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Hi all,
I have received, as registered keeper, the Penalty Notice below from Apcoa. I was not the driver at the time.
Can I just appeal on the basis that I was not the driver and I am not therefore liable?
many thanks
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APCOA is “offering” you, the registered keeper and “presumed owner” a £100 bribe to prevent it taking you to court for breaching railway by-laws.
The truth is that it never instigates the prosecution because it gets no money from it, it’s only something that costs them money.
So don’t rush, string them along by all means, but delay as much as possible because after 6 months their threat is totally de-fanged anyway.
In the meantime I suggest you use the forum’s search function for APCOA if you haven’t done so already. -
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It is a fake Penalty Notice. You should report APCOA to Action Fraud. Real Penalty Notices can ONLY be addressed through statutory enforcement mechanisms.
As stated above, what you have received is a civil contractual offer for APCOA not to prosecute you in the magistrates court for a criminal matter. There is no way that a criminal matter and a civil matter can be conflated.
As it is a civil contractual offer from APCOA, they have acted unlawfully by using the language in their fake Penalty Notice with threats of criminal prosecution.
The normal way that these used to easily be dealt with was by appealing only as the Keeper. Because the location of the alleged contravention is not relevant land for the purposes of PoFA, they cannot hold the Keeper liable. Only the unknown (to APCOA) driver can be liable.
As the Keeper and the driver are separate legal entities and there is no legal obligation on the known Keeper to identify the unknown driver to an unregulated private parking company, the burden of proof that the Keeper was also the driver is on APCOA. However, they are not allowed to infer or presume that the Keeper was also the driver and the only way they could know the identity of the driver is if the Keeper blabs it to them, inadvertently or otherwise.
So, as long as the notice is appealed as the Keeper and the Keeper only refers to the driver in the third person, they have nowhere to go with this.
If it were a real Penalty Notice, it would time out anyway after 6 months. However, even if you did nothing and ignored all the reminders and debt collector letters, nothing would ever happen. APCOA cannot litigate an alleged Penalty Notice in the civil (county court) and they cannot prosecute it in the magistrates court because they are not the authority that applies the byelaws and, even if they were able to and they won, they wouldn't see a penny as any penalty goes into the public purse.
For now you have a few choices:
1. Appeal, gets rejected, appeal to POPLA, may or more likely will, will not be accepted, go through the months of useless debt collector letters and it eventually stops.
2. Same as #1 above but just leave out the appeals. Same result.
3. Confront APCOA about their fake Penalty Notice and also report the to Action Fraud.
What do you prefer to do? At the end of the day, no one receiving advice from us here pays a penny to APCOA.
They rely on you being low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree to pay into the scam out of ignorance and fear.
Just in case you prefer option #1, here is the wording of the appeal you should use:QuoteI am the registered keeper. APCOA has issued what purports to be a Penalty Notice, but it is impossible for this to be a real statutory penalty. This is a fake penalty and amounts to an unlawful attempt to mislead the recipient into believing that a private company has powers it does not possess. The matter will be reported to Action Fraud for misrepresentation and potential fraudulent demand.
As APCOA will be well aware, Penalty Notices under Railway Byelaws can only be enforced through statutory mechanisms, specifically by laying information before a magistrates’ court. They cannot be enforced through private debt collection or county court action, nor can a private parking company attempt to extract payment by conflating a civil contractual offer with a statutory penalty under criminal law.
If the landowner (Network Rail or the Train Operating Company) intended to enforce Railway Byelaws, that would be within their statutory remit, but that is not what APCOA is doing here. Instead, APCOA has issued a demand for payment designed purely for its own commercial gain while fraudulently misleading the recipient into believing they are liable for a statutory penalty. This is not only a serious misrepresentation of authority, but also an abuse of process.
The registered keeper cannot be presumed or inferred to have been the driver, nor pursued under a fabricated interpretation of agency law. There is no lawful basis for this demand, and APCOA is urged to cancel it immediately. Otherwise, I will escalate this complaint to the relevant authorities, including the British Parking Association, Trading Standards, and Action Fraud. -
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Many thanks! I will appeal on that basis.
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Hi all,
My appeal was ignored so I didn't get an option to appeal to POPLA. I have now received a demand for payment from Debt Recovery Plus. Do I ignore these or do I have to reply?
Letter posted below
many thanks
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Ignore
Instead follow up on your last sentence in your appeal. -
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Send the following formal complaint to APCOA:Quote
Subject: Formal Complaint – Fake Penalty Notice GTO0323254A – Criminal Misrepresentation and Extortion
To: APCOA Parking (UK) Ltd
Date: [Insert today's date]
Dear Sir/Madam,
Re: Penalty Notice GTO0323254A – GOVIA THAMESLINK, DORKING STATION (ANPR)
Vehicle Registration: [Insert VRM]
DRP Reference: 14626748
This is a formal complaint regarding your recent conduct and that of your appointed agent, Debt Recovery Plus (DRP), concerning the above matter.
On 12th February 2025, I submitted a detailed appeal as the registered keeper, clearly demonstrating that the document you issued—purporting to be a “Penalty Notice” under Railway Byelaw 14(4)(i)—is a fake penalty. That is to say, it mimics the appearance of a statutory fine but is instead being enforced via unlawful civil channels for your commercial gain, not by way of prosecution under statutory process by a competent authority.
This is not a genuine penalty issued or enforceable under the relevant provisions of the Transport Act 2000 or Railways Act 2005, which require the matter to be laid before a Magistrates’ Court by a prosecuting authority. You are a private company with no such prosecutorial powers, and yet you continue to present these documents as statutory penalties, thereby knowingly misrepresenting your authority and misleading the recipient.
Your subsequent referral of the matter to Debt Recovery Plus, a powerless private debt collector, confirms your intention to extract payment outside of any lawful framework, relying on intimidation, coercion, and misrepresentation.
Let me make this clear:• This is a criminal act.
• It constitutes fraud by false representation, contrary to section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006.
• It also meets the criteria for fraud by abuse of position, and fraud by failing to disclose information (sections 3 and 4).
• You are falsely representing that the recipient is liable for a statutory penalty, when in fact no such liability can arise without due process through the criminal courts.
Your use of DRP as an agent only worsens your position. I regard both APCOA and DRP as active participants in this fraudulent scheme, and both will be named and reported to the police for criminal investigation. This is nothing less than extortion under the guise of enforcement, and it will not go unchallenged.
For the avoidance of doubt, I will not engage with DRP under any circumstances. They are a legally irrelevant third party, incapable of enforcing a statutory penalty. Their threats will be retained as evidence for the police complaint.
Should APCOA fail to respond to this formal complaint and confirm cancellation of this fake penalty within 14 days, I will escalate the matter to:• The British Parking Association, for breach of its Code of Practice and your misuse of debt recovery services in the context of byelaw matters; and
• The DVLA, with a request that your access to registered keeper data be suspended or permanently revoked, due to your abuse of that data in pursuit of unlawful demands.
This is your final opportunity to bring this matter to an end before further regulatory and criminal complaints are lodged. I expect immediate written confirmation of cancellation.
Yours faithfully,
[Your Full Name]
[Your Address]
[Your Email Address]
[Optional: Contact Number] -
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Update - I was going to ignore the debt recovery letters as advised. But yesterday I received a letter from APCOA refusing my appeal, giving me a POPLA code for a further appeal and offering me the £60 payment option. Which is odd considering I have now had 2 debt recovery letters.
Should I appeal to POPLA? Or just keep ignoring!
Letter below.
Many thanks for your help.
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Did you send the formal complaint as advised?
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In the meantime, you can send this, together with a copy of the DRP letter you received to POPLA:Quote
POPLA Verification Code: [insert code]
Penalty Notice Reference: [insert reference]
Registered Keeper: [insert name if appropriate]
This is a formal appeal against a so-called “Penalty Notice” issued by APCOA Parking. However, it must be made absolutely clear from the outset that this is not a valid Parking Charge Notice (PCN) and not a legitimate Penalty Notice (PN). It is neither.
What has been issued is a deliberately fabricated hybrid document, falsely styled to resemble a statutory enforcement notice. It is designed to deceive, with language and formatting mimicking criminal penalty processes despite carrying no lawful authority whatsoever. It is the product of calculated misrepresentation.
APCOA’s conduct amounts to fraud by false representation, contrary to section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006, and may also engage the offence of blackmail, under section 21 of the Theft Act 1968, by threatening financial harm unless payment is made. This is not a civil contractual dispute. It is a serious and ongoing criminal matter.
Furthermore, APCOA escalated the matter to a third-party debt recovery agent—Debt Recovery Plus Ltd—before the appeal had been concluded. The debt recovery letter is dated 28/02/2025, while the appeal rejection from APCOA is dated 31/03/2025. This chronology clearly shows that the matter was escalated to debt recovery while the appeal was still under consideration, which is a direct breach of Section 10.1 of the Private Parking Single Code of Practice (PPSCoP). That section states clearly that debt recovery must not be initiated until the appeals process has concluded. This also puts APCOA in breach of its KADOE contract with the DVLA, as the Keeper's data has been misused to support unlawful processing.
Additionally, the Keeper was not the driver, and since the land in question is subject to statutory control (railway land), PoFA 2012 does not apply. Therefore, no liability can be transferred to the Keeper.
It is important to reiterate that this is not a generic scam. It is a deliberate and unlawful act by a well-known company in the parking industry. A document falsely labelled as a Penalty Notice, containing legalistic threats and a demand for payment, was issued without statutory authority. This is a textbook example of fraud by false representation, and potentially blackmail, due to the misuse of process and threatening tone of correspondence issued with no lawful basis.
Should POPLA proceed to assess this appeal, it must be understood that it would be acting entirely outside its lawful remit, which is confined to the assessment of civil Parking Charge Notices issued under contract law. POPLA has no legal authority to adjudicate on a matter that concerns criminal conduct or the misuse of a fraudulent legal instrument.
While POPLA does have the authority to instruct the operator to cancel the charge—and it is submitted that you should do so without delay—this in itself will not prevent the appellant from pursuing the matter as a criminal breach of the Fraud Act 2006. Cancellation does not erase the fact that a fraudulent document was issued with intent to mislead, nor does it absolve any party who, once aware of the fraud, chooses to engage with it as though it were a legitimate civil matter.
POPLA has now been placed on notice that the charge is not a lawful Parking Charge Notice under contract law, nor a statutory Penalty Notice under any applicable legislation. If POPLA proceeds to assess this case or purports to validate or legitimise the charge in any way—despite knowing it to be fraudulent and beyond POPLA’s jurisdiction—then it risks becoming complicit in the offence, either by aiding and abetting, or through reckless indifference to the legal status of the charge.
Even if POPLA now instructs the operator to cancel the charge, its involvement up to this point may still be viewed as complicity by association, particularly if it continues to process similar fraudulent charges in future. That position will be brought to the attention of the authorities, and the appellant reserves the right to pursue the matter further on grounds of complicity in fraud and unlawful processing of personal data.
Yours faithfully,
[Your name] -
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Many thanks as always! I have appealed to POPLA.
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Another update!
I appealed to POPLA and received a letter back asking me to use an enclosed appeals form either by post or online. But to reply by April 27th. I decided to appeal online and started this today. I entered the verification code and received a message that the code was no longer valid.
This is odd as I have not exceeded the 28 days from the date of the APCOA rejection letter which was March 31st.
So I guess that now I have to write to POPLA and APCOA with a complaint about the appeals process.
Is there any particular provision of the Parking Code I can use?
Many thanks
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Sorry forgot to upload screenshot
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But the POPLA appeal has already been submitted!
When you submitted the original POPLA appeal, did you receive any confirmation that it had been received and would be processed blah, blah, blah?
DO NOT submit a further appeal. A POPLA code is valid for 33 days. It may say that it is valid for 28 days, but they allow 5 days for service of the appeal rejection. So, if the appeal rejection date is 31st March, the code would be valid until 3rd May.
Please be VERY clear... Who or which entity has sent you this "letter back asking me to use an enclosed appeals form either by post or online. But to reply by April 27th."
Is it from APCOA or POPLA?? You must make yourself clear and understood for heavens sake!!! Show it to us!!!!
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Apologies! Here is the letter I received in response to my appeal
The form is 10 double sided pages.
I have received nothing else from POPLA or APCOA.
Many thanks -