TLDR: I’m struggling with unfair fines from Apcoa and could use advice on how to address this.
Hi everyone,
Context: I’m a season ticket holder at the Three Bridges car park managed by Apcoa. Recently, I received £500 total fine for five parking infractions. The issue? I mistakenly had the wrong car registered on my account.
Here’s what happened: I’d temporarily changed the registered car for a day but forgot to switch it back. Later, I realized that the bookmark I’d been using to manage my vehicle registration was for an expired ticket. Unfortunately, the webpage for expired and active tickets looks identical, apart from a small difference in the URL.
As someone who works in tech, I find this design incredibly unintuitive—it’s easy to see how someone could make the same mistake. It feels unreasonable for them to charge me over what is essentially poor design on their part.
I appealed the fines, explaining the situation, but my appeal was rejected. Instead, they offered a "discounted" penalty of £260 for all five infractions. This is frustrating, especially since I’ve been a paying season ticket holder for nearly a year.
Other concerns with Apcoa:
This isn’t my first negative experience with Apcoa. They have a history of questionable practices, such as:
No guarantee of a parking spot: Even if you pay for parking via their app, they refuse refunds if the car park is full.
No compensation for restricted access: When the railway station closes the car park for rail-replacement buses, season ticket holders still have to pay, with no adjustments for the inconvenience.
I feel their approach is unfair and would appreciate any advice on how to contest these fines further or avoid such issues in the future.
Thank you!
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Have you received "PENALTY" Notices (PN) threatening criminal prosecution under railway bylaws or "PARKING" Charge Notices for alleged breach of contract under civil law?
APCOA are benign in that they do not litigate. However, if they are PCNs (not PNs), and you have appealed already, did you identify yourself as the driver?
Please show us at least one of the notices you received leaving all dates and times visible.
Thank you for your speedy reply. I have received a Penalty Notice, but Apcoa's response to my appeal mentions a PCN notice.
I received 5 separate notices for different dates, but after that they stopped sending me more (I spoke with their customer support, and they mentioned they cannot send more than 5 penalties). I didn't confirm I was the driver at any point in that conversation either.
In my appeal, I merely said that I had a season ticket already. I did not explicitly identify myself as the driver.
Attached both sides of one such notice below. I can send the rest also if that helps.
I have also attached their response to my appeal. They reduced the fee for one infraction to £20, but only reduced the rest to £60, even though all have the same reasoning. I think the £60 is an lawful obligation also, not a discounted rate, even though in their email they present it as a discount.
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Ignore everything. The PNs are fake and simply an attempt to extort money from you using unlawful language threatening criminal prosecution. Personally, I would report APCOA to Action Fraud and would have responded to them advising them to review the answer given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971).
What they actually are, are "offered contracts" that are not legally enforceable as no one is obliged to accept an offered contract. A real PN issued under railway bylaws can only be prosecuted in the magistrates court if the authorised prosecutor issues a Single Justice Procedure Notice (SJPN) stating the actual bylaw breached pm the charge.
However, even if it went to court or you pleaded guilty to the charge, any money paid, including subsequent fines go to the public purse, not the entity prosecuting the charge. APCOA never litigate, even for civil Parking Charge Notices.
They have not even mentioned which subsection of railway bylaw 14 the driver is alleged to have breached. Parking charges were decriminalised back in 1991 and the DfT has already stated that they expect breaches of railway bylaws not to be handled as Cremona matters under railway bylaw 24(1) but as civil matters by way of civil Parking Charge Notices. No one is allowed to use the language used in their PN for a civil matter, hence the unlawfulness of their offered contract.
You can safely ignore all correspondence and subsequent debt collector letters. It will eventually stop. Even if they were able to prosecute, they would have to bring the charge within 6 months of the PN. However, what you have received and fallen for, like the proverbial low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree, is an offered contract to bribe APCOA to not prosecute you (they can't and won't).
Get on with your life and ignore APCOA. Do not enter into any further communication with them. Let them waste their postage until they realise you are no longer "low-hanging fruit" and the move on to more gullible prey.