Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi all! Bit annoyed right now as we’ve just had a PCN from Initial Parking per the title. So there actually is a ticket and the driver distinctly remembers leaving within the time but they’re alleging the driver left 20 minutes or so after. Now they have photos of the car entering and leaving however the photos have no timestamps, instead the timestamps are external captions on the letter.

Would this be worth appealing? We’d really this rather didn’t go to court as I presume it’d be in Wales and really it’s the driver’s word against their’s. Any thoughts on what we should do?

Many thanks!

Edit: just found this interesting thread covering more or less the exact same thing as the driver.

Quote from: ZimOfBritannia on October 26, 2025, 11:18:31 pm

I’d really this rather didn’t go to court as I presume it’d be in Wales

Any court case would be held in your local county court.

We cannot advise on a notice we have not seen - please read the following thread carefully and provide as much of the information it asks for as you are able to: READ THIS FIRST - Private Parking Charges Forum guide

Hi thanks for the response

Ah okay thank you! Makes me feel better about fighting it then admittedly. Did a bit more looking into this and it seems unlikely Initial would take it to court but we’ll see.

I’m not able to provide a full photo of the document at the moment as I’m at work (not to mention my sister ripped it up in anger so I’ll have to piece it together again) but from what I remember seeing they’ve:
- invited me to either pay or nominate the driver but I don’t think they specifically referred to me as the keeper.
- they don’t actually specify what the offence was, just that I either didn’t buy a ticket or overstayed.
- they’ve included evidence of my car entering and leaving but with no synchronised timestamps and it doesn’t actually show me parked.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to get photos of the signage as I’m back on the other side of the country now but they looked pretty unchanged since I went there some years ago, predating that other thread so I can’t imagine they’re any better. That being said I don’t think there were any issues with the signage?

Actually one question if you (or anyone) can, I’ve seen the default appeal on the MSE forums, I assume I just send that over as it is or should I mention the lack of actual timestamps?

Many thanks

Personally, I'm not a fan of the MSE default appeal. In my view it doesn't actually fulfil the purpose of an appeal, which should be to set out the reasons why no money is owed.

It's very difficult to offer accurate advice without sight of the notice.

Images as promised! Apologies for the quality, but taped it up as best I could. If anyone wants it, I can write up a transcript of the document?

Also just realising it does say notice tk the keeper at the top. If anyone needs it I can take closeup photos too.

This is a busy forum run entirely by volunteers, and you showed us the PCN less than 24 hours ago, please have some patience.

Asking if anyone has any "real advice" because you haven't yet received a response yet is hardly likely to encourage us to offer you free help.

From a look the notice looks mostly PoFA compliant (nothing that Initial or POPLA would go for). I'm not sure how often Initial bother taking cases as far as court, but one of your options is to challenge it as far as that, and seek to exploit any procedural issues that emerge with their handling of the case (there is of course an element of risk involved with this approach).

If you haven't already, your starting point should certainly be to contact the church and see if they can intervene.