Free Traffic Legal Advice

This PPC is IPC affiliated and as such no appeal is likely to be successful. You would have a good chance of success if it ever made it to court which many don't. The forum will help you with your defence should it reach that point.

Is the signage really clear? Does it meet the standards set by the Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice? Is the signage relevant and applicable to alleged contravention?

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For now, appeal only as the Keeper. 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:

Quote

PCN No: [PCN Number]

Vehicle Registration Mark: [VRM]

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. Parking Control Management (UK) Ltd 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. You are urged to save us both a complete waste of time and cancel the PCN.

All credit to b789 for the appeal wording.

As I say though, chances of success at appeal are next to zero. You will need to be prepared to take this all the way if necessary - but I would offer you a higher than 99% chance of never paying a penny if you do.

Yes, the driver should be hoping for a cancellation - but as I say, an IPC company is very unlikely to do so. They will most likely reject and refer to the second stage "Independent Appeals Service" which is not independent at all and to most people a waste of time.

The most obvious PoFA failing is non-compliance with Paragraph 9(2)(a): The notice fails to specify the actual period of parking. It only shows a single timestamp of 16:53. Paragraph 9(2)(a) requires a period of parking, not just a moment in time. There was a court case where this was successfully argued but for the life of me I can't remember which one, someone else might pipe up.

You should also look up the BPA/IPC Private Parking Single Code of Practice (PPSCoP) and what it says about consideration/grace periods and signage.

The driver saw some parking bays and pulled in for less than one minute. Is one minute a reasonable amount of time to consider the parking contract if indeed there was even one available via adequate signage?

Furthermore, how could the driver enter a contract whereby parking is not permitted 'outside of a marked bay' if no parking were permitted at all? And if parking were not permitted at all, how could a parking contract even exist to be entered into?!

No contract was formed. To form a contract by conduct, three key elements must be present:

1. Offer – A clear promise of terms made by one party.
2. Acceptance – Clear agreement to those terms by the other party.
3. Consideration – Something of value exchanged (e.g. money for a service).

In a contract by conduct, these elements must be clear from actions alone — not just from signs or warnings — and the terms must be communicated before the conduct occurs.

The sign says "No Stopping – £100 charge," which is a prohibition, not an offer. You can’t accept something you’re told not to do. Since there’s no offer, no contract can be formed, even by conduct. Stopping briefly to let someone out isn’t accepting terms—it’s ignoring a warning. Without offer, acceptance, and consideration, there’s no contract.

As the Notice to Keeper (NtK) states the reason as "parked outside the confines of a marked bay," then there must be signs clearly displaying that specific term and any associated charge. However, you have not shown us evidence of any such sign. I suspect that there are other terms and conditions of parking signs and you would need to show us what those actually say and where they were in relation to the route you took through the private land.

In any case though the vehicle was not parked. The driver simply stopped briefly to let a passenger out. As confirmed in Jopson v Homeguard (2016) [B9GF0A9E], a short stop for dropping off passengers is not “parking”, and does not breach parking terms.

Additionally, as already mentioned, the NtK fails to comply with PoFA 2012, Schedule 4, Paragraph 9(2)(a) because it does not specify a period of parking—only a single timestamp (16:53) and a vague reference to a period "immediately following" that time.

As confirmed in Brennan v ParkingEye (2023) [H6DP632H], PoFA requires a clearly stated period, not just an instant or assumption. Without a valid period of parking, the Keeper cannot be held liable under PoFA.

So, this is the most likely scenario if you follow our advice... You can submit the initial appeal to PCM, but it will be rejected, regardless of the merits. Since this operator is with the IPC, a secondary appeal to the IAS is pointless—it lacks independence and rarely upholds appeals.

Next, you, as the Keeper, will receive a series of threatening but powerless debt recovery letters, which can be safely ignored. Eventually, PCM will likely instruct an incompetent bulk litigator to send a Letter of Claim (LoC), followed by an N1SDT Claim Form from the Civil National Business Centre (CNBC).

If defended using our recommended template, the claim has a greater than 99% chance of being struck out or discontinued, based on extensive experience dealing with these rogue, unregulated private parking companies.

You’re confusing “grace period” with “consideration period”. If there’s contractual terms and conditions, there must be a minimum “consideration” period for the driver to be able to “consider” those terms and conditions before deciding to accept them or not.

A “grace period” only applies where parking is permitted.