3. Civil Enforcement PCN only just received, less than week to appeal
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Civil Enforcement PCN only just received, less than week to appeal
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Hi there, any advice regarding likelihood of appeal success please.


The keeper received this at the weekend, the 19th May. Has not received anything previously despite it insinuating otherwise (but obviously the keeper won't be able to 'evidence' this is the first letter received).


States 'Failed to obtain a permit in accordance with the notified terms". The Driver arrived in the car park to visit a therapist's salon within the premises & was a legitimate paying customer (& has messages between them & the therapist to confirm they could attend outside of normal salon hours plus confirmation of paying the therapist).


On arrival the driver saw the parking signs & asked the therapist where to input the vehicle details, The therapist showed them the tablet with the parking app which was right next to her salon door & as she was opening up the salon, the driver entered the vehicle details.


The driver is 100% sure that they entered the correct details as it is a very simple, personalised plate, an easy VRM to enter &, as they utilise this vehicle regularly at other car parks whereby they have to enter the VRM into tablets, they are sure the app worked correctly.


The driver contacted the therapist immediately on receipt of the PCN & she has said she will ask the Landlord to contact CE Ltd to ask to revoke, but the driver has not heard from her since (they will chase).


I personally have had a PCN before from a private company but chose to ignore all these PCN's as they are simply just 'bills' & lo & behold they eventually gave up with all their stupid threats.
The driver in this case is not 100% confident in doing this & would like some advice as to whether they can ignore or if they should apeal.


As this is the first PCN letter that has been received, they only have until 23rd May to appeal.


If they do appeal is there any specific wording they need to use?

TO NOTE: it's free parking as long as you are a legitimate customer of one of the businesses within the property, which the driver was!

One thing also I thought, would it be an idea for the keeper to make SAR/FOI request to the company requesting all data that was input into their parking app for that specific location between the times the driver was at the location? They were the only ones in the location at the time as the business was shut (just being used by the therapist for the driver) so in theory, if the driver did put a wrong digit in,  from the SAR request the keeper can then ask the company to rectify their 'personal' data immediately. Then the PCN would have to be revoked?! Just a thought?! TIA

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« Last Edit: May 20, 2025, 09:21:24 pm by Elprincesso »
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Re: Civil Enforcement PCN only just received, less than week to appeal
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Quote from: Elprincesso on May 20, 2025, 09:14:55 pm
I personally have had a PCN before from a private company but chose to ignore all these PCN's as they are simply just 'bills' & lo & behold they eventually gave up with all their stupid threats.
You may have been very lucky (assuming all of the relevant parking incidents took place more than 6 years ago - if they were more recent, there is in theory still time for them to go to court)

Quote from: Elprincesso on May 20, 2025, 09:14:55 pm
The driver in this case is not 100% confident in doing this & would like some advice as to whether they can ignore or if they should apeal.
Your friend is right to be wary. Civil Enforcement Ltd issued 33,220 County Court claims in 2023, roughly 91 per day. This doesn't mean he should pay, Civil Enforcement use DCB Legal to handle their court claims, and they nearly always discontinue if defended with our help.

That's a good while off yet though. The first thing he should do is speak to the owners/management of the premises of which the driver was a legitimate user, and ask them to intervene.

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One thing also I thought, would it be an idea for the keeper to make SAR/FOI request to the company requesting all data that was input into their parking app for that specific location between the times the driver was at the location? They were the only ones in the location at the time as the business was shut (just being used by the therapist for the driver) so in theory, if the driver did put a wrong digit in,  from the SAR request the keeper can then ask the company to rectify their 'personal' data immediately. Then the PCN would have to be revoked?! Just a thought?! TIA
This seems like a non-starter. Private business are not subject to Freedom of Information requests (FOI). They are required to respond to Subject Access Requests (SARs), but even if that did yield the requisite information, this is unlikely to help them. Requesting data to be rectified is not a magic wand to cover up human error - Civil Enforcement could just say "the defendant submitted a data rectification request on [date], asking us to change our record of the VRM that the driver input into the system on the date of the parking incident" (assuming they did actually change it at all)
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Re: Civil Enforcement PCN only just received, less than week to appeal
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Thank you for your quick response. Yes, mine was 12 years ago so I think things were very different back then. I have been reading other forums & posts from people that have had the same thing from this company & it appears that they usually just disregard the appeal & reduce the amount to £20. I, as the keeper, will have to put the appeal in now. The therapist has said they will be speaking to the landlord of the property tomorrow so fingerscrossed he may be able to have them remove it (but I won't hold my breath!).
What is annoying is this is apparently not the 1st letter they have sent but this is the 1st I have received (& I have owned the vehicle since September! So there ) thank you again
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Re: Civil Enforcement PCN only just received, less than week to appeal
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It is not your responsibility to prove non-receipt of the initial Notice to Keeper (NtK). You are entitled to put CEL to strict proof that the NtK was actually sent. They should hold a record of this, as required by the PPSCoP Section 8.1.2(e), Note 2, which states:

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NOTE 2: A notice sent by post is to be presumed, unless the contrary is proved, to have been delivered on the second working day after the day on which it is posted; and for this purpose, “working day” means any day other than a Saturday, Sunday or a public holiday in England and Wales. Therefore, parking operators must retain a record of the date of posting of a notice, not simply of that notice having been generated (e.g. the date that any third-party Mail Consolidator actually put it in the postal system).

Similarly, Paragraph 9(6) of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA) states:

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A notice sent by post is to be presumed, unless the contrary is proved, to have been delivered (and so “given” for the purposes of sub-paragraph (4)) on the second working day after the day on which it is posted; and for this purpose “working day” means any day other than a Saturday, Sunday or a public holiday in England and Wales.

Accordingly, if the creditor cannot produce evidence that the notice was actually entered into the postal system (as opposed to merely generated), then that’s a rebuttable presumption of service, and the Keeper is entitled to rebut that presumption by providing credible evidence that it was not received, or by showing that the operator cannot prove it was properly sent.
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