Free Traffic Legal Advice

Your lease company have acted wrongly here. The Notice to Keeper (NtK) clearly states:


Instead of following that process, they sent a Letter of Authorisation (LoA). That is not what PoFA requires, and if the operator refuses to accept it, liability remains with the lease company which means they may end up paying it and charging it back to you.

They have also wrongly referred to this as a "Penalty" charge notice. It is nothing of the sort. A penalty can only arise from a statutory authority. This is a civil matter, and the notice is merely a speculative invoice alleging a breach of contract by the driver, issued by an unregulated private parking company.

You should instruct your lease company to transfer liability properly, in accordance with the NtK and PoFA. Once they have provided the operator with the hirer’s details, a copy of the hire agreement, and the statement of liability, the lease company are absolved of any liability. The operator must then serve a Notice to Hirer (NtH) in your name.

When you receive the NtH, you should appeal only as the Hirer. Operators rarely comply fully with PoFA in hire situations, meaning liability cannot pass to the hirer. Only the driver could then be liable, and the operator has no evidence of who that was unless the Hirer discloses it, inadvertently or otherwise.

Once you receive an NtH in your name, use the following as your appeal. No need to embellish or remove anything from it:

I am the Hirer of the vehicle and I dispute your 'parking charge'. I deny any liability or contractual agreement and I will be making a complaint about your predatory conduct to your client landowner.

As your Notice to Hirer (NtH) does not fully comply with ALL the requirements of PoFA 2012, you are unable to hold the Hirer of the vehicle liable for the charge. Partial or even substantial compliance is not sufficient. There will be no admission as to who was driving and no inference or assumptions can be drawn. Bank Park has relied on contract law allegations of breach against the driver only.

The Hirer cannot be presumed or inferred to have been the driver, nor pursued under some twisted interpretation of the law of agency. Your NtH can only hold the driver liable. Bank Park have no hope should you be so stupid as to try and litigate, so you are urged to save us both a complete waste of time and cancel the PCN.

DO NOT try to steal to an unregulated private parking firm of ex-clampers. Even if you could get through you'd have no record of anything that is said.

You will not miss any appeal deadline because you CANNOT appeal until you receive an NtH in your name. You are NOT the Keeper.

If your moronic lease company have transferred the liability correctly, the there is no longer any liability on them and the operator cannot go back to them again. All they can do is issue an NtH to you and you can then appeal and will tell you exactly what to put in that appeal.

SO what if it takes a coupe of weeks for them to send the NtH? You will have 28 days from receipt of the NtH to appeal it.

I suggest you respond to the lease company with the following:

Subject: Your PCN template misstates the law – urgent correction required

Dear [Lease Company],

Your wording below from the letter your recently sent me is incorrect and misleading:

“The changes mean that [Stellantis Financial Services UK Ltd] as the registered keeper can be held liable for these charges if you take no action.

In the event we receive a second notification from a Private Parking Operator for the same offence, we will pay the outstanding amount and recharge this amount to you….”

This is wrong as this is not an “offence”, fine or penalty. A Parking Charge Notice from an unregulated private operator is a civil contractual claim. The sender is not an authority, and no criminal or statutory “offence”, “fine” or “penalty” arises.

Keeper liability is conditional—and the duty is yours, not the hirer’s. Under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4, a registered keeper can only be pursued if strict conditions are met and the keeper fails to transfer liability. For hire vehicles, paragraphs 13–14 set out your clear route to avoid keeper liability: within the statutory period you must provide the operator with:

(a) a statement that the vehicle was hired,
(b) a copy of the hire agreement and the prescribed statement of liability, and
(c) the hirer’s name and serviceable address.

Once you do this, liability transfers and the operator must pursue the hirer with a Notice to Hirer. Your phrase “if you take no action” wrongly dumps your statutory duty onto the hirer. There is no such thing as a “second notification” trigger in PoFA. “Second notification” is your internal process, not a legal milestone.

If you receive further letters, it usually means you have not transferred liability correctly or on time. The cure is to complete the PoFA paras 13–14 transfer, not to pay.

Paying and recharging is improper in a disputed, private civil claim. Unless your contract expressly and lawfully permits it (and even then, it must be fair and transparent), choosing to voluntarily pay a non-statutory invoice and then recharge the hirer—plus an admin fee—is unreasonable. The correct step is to name the hirer and send the prescribed documents so the operator re-issues the notice properly. Anything else risks a breach of contract and an unfair term issue.

Do not pay the PCN. Within the statutory period, provide the operator with the hirer’s full name and serviceable address and the prescribed hire documents (PoFA Sch.4 paras 13–14). Confirm to the hirer in writing that liability has been transferred and that no payment or recharge will be made.

You should amend your template so it does not refer to “authority”, “offence”, “fine” or “penalty” in relation to private parking invoices. As a simple accuracy check, please count how many times those words appear in the operator’s notice itself. For every genuine occurrence, the hirer will gladly send you £100. For every occurrence that appears only in your letter, please remove it from your templates and confirm you have corrected your processes.

Yours faithfully,

[Name]
[Address]
[Agreement/Reg No.]

As per Reply #1.

Appeal reason: other

For relationship to vehicle I'd just choose registered keeper, your appeal makes clear that you are not, and it is not your problem their form doesn't contain an option for hirer.

Send a formal complaint as follows and CC yourself:

Subject: Formal Complaint – No Appeal Decision, PPSCoP Breach & KADOE Misuse – PCN [ref]

Dear Bank Park Management Ltd,

This is a formal complaint about your handling of PCN [ref].

Background & key breach

• I lodged an appeal against your Notice to Hirer on 8 September 2025 (acknowledged by you the same day).
• As of 30 October 2025 (52 days later) you have not issued any appeal decision.
• Instead, you sent a “Final Reminder” dated 23 October 2025.

Issuing a payment demand while an appeal is outstanding and failing to provide a timely, reasoned decision with an independent appeal route breaches the Private Parking Single Code of Practice (PPSCoP) requirement to pause enforcement during an appeal and to decide the appeal within a reasonable timescale. Your conduct is procedurally unfair and non-compliant.

Further non-compliance (non-exhaustive)

1. Misuse of DVLA data / KADOE breach – Using DVLA keeper/hirer data to pursue payment via a reminder while an appeal is live is outside permitted use. Compliance with the PPSCoP is a condition of DVLA KADOE access. Your breach of the Code therefore constitutes a KADOE breach.
2. Hire-vehicle PoFA defects (no hirer liability) – Your Notice to Hirer did not enclose the copy hire agreement and the prescribed statement of liability required by PoFA 2012, Sch.4 paras 13–14. In the absence of strict compliance, no liability transfers to the hirer.
3. Improper driver assumption – Your correspondence presumes or infers I was the driver. I have not identified the driver and am under no legal obligation to do so to an unregulated parking firm.
4. Threat of unrecoverable add-ons – The threatened £70 “debt recovery” is not recoverable.

Remedies required (within 7 days of receipt)

• Cancel the PCN; or
• Issue a formal rejection (not a reminder) with the independent appeal code and reset all payment/appeal deadlines from the date of that decision; and
• Confirm the case is on hold and that no data will be shared with third parties pending outcome.

Restriction of processing (effective immediately)
Under UK GDPR Article 18, restrict processing for this PCN while this complaint and the appeal remain unresolved. Do not pass my data to any third party (including debt collectors). Confirm in writing that processing is restricted.

Notice of escalation
If you fail to comply within 7 days, I will submit a formal complaint to the DVLA for KADOE misuse (breach of PPSCoP obligations linked to data access) and seek sanctions against your access. I also reserve the right to complain to the ICO for unlawful processing and to pursue costs arising from your non-compliance.

Treat this as a complaint under your published complaints procedure and respond in full within your stated timeframe.

Yours faithfully,

[Name]
[Postal address]
[Email]
[PCN reference]

Why would you get concerned just because they send you a reminder/threat when they have absolutely no power to do anything. If they want to try and get you to pay, they must file a county court claim and prove their case. They don't have one.

They are relying on you being low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree who can be intimidated into paying out of ignorance and fear.

Under the Private Parking Single Code of Practice (PPSCoP) Version 1.1 (17 February 2025), the section governing complaints handling is Section 11.3 — Complaints. It states that:

11.3 A complaint must be acknowledged by the parking operator within 14 days of its receipt unless exceptional circumstances apply, in which case the complainant must be kept informed by the operator.

11.4 A full response to a complaint must be provided by the parking operator within 28 days of its receipt unless exceptional circumstances apply, in which case the complainant must be kept informed by the operator.

These timelines apply to all formal complaints, including those treated as appeals under clause 11.2, which requires any complaint relating to a parking charge to be handled as an appeal if the issues raised could affect the validity of that charge.

Have they complied with this deadlines? If not, submit a formal complaint to the BPA.

The PPSCoP says a complaint must be acknowledged within 14 days (you got an auto-ack on 3 Nov, so that’s covered) and a full response within 28 days of receipt — unless there are exceptional circumstances, in which case they must keep you informed.

Because your complaint relates to a PCN, they must also treat it as an appeal for timescales and either issue a decision within 28 days or, if they can’t, acknowledge and confirm the timeframe for concluding it.

So, with receipt on 3 November 2025, the latest compliant deadline for their full complaint response is Monday 1 December 2025, and you should already have either a decision on the appeal or a written timeline for it.