Free Traffic Legal Advice

For heavens sake! Tell your friend to tell the "fines processing team" that they never had to get in touch with CPM to transfer the liability. They only had to send the tear off form and the copies of the requested documents to CPM and that would be the end of the matter. They are obfuscating.

They really are exposing their intellectual malnourishment and shameful lack of understanding. That or they are trying to wriggle out of their liability due to their incompetence.

There is not much time left for them to transfer the liability. If CPM were really so stupid to refuse to accept a transfer of liability, they are in breach of PoFA, KADOE and the BPA CoP.

We are sorry to read that you are unsatisfied with Tusker's management of this fine.

Please be advised, this fine has been issued by UKCPM. This is one of many parking operators that does not accept a transfer of liability, this is due to Tusker's agreement with our drivers being a Salary Sacrifice Agreement, as the vehicle is on hire to your employer, as opposed to a Lease Agreement which would be accepted.

As a result of this, rather than making payment upon receipt of fines issued by these operators which we could do, we attempt to provide our drivers with the opportunity to manage the fines directly by forwarding our copy of the notice to them by email. This was sent to you on 25/09/2024. Please find attached a copy of the notification email.

In this email, it does explain that transfers are not accepted, and so if this notice is unactioned and we receive a second notification for the same offence, the fine will be paid and recharged to you.

Please find attached a copy of your Salary Sacrifice Agreement which you signed on 15/11/2023 before the vehicle was delivered.

Under the heading Responsibility, it does state;

12. Understand that parking or congestion charges and any other fines are their responsibility and if incurred will be recharged to them along with an administration fee.

13. Understand and agree that the Employer shall be entitled to deduct from salary, or other payments due to them, any money which they may owe or be liable to pay in respect of the Vehicle arising from their use of it at any time pursuant to the terms of this Agreement and the terms of the Scheme Policy. The Employee accepts that if the Employer is unable to recover any amounts owing from the Employee by way of such deductions, then the Employee must pay to the Employer the relevant amounts owing as a debt and upon demand.

More information on how we manage fines can also be found in your Driver Guide.

We received the second notice on 10/10/2024, and payment would now usually be made. However, we have checked online and our team have not yet made the payment. If you would like to appeal, you can by using the Third Party Letter of Authorisation which was attached to your notification email. This is our permission for you to discuss the fine on our behalf as the registered keeper, and we have received many refunds and accepted appeals from UKCPM before. Appeals can be made online.

We have asked our processing team not to make the payment on this occasion to allow you to continue your appeal, however please be advised that if we received a third notice, this will be made and recharged to yourself.

Should you remain unsatisfied with this response, please contact our Resolutions Team on resolutions@tuskerdirect.com.

Kind regards,

The Fleet Admin Team

Reading between Tusker's jumble of words, what I think has happened here is that Tusker's have tried to nominate the OP directly, but as he is not the one Tusker's are hiring the vehicle to (that being his employer instead), CPM have not accepted this.

I don't necessarily think CPM are wrong to refuse if this is the case - if Tusker's hire agreement is between them and the employer, then they would not be able to provide to CPM the documents required under PoFA when nominating the OP.

Quite why Tusker's can't/won't nominate the employer instead, with whom they presumably do have the requisite contractual documents, who knows...

They can't nominate a "driver". They have absolutely no idea who was driving. They can only nominate the Hirer. Only the hirer (although not the employer in this case) can identify the driver.

The issue is that the employee is the day to day keeper but that is not a recognised term as such. The only realistic way I could see this being handled lawfully would be if Tusker had transferred liability to the Hirer (the employer company). The employer would then have the option to do the appeal or, preferably, give the employee a letter of authority to appeal or deal with the NtH in the company name.

The employee would appeal and would, technically,  be in a winning position because CPM would have failed to provide the copies of the required documents and there could then be no keeper liability. The only fly in that ointment would be after CPM reject the appeal (no doubt about this) is that any IAS appeal is likely to be unsuccessful and that would then leave CPM pestering the employer unless they accepted the letter of authority from the employer for the employee to deal with it.

As I said earlier, there are possible CRA 2015 points that need investigating from the point of view of the employee being under a contract to purchase the vehicle through the salary sacrifice scheme.