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I have been advised to come here from reddit.

To start with, I am 100% to blame for this. I am looking if there is anything I can do.

Two months ago I received a letter from NPC (national parking control) for leaving with out paying in a car park near town (I had no clue that there were parking restrictions in that area so I used to park there often). The first letter i received said I need to pay £100 pounds. Me being new in this country, new driver and not having much knowledge about parking and stuff, I ignored it.

The following days I kept receiving letters from NPC. In total I received five letters from them. I thought all the letters were for the same incident and they were just putting pressure on me to pay the £100. So I didn’t check the letter much and put them aside (stupid mistake I know).

Long story short I decided to pay the £100 so I went to the NPC website, entered my reference number from the first letter I received, and paid the £100 amount. All done.

Few days later I received a letter from another firm called DCBL.The letter says I need to pay £170 debt for unpaid parking charge. I phoned them straight away and told them that I have already paid the £100 fine to NCP so I don’t need to pay them. They asked me to email them the receipt and I did.
They kept sending me the same letter the following days but i ignored all thinking its same thing happening again. They sent me four in total.

It turns out to be those five letters at the start were from different incidents. As I paid one to NCP, the rest 4 were transferred to DCBL.
Now DCBL are asking me to pay £170 for each of the 4. That’s like £680 in total. Plus the £100 I already paid becomes £780. I phoned NCP and they said they don’t have anything to do it with it now and I have to deal with DCBL.

DCBL are threatening to take me to court if i don’t pay them. I am student doing small part time jobs to make a living. I am not capable of paying that amount of money.

What can I do? Thank you.

Hi. Thank you. I will do as you said. about the last question, I did some researches and I found out that the ANPR camera was newly installed few months ago. There’s also a petition going on to abondon it. I have seen on the comments of the petition that there are many people affected by it.

If you didn't know it had changed to a new regime, then they have obviously failed to comply with section 3.4 of the Single Code of Practice (SCoP):

3.4. Material changes – notices

Where there is any material change to any pre-existing terms and conditions that would not be immediately apparent to a driver entering controlled land that is or has been open for public parking, the parking operator must place additional (temporary) notices at the site entrance for a period of not less than 4 months from the date of the change making it clear that new terms and conditions/charges apply, such that regular visitors who might be familiar with the old terms do not inadvertently incur parking charges.

NOTE: Examples of material changes can include introduction of parking enforcement where none has previously applied, introduction of time-limited free parking, or reductions in the time limit within which free parking is available. Given the need to avoid confusion and clutter at entrances the test is whether the fact that a change has been made is clearly signalled to drivers on entering the land and the nature of the change is clearly displayed thereafter – it may also be necessary to install repeater notices depending on the scale of the premises