This will be a protracted exercise but if you follow the advice you will not be paying a penny to the scammers at VCS. Why? Because what you have received is simply an invoice for an alleged breach of contract by the driver.
What contract? Well, there wasn't one because if you look at the signage at the airport, it is not contractual at all. I won't go into depth here but you can do your own research on what three elements are required to be able to form a contract that is entered into by conduct. Suffice it to ay that a prohibitive sign cannot form a contract because there is nothing on offer for consideration.
So, first thing is that there was no contract. VCS are not an authority that can issue fines or penalties. They are a verminous firm of ex-clampers running an unregulated private parking company and have zero authority.
Secondly, they can only hold the driver liable for any charge. They have absolutely no idea who the driver is. They are not allowed to assume or infer that the Keeper must be the driver, even though they have already done so in the Notice to Keeper (NtK). As the location is an airport, it is under statutory control (Byelwas) and therefore is not relevant land for the purposes of PoFA 2012.
They cannot transfer liability for the charge from the
unknown (to them) driver to you, the
known Keeper. They will hug and puff and say they can but they can't. If this were to ever go as far as a claim in court (it won't), they would not have a leg to stand on.
So, this is how it will go if you follow the advice... You make an initial appeal to VCS which they will reject. You ignore the secondary appeal process with the IAS which is a kangaroo court and I refuse to waste any time and effort on appeals to a corrupt and incestuous firm. You will then receive a load of threatening debt recovery letters which you can safely ignore. They can only try and scare the low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree into paying out of ignorance and fear.
Eventually, they will threaten a claim in the county court which you will respond to and in due course the claim will either be struck out or in the very unlikely event it were to ever go all the way to a hearing, you win.
There is no legal obligation on the
known keeper (the recipient of the Notice to Keeper (NtK)) to reveal the identity of the
unknown driver and no inference or assumptions can be made.
PoFA does not apply on non-relevant land, such as at an airport, which means that if the
unknown driver is not identified, they cannot transfer liability for the charge from the
unknown driver to the
known keeper.
For now, you can simply appeal, only as the Keeper, to VCS with the following:
I am the registered keeper. VCS cannot hold a registered keeper liable for any alleged contravention on land that is under statutory control. As a matter of fact and law, VCS will be well aware that they cannot use the PoFA provisions because Leeds/Brdford Airport (LBA) is not 'relevant land'.
If LBA wanted to hold owners or keepers liable under Airport Bylaws, that would be within the landowner's gift and another matter entirely. However, not only is that not pleaded, it is also not legally possible because VCS is not the Airport owner and your 'charge' is not and never attempts to be a penalty. It is created for VCS's own profit (as opposed to a bylaws penalty that goes to the public purse) and VCS has relied on contract law allegations of breach against the driver only.
The registered keeper cannot be presumed or inferred to have been the driver, nor pursued under some twisted interpretation of the law of agency. Your NtK can only hold the driver liable. VCS have no hope should you be so desperate as to initiate litigation, so you are urged to save us both a complete waste of time and cancel the PCN.
