't be bothered wasting time with the cabal as they will never bite the hand that feeds them.
Update - Reply from Britannia:
Good Afternoon,
Thank you for your email, your additional correspondence for your appeal has been logged to our system.
Someone will review this as soon as possible and take into consideration what you have said. A decision will be made and sent out to you.
We do have an internal 28 day deadline in which to reply to appeals, however as we have requested additional evidence to be provided our response may exceed this deadline.
Please regularly check your spam/inbox for correspondence.
Kind Regards,
Any thoughts appricated, thanks.
I'm not sure there's much to offer thought on - their response seems rather self-explanatory.
Reply regarding my appeal:
Thank you for your appeal received on 11/08/2025 regarding the above Parking Charge.
We have considered your appeal and comments you have made; in conjunction with any evidence
you have provided and the photographs we have on record.
The Parking Charge was issued to your vehicle because you over stayed the maximum time
permitted for parking at this car park. The store operates as a 90 minutes maximum stay car park.
Britannia Parking is an active member of the British Parking Association (BPA) and we follow their
Approved Operators Scheme, Code of Practice at all times. We meet all signage requirements
under the BPA's Code of Practice regarding signage and notifying the driver of the terms and
conditions.
British Parking Association Code of Practice - Consideration and Grace Periods
Where a parking location is one where a limited period of parking is permitted (Max stay), or where
drivers contract to park for a defined period and pay for that service in advance (Pay & Display), this
would be considered as a parking event and a Grace Period of at least 10 minutes must be added
to the end of a parking event before a Parking Charge can be issued.
Neither a consideration period or a grace period are periods of free parking and there is no
requirement for Britannia Parking to offer an additional allowance on top of a consideration or grace
period.
We give motorist a 10 minute grace period at the end of parking event to leave the car park before a
Parking Charge is issued, which is within the BPA guidelines.
After 90 minutes of parking, your 10 minute grace will commence, if the driver has not left the car
park by the time the 10 minute grace period has been reached, a Parking Charge will be issued for
breaching the terms and conditions of the car park.
Therefore, we consider the Parking Charge to be valid and correctly issued.
Having considered the content of your letter and our internal review, as this is your first Parking
Charge appeal, we are prepared to cancel the notice; with the understanding that you will not
continue to breach the terms and conditions; as you are now aware of the maximum stay time
permitted for this car park.
Yours sincerely,
Appeals Department
Britannia ParkingThanks for your help all, particularly @b789
Total male bovine excrement from the incompetents at Britannia’s back office. They know perfectly well that—by their own admission—the NtK is
not PoFA-compliant. Without the driver’s identity, a POPLA appeal would be unwinnable for them and they know it.
This little gem from them is rubbish:
“This Parking Charge is not POFA compliant, however, payment can still be sought under the old ‘implied-contract-with-the-driver’ rules used prior to POFA.
Under Contract Law there is a probability that the Keeper was the Driver if the Keeper does not nominate anyone else.”
A classic example of intellectual malnourishment by whoever authored it. Pre-PoFA “implied contract” doesn’t let an operator pursue the
keeper; and there is no legal presumption that the keeper was the driver. The burden remains on the claimant to prove who drove. Hand-waving about “probability” is not evidence.
Anyway, they folded and cancelled the PCN. Quite right, too.
If it were me, I'd follow up with this:
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for confirming cancellation of PCN [reference]. Your own correspondence concedes the NtK was not compliant with PoFA. In the absence of admissible evidence of the driver’s identity, you had—and have—no viable claim against the keeper.
Should you ever try to repeat the exercise, I will simply refer you to the answer given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971).
Yours faithfully,
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