Free Traffic Legal Advice

A final reminder is useless for us to advise on. However, suffice it to say, if you receive a county court claim issued by DCB Legal, as long as you defend it with the advice you get here, then you will not be paying penny to ECP.

AS we have no idea of the alleged contravention or the dates, I suggest you try an initial appeal. There is no legal obligation on the known keeper (the recipient of the Notice to Keeper (NtK)) to reveal the identity of the unknown driver and no inference or assumptions can be made.

The NtK is not compliant with all the requirements of PoFA which means that if the unknown driver is not identified, they cannot transfer liability for the charge from the unknown driver to the known keeper.

Use the following as your appeal. No need to embellish or remove anything from it:

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.

In the meantime do a forum search for any of the other multitude of ECP PCNs and read how they are handled and eventually discontinued.

You need to send them a subject access request to get a copy of the original PCN.

If you are appealing to POPLA on the grounds the PCN was not fully compliant with POFA it will most likely fail, this is a delaying tactic on the part of the keeper when no better appeal grounds exist and may only be a valid defence if it ever gets to court but I don't think we've ever seen a case won on that argument.

Were there extenuating circumstances that meant the disabled driver was unable to comply with the car park rules as they were presented, as in did the rules discriminate against a disabled person. Taking too long to get back to the car park normally doesn't count unless there was some form of medical emergency. An example of a valid appeal would be not having a long enough grace period to allow a disabled person to return to their car having paid at a payment machine on exit in a paid car park. If there were grounds, failing to include that in your initial appeal was a mistake, how did the PPC know the driver was disabled, if you didn't tell them how could they make reasonable adjustments (cancel the PCN) if they didn't know. If you are going to use the disabled driver as an appeal issue you will need to be able to clearly explain to the POPLA assessor why the issues encountered were related to the car park management and discriminated against the driver. Having a blue badge on it's own counts for nothing.

As for appealing to POPLA it does show you've engaged with process in good faith if it ever gets to court but it probably won't make much difference. You're not pursuing a court claim, the PPC may decide to issue a court claim against you, the ball is in their court, you are just a passenger in this process until court proceedings start.

It would have been worth contacting Sainsbury's in the first place, they may have just got it cancelled at the mention of disability, nothing stopping you trying that route now.

Hi everyone, and thanks again for your time and efforts,

Although I understand ultimately, a POPLA appeal is unlikely to yield any positive results, I provide my draft appeal which I intend to send through tonight.

I have identified some previous appeals I think are most relevant to my case, and altered their content to better reflect my situation.

Hopefully, it's good to go as is:

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I am the registered keeper of vehicle xxxxxxx and I dispute the above-referenced Parking Charge. The NtK is not compliant with all the requirements of PoFA which means that they cannot transfer liability for the charge to the keeper. I therefore dispute the charge on the following grounds:


1. Non-Compliance with the Protection of Freedoms Act (POFA)
2. No evidence of parking
3. No evidence of landholder authority

1. Non-Compliance with POFA

Schedule 4 paragraph 9(2) is binary (“MUST” means all or nothing) and this NtK omits the mandatory invitation to the keeper to pay under 9(2)(e)(i)

Schedule 4 paragraph 9(2) does not say the notice should include certain things. It says: “The notice must — (a)… (b)… (c)… (d)… (e)… (f)… (g)… (h)… (i)…”. “Must” is compulsory. PoFA 9(2) is a statutory gateway to keeper liability: either every required element is present or the gateway never opens. There is no such thing as “partial” or even “substantial compliance” with 9(2). Like pregnancy, it is binary: a notice is either PoFA-compliant or it is not. If one required limb is missing, the operator cannot use PoFA to pursue the keeper. End of.

Here the missing limb is 9(2)(e)(i). That sub-paragraph requires the NtK to invite the keeper to pay the unpaid parking charges. The law is explicit that the invitation must be directed to “the keeper”. It is not enough to tell “the driver” to pay; it must invite “the keeper” to pay if the creditor wants keeper liability.

What this NtK actually does is talk only to “the driver” when demanding payment, and nowhere invites “the keeper” to pay. The demand section of the NtK is framed in driver terms (e.g. language such as “the driver is required to pay within 28 days” / “payment is due from the driver”), and there is no sentence that invites “the keeper” to pay the unpaid parking charges. The word “keeper” (if used at all) appears only in neutral data/disclosure paragraphs or generic definitions, not in any invitation to pay. That omission is precisely what 9(2)(e)(i) forbids.

For the avoidance of doubt, 9(2)(e) contains two limbs: (i) an invitation to the keeper to pay, and (ii) an invitation to either identify and serve the driver and to pass the notice to the driver. Even setting aside 9(2)(e)(ii), the absence of the 9(2)(e)(i) keeper-payment invitation alone is fatal to PoFA compliance. The statute makes keeper liability contingent on strict satisfaction of every “must” in 9(2). Where a notice invites only “the driver” to pay, it fails 9(2)(e)(i), so it is not a PoFA notice. The operator therefore cannot transfer liability from an unidentified driver to the registered keeper. Only the driver could ever be liable; the driver is not identified. The keeper is not liable in law.

2. No evidence of parking

Having not received a PCN at all, only a Final Notification Letter, EuroCarParks have failed to provide photos of the vehicle, together with time stamps, as evidence of entering and leaving the site on the alleged date of contravention.

I require full unredacted copies of photographs of the vehicle entering and leaving the site which conform to Section 7.3 of the COP. Without these, we only have ECP’s word that an infringement has potentially been committed.

3. No evidence of Landowner authority

The operator is also put to strict proof, by means of contemporaneous and unredacted evidence, of a chain of authority flowing from the landowner of the "relevant land" to the operator. It is not accepted that the operator has adhered to the landowner’s definitions, exemptions, grace period, hours of operation, etc. and any instructions to cancel charges due to complaints nor that both the landowner and operator are in full compliance with planning permission granted against a Traffic Management Plan.

Section 14 of the COP defines the mandatory requirements and I put this operator to strict proof of full compliance. As this operator does not have proprietary interest in the “relevant land” then I require that they produce an unredacted copy of the contract with the landowner, to prove that they have the right to enforce the charge in court in their own name

I therefore respectfully request that this PCN be cancelled.

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Just copy it directly.

I am expecting this POPLA appeal to be successful.

Thanks InterCity125 and jfollows for your comments, I really appreciate your time, and everyone has been very helpful.

A brief update, due to a family health situation requiring my attention, I wasn't able to sit down until 22.55pm on 24th February to get this submitted. Interestingly, as I logged in and was in the process of submission, the website timed out, and lost my progress.

Upon refreshing things, I needed to log in again, and lost the option to submit my comments.

I received an email at 23:00pm on the 24th February, stating as follows:

'We are writing to update you about your appeal.

Your appeal is now ready to be assessed and is currently in a queue waiting to be allocated. We expect to make a decision on your appeal 6-8 weeks from the point that the appeal was first submitted. The next communication that you will receive from us will be the decision on your appeal.'

I find this peculiar given I had 7 days from the date of the original email on the 17th February to add comments. With no cut off time provided, the day surely wasn't over by 23:00.

Anyway, for what it is worth, I have written an email to info@popla.co.uk, stating the above, and asking for them to add the comments by InterCity125 to my appeal. This was sent at 23:50 on the 24th February.

I will update the thread with any responses, or the result of the appeal, whichever may occur first.

Thanks to all again.