Free Traffic Legal Advice

My first dealing with these scammers..

Recieved a a parking charge through the post showing 2 photos, one going in at 11.41 and another leaving at 14.00. I paid for 2 hours parking (no longer have the ticket to prove this). I had my 2 young kids with me and it takes time to get them out the car, get a ticket, go back to car and sort them out etc.

They clocked me going into the car park before I even bought the ticket, so started the arrival time before the ticket time.

Getting back to the car within the 2 hours I paid for, kids needed to use the potty and getting them sorted again takes time.

Basically they're saying I have overstayed by 19 minutes when in fact its more like 10 minutes taking into account they clocked me arriving before I was able to get a ticket from the machine.

Please advise where I stand with this? I have appealled but would like to know if I should refuse to pay/ignore contact or just pay up and forget about it?

How do these private parking companies get away with it!

Whilst your mitigating circumstances are understandable, unfortunately you are not dealing with anyone who has an ounce of care about that. The PPSCoP allows for an additional minimum of 10 minutes "grace period" and you have exceeded that  by 9 minutes.

There is a minimum 5 minute "consideration" period for you to park, find a sign, read it and decide whether you agree to the terms and conditions and leave, but once you have remained longer than that, you are deemed to have accepted those terms and the consideration period is not extra time that can be added to the grace period.

So, technically, the driver has breached the contractual terms of parking. However, you are dealing with (not so) Smart Parking. There is every likelyhood that their Notice to Keeper (NtK) is not fully compliant with ALL the requirements of PoFA and so cannot transfer liability from the unknown (to them) driver to the known Keeper.

Unfortunately, the way you have described the situations you have made it very obvious that you, the person that received the NtK, the known Keeper, was also the unknown Keeper, because you have blabbed it, albeit unintentionally, because, as the Keeper, you have not referred to the driver in the third person.

There is no legal obligation on the Keeper to identify the driver to an unregulated private parking company. If the NtK is not fully compliant with PoFA, then they cannot hold the Keeper liable. If they don't know who the driver is, then they have nowhere to go with this.

There is also a high likelihood that (not so) Smart Parking do not have a valid agreement flowing from the landowner thugs permits them to operate and issue PCNs at the location.

So, until you show us the NtK with only your personal details and the PCN number redacted, but leaving ALL dates and times visible, there is not much more we can advise as the moment/ Suffice it to say, if you do follow the advice, you won't be paying a penny to (not so) Smart Parking.

Attached parking notice

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Typical "golden ticket" from (not so) Smart Parking. The NtK has not been served within the relevant period and therefore they are unable to transfer liability from the unknown driver to the known Keeper.

Easy one to deal with… as long as the unknown drivers identity is not revealed. 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. Smart 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. Smart have no hope at POPLA, so you are urged to save us both a complete waste of time and cancel the PCN.

Come back when you receive the appeal rejection with the POPLA code.

What a total waste of a "golden ticket" because you rushed in with a totally useless appeal. I don't know why we bother sometimes!!

There was no reason to go and blab the drives identity with "I did this and that" instead of "the driver did this and that". A classic example of 'where fools rush in...".

You haven't followed the advice so you may as well just pay the mugs discount rate when you didn't have to pay a penny.

The appeal was sent yesterday, before I discovered this site unfortunately.