Hoping for some advice regarding a rejected PCN appeal with Euro Car Parks.
What happened: on January 13th around 17:00 I got a flat tyre on the perimeter road of Heathrow, and the nearest safest place for me to pull in was an Esso ASDA garage. I tried their tyre air machine, but it wouldn’t hold air. Due to poor phone signal, I went into ASDA and asked the guy behind the counter if I could use their WiFi or if he could look up a number for my AA breakdown cover, to which he said they couldn’t help. I highlighted again that I had broken down, and is there anything I needed to do about the parking, to which the answer was “nothing we can do mate, the parking is managed by someone else. If you get a fine you’ll have to appeal it.” At 19:50 breakdown finally arrived, over 3.5 hours after I called them! My tyre was plugged and I was finally on my way just after 20:00.
Lo and behold ECP sent through a £90 fine as I overstayed the maximum 30 minutes permitted. I appealed this on the grounds of my breakdown and provided the following evidence to ECP:
- AA report to show time I reported the breakdown, time they arrived, breakdown details info etc
- Photo of my car with VRM visible and AA breakdown van attending
- Photo of my flat tyre
- Screenshot of my bank statement showing I tried the air machine, and also bought food from the ASDA.
- In the appeal I also mentioned I spoke to staff at ASDA,m and was not advised about contacting ECP or assisted at all.
Much to my surprise, I heard back from ECP today and they’ve rejected my appeal on the following grounds:
1) The car park is operated by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) – cameras capture an image of vehicles entering and leaving the car park and calculate their length of stay.
2) Parking at the above site is limited to 30 minutes.
3) On entry to private land it is the responsibility of the driver to check for signage and ensure
that your vehicle has been correctly parked.
4) As previously advised, the car park is camera controlled and therefore it is imperative that all
extenuating circumstances are reported at the time of the event i.e. if your vehicle breaks
down.
5) Euro Car Parks have received no report of a broken down vehicle on the day in question and
therefore I am unable to cancel the notice.
6) Your vehicle was parked longer than 30 minutes, therefore the notice was issued correctly
and remains payable.
7) We are in receipt of your correspondence; however, you have not provided any
supporting documentation to substantiate your appeal. All supporting evidence must
be uploaded within 14 days to
www.eurocarparks.com/enquiry. Please note that any supporting evidence uploaded may change the above decision, and therefore if you are submitting the evidence to Euro Car Parks please do not log an appeal directly with
POPLA. If evidence is unavailable or is not received in the next 14 days, the internal
appeal process will conclude, and the PCN will remain payable.
This just seems completely unfair and unreasonable to me! They’ve ignored any mention I made in the appeal about speaking to staff at the time to report the breakdown, and I have no idea what they mean by point 7 - I uploaded the above mentioned evidence as part of the appeal. I’m pretty certain it was all attached, but I have no way to confirm.
Today I went back to the garage and spoke to the manager to discuss the PCN, what happened with staff on the day, and the fact my appeal has been rejected. He said he’ll see what he can do about cancelling the PCN, but he’s not sure if he can as I’ve already appealed (as I was advised by his staff at the time!) I’m now stuck as to whether I wait and see if the manager of the ASDA garage pulls through, or whether I should appeal via POPLA as stated in ECP’s rejection email.
No wonder these parking companies get a bad reputation, how inhumane can you be fining someone who broke down £90 as their car broke down and they waited over 3.5 hours for recovery!
