Free Traffic Legal Advice

Good afternoon.
I have 2 private PCNs, both where I wasn't driving my car, from June 2019 and March 2020.
I am aware of the keeper liability law in Scotland, but it's the prescription and limitation that I am worried about. I know they have 5 years in Scotland to claim this, but the law recently changed with effect from June 2022. How does this affect my defence in respect of using this argument also? Is the 5 years still over? Or do the provisions in the new laws negate this argument?
Thank you.

AS above. There is NO Keeper liability in Scotland yet.

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, which received Royal Assent on 15 November 2019, contains provisions that would allow for the regulation of parking on private land and potentially enable keeper liability similar to Schedule 4 of PoFA. Specifically, Part 6, Chapter 2 of the Act provides a framework for the regulation of private parking, including:


Although the Act sets out the powers to introduce it, the necessary secondary legislation has not been passed, and no implementation date has been confirmed publicly. Discussions about a national Code of Practice and appeals framework in Scotland are ongoing, but there is no live system equivalent to PoFA in operation yet.

So, the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 does pave the way for keeper liability, but until the Scottish Government enacts the relevant regulations under the Act, private parking companies in Scotland cannot rely on statutory keeper liability like they can in England and Wales under PoFA.

This has nothing to do with the statute of limitation. The Parking Charge Notice (PCN), whether a windscreen Notice to Driver (NtD) or a postal Notice to Keeper (NtK) has to have particular wording and have been given within a relevant period to be fully compliant with all the requirements of any Act, at the time it is issued.

No operator is allowed to issue a PCN claiming Keeper liability if they are not allowed to do so. In Scotland, for now, they are not permitted to do so. If the PCN you have received (you've not shown it to us) suggests or mentions any Keeper liability, then they are in breach of the BPA/IPC Private Parking Single Code of Practice (PPSCoP). This would mean that they are in breach of their KADOE contract with the DVLA and are using your DVLA obtained data unlawfully.

So, there can be no retrospective claim against the Keeper should the Keeper liability aspect of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 become active within 5 years of the date of the alleged contravention.

I suspect you may be overthinking this. You can safely ignore anything about this PCN and it will eventually go away.