Free Traffic Legal Advice

Good Morning all,

A friend of mine has a numbered residential parking space allocated in their private apartment block car-park, however when they came to park after work one evening, there was another vehicle parked in their space. My friend then proceeded to park in a visitors parking space until they saw that the other vehicle had moved (they didn’t know who the vehicle belonged to, and I believe she asked her neighbours). When they went to move their car from the visitors parking space, their car had been ticketed… The evidential photos from the PCN clearly show a car parked in their registered bay. The private residential car park does not issue permits for cars, so the ticketing warden would be unable to know that the car parked in my friends bay was incorrectly parked as they don't know which car is registered to which apartment… They have an app based payment system for visitor parking… Would she have a case for appeal or is it just suck it up and pay? I'll post the PCN and photos later when I have them... I've told them not to make any contact with the company just yet till advice is sought...

- PCN Front
- PCN Rear
- Cropped picture of vehicle showing another vehicle in owners bay

out of interest then if someone did park in your space what can you do about it?

Is this a warden enforcement or just someone from the flats?

Exactly, speaking to my friend, there's no way of knowing if a car is parked in a bay where it shouldn't be other than the Visitor parking bays which are controlled by an app.

It's warden enforcement

Oh dear this could get messy. The correct process is the parking company will issue a notice to keeper if the notice to driver from the windscreen is ignored. That will go to the lease company who should then reply to the parking company naming the hirer and providing the documents mandated by POFA to transfer liability. What often happens is they name the hirer but don't provide the correct documents. This is good as the hirer can then refute liability as the conditions of POFA have not been met. Most parking companies will give up. The other option is the lease company pays the PCN and passes the cost direct to the hirer along with an admin fee. If that's in the lease contract they can do that. Sometimes the wording in the lease contract doesn't properly cover private parking invoices, however convincing the lease company of that can be very difficult.

Anyway until a notice to hirer arrives addressed to your friend the only option is to name themselves as the driver, but that won't get the PCN cancelled, it will just confirm to the parking company who the driver is and they will pursue that person. Or the lease company passes the cost into your friend, then the matter is between the hirer and the lease company.

Either way sit tight for now as there is nothing the driver can do which doesn't make the situation worse.