Free Traffic Legal Advice

The parking operator does not now who the driver is.

They only have the keeper details.

The keeper cannot automatically be assumed to be the driver as in many instances a household has a vehicle which maybe routinely driven by more than one person.

When you enter a private car park, the contract is with the unknown driver and not the keeper.

PoFA allows a private parking company to shift liability from the unknown driver to the known keeper so long as certain criteria is met.

One critical criteria is that the NtK must be served on the keeper within 14 days of the event - if it is not then there can never be any keeper liability under PoFA.

In your case there is a very small time window for the operator to issue a second PCN with an amended contravention (such as 'Not parked in a marked bay') which could be deemed served just inside the 14 day window.

Non PoFA compliant PCNs are easy to defend when there is no keeper liability as the parking company has no one to chase.

I understand - so if I wait until Saturday 31st January before appealing, it will prevent the operator from being able to issue any additional PCNs as they would be outside of the 14 day window to serve a NtK?

The 'bay' is the rectangular bit and nothing else.

Unless there is established case law on this point (in which case: as you were), I fear quite a few county court judges would take quite a lot of convincing that a hatched area immediately around a disabled bay, which exists for the purpose of facilitating disabled access, does not constitute part of the bay.

I'm not saying I disagree with the argument, just that I think quite a lot of judges might.

Although if the only images the parking company has are those already provided, they might not be able to demonstrate much.

The points around the signage are very valid. The convoluted terms notwithstanding, there's that much crammed onto the signage that the key terms are very much not prominent!