Welcome. If you follow the advice, you won't be paying a penny to ECP. However, the process is long and protracted. The eventual outcome will be a discontinued county court claim but that won't be until some time next year.
For now you will need to appeal to ECP, which will be rejected by them but you will receive a POPLA code for a secondary appeal to POPLA which is unlikely ti be successful either. It may be, but don't hold your breath.
After a POPLA appeal rejection, you will receive debt collector letters which can be safely ignored. They are powerless to do anything except to try and scare the low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree to pay up out of ignorance and lack of knowledge of their rights.
Eventually, you will receive a Letter of Claim from DCB Legal and some time after that an N1SDT Claim form issued through the CNBC. This cantle ignored but with our assistance and advice you will acknowledge service of the claim and will defend it.
In due course, the case will be transferred to your local county court and once a hearing date is set, DCB Legal will discontinue the claim before they have to pay the trial fee. That will be the end of it.
We are very familiar with their modus operandi and can say will 99% confidence that that will be the outcome.
For now, here is the appeal you should submit to ECP, only as the Keeper of the vehicle:
I am the keeper 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 Keeper (NtK) does not fully comply with ALL the requirements of PoFA 2012, you are unable to hold the keeper 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. ECP has relied on contract law allegations of breach against the driver only.
The registered keeper cannot be presumed or inferred to have been the driver, nor pursued under some twisted interpretation of the law of agency. Your NtK can only hold the driver liable. ECP have no hope at POPLA, so you are urged to save us both a complete waste of time and cancel the PCN.
