Free Traffic Legal Advice

I repeat my demand that you tell me who exactly you shared my data with. (Point 2 of my email.)

At least some of the black rectangles may comprise data that would not be your personal data.

The name of the person at ParkingEye who sent the email, for example, may not be in scope in a SAR response. The entity processing your data would likely be viewed as ParkingEye, not John Smith working for ParkingEye.

Dear [***],

Thank you for your email, the contents in which have been noted.

Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 is applicable to parking events that occur in England and Wales.  We do not believe the Operator has breached the Code here for holding the keeper liable as they do not know the name and address of the driver on the day of the alleged contravention.

In regard to your appeal and complaint, we can review this further.  You mentioned Parking Eye refused to respond due to you not agreeing to their privacy and complaints policy.  To assist our investigation, can you please forward to us a copy of this exchange.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Gemma Dorans

AOS Investigations Team

Dear Ms Dorans,

You are mistaken in your understanding of the applicability of the transfer of liability to a registered keeper, and it is  obvious that the fact that the operator does not know the name and address of the driver does not in itself imply that the transfer of liability to a registered keeper is lawfully possible outside of the English jurisdiction. That there exists a car park inside the English jurisdiction where English law applies is not in dispute.

For the time being, and before we correspond about anything else, please address the matter of what Laura Cox on behalf of the BPA told me on 12 May 2025, which was that the operator "has 28 days to respond" to my appeal. I submitted my appeal 106 days ago on 19 February 2025 and the operator has not issued a substantive response. The number 106 is a lot bigger than the number 28. So kindly confirm that given that they have not responded, the PCN is now void. Do you agree? Is the answer "yes" or is it "no"? If it is "no", then what is the meaning of the BPA's unambiguous statement that an operator must respond to an appeal within 28 days?

The relevant fact here is that the operator has not responded to my appeal. There is no disagreement that the operator received my appeal. If required in legal proceedings at a later date, I can certainly instruct the furnishing of copies of the operator's emails in which they referred to their privacy policy, but the matter of whether or not I confirm my agreement to their privacy policy (or to anything else) is totally and utterly irrelevant to their failure to respond substantively to my appeal. I appealed. There has been no substantive response. Those are the relevant facts.

All you need to do is to confirm that the operator has not responded substantively to my appeal. Ask  them. If they say they have responded substantively, they will be lying. For my own part, I am telling the truth and I am willing to repeat on oath on pain of perjury that I have not received any substantive response to my appeal. The operator's harassing demand that I identify the driver, even after I specifically told them there would be no identification, is not a substantive response to my appeal. A substantive response would have specified whether they rejected or upheld the appeal.

So all you have to do is to confirm that they have not responded, and then confirm to me at your earliest convenience that the PCN, as per your email to me dated 12 May 2025, is void.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

[***]

Dear [***],

Thank you for your reply.

To assist with our investigation, it would be helpful for you to provide us with a copy of the correspondence received from Parking Eye.  Once received we will review and advise further.

We note you advised Parking Eye did not respond to your appeal.  It is possible a response has been sent but not received.  Operators do have 28 days to respond to an appeal.  However, a breach of our Code does not invalidate a parking charge, therefore we cannot confirm that your charge has been cancelled.

Please provide the information requested so we can advise further.

Kind regards

Gemma Dorans

AOS Investigations Team

Dear Ms Dorans,

I have received your email of 4 June 2025, and I note your ludicrous assertion that perhaps your member sent a response to my appeal but unfortunately it got lost in the post.

Here is a copy of my appeal:

**************

19 February 2025

I am the keeper of the vehicle and I reside in Scotland. I deny any liability or contractual obligation to you or your client.

There will be no identification of the driver, and you are not permitted to hold me liable for the charge you allege was incurred by the driver, for the simple reason that the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA) - in particular, paragraph 4 of Schedule 4 - does not apply here in Scotland.

You are in flagrant breach of Section 8.1.1(d) of the Private Parking Single Code of Practice (PPSCoP) in that you have issued a Notice to Keeper containing a PoFA warning when you know that PoFA does not apply in Scotland.

There are several other legal problems with your Notice, which I shall not mention here because the above is fully sufficient to show that ParkingEye have absolutely no hope of success at POPLA - so kindly save us both a complete waste of time and cancel the PCN without delay.

I am ticking the box saying "I confirm I have attached all supporting information available to me, and understand that I will be unable to provide any additional evidence at a later date, unless specifically requested by Parkingeye", but the only reason I am ticking it is because you have configured your software not to accept appeals from appellants who do not tick it. I absolutely do not "confirm" as stated, and I reserve the right to submit whatever evidence I choose at a later time.

**********

Here is a copy of your member's acknowledgement of their receipt of my appeal.

*********

Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2025 [***]
Subject: Automated Response: Appeal Received [***]
From: Parkingeye Ltd <no-reply@parkingeye.net>
To: [***]

Thank you for contacting Parkingeye, we acknowledge receipt of your appeal.

We endeavour to respond to all appeals as soon as possible. Whilst we consider an appeal the parking charge amount will not increase. Please note that a full written response may take up to 28 days.

Kind Regards,

Parkingeye Appeals Team

**********

Here is a copy of the non-substantive and criminally harassing response I received from your member regarding my appeal:

**********

05 March 2025

Reference: Parking Charge Notice - [***]

Dear Sir / Madam,

Thank you for your correspondence in relation to the Parking Charge incurred on 02 February 2025 at [***], at Welcome Break Charnock Richard-Chorley (South) car park.

We are writing to advise you that your recent appeal has been referred for further information.

You have stated that you were not the driver of the vehicle at the date and time of the breach of the terms and conditions of the car park, but you have not indicated who was.

You have already been notified that under section 9(2)(b) of schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 that the driver of the motor vehicle is required to pay this parking charge in full. As we do not know the driver’s name or current postal address, if you were not the driver at the time, you should tell us the full name and the current postal address of the driver.

You are warned that if, after 29 days from the Date of Issue, the parking charge has not been paid in full and we do not know both the name and current address of the driver, we have the right to recover any unpaid part of the parking charge from you, the registered keeper. This warning is given to you under paragraph 9(2)(f) of schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 and is subject to our complying with the applicable conditions under schedule 4 of that Act.

Please note, if you have made or wish to make an appeal on behalf of the driver, and you do not provide the full name and current postal address of the driver, Parkingeye will be obliged to deal with the representations made in your name.

Parkingeye have placed this charge on hold for 28 days to enable you to provide the evidence requested. If this information is not provided within 28 days, the appeal may well be rejected and a POPLA code provided.

Parkingeye Limited, 40 Eaton Avenue Buckshaw Village, Chorley, PR7 7NA,

Registered in England, Registration No. 5134454

Alternatively, payment can be made by telephoning our offices on 0330 555 4444 or by visiting www.parkingeye.co.uk or by posting a cheque or postal order to

ParkingEye Ltd,

PO Box 117, Blyth, NE24 9EJ.

Yours faithfully,
Parkingeye Team
Further Information
Photographic evidence
The Parking Charge Notice contains further details of the parking event and includes date and time stamped photographs of the vehicle entering and exiting the car park.
You can also view photographs of the vehicle via our driver portal by using the following link

https://portal.parkingeye.co.uk/.

To access the portal you will need to enter your Parking Charge reference number and vehicle registration details.

**********


I confirm that I have still not received a substantive response to my appeal. Obviously given that 1) your member is obliged to follow your code, 2) you have clearly stated that it has 28 days to issue a substantive response, and 3) it has failed to issue a substantive response within that time, it is now impossible for it to issue a substantive response because any "response" it may purport to issue will be out of time.

I have corresponded with your member regarding complaints I submitted to it, which it has refused to consider, citing my declining to agree to its privacy policies (which obviously I am under no obligation to do, and the purpose of which anyway is to protect me, not to protect your member). However, as you are surely aware, complaints are not the same as appeals and they are processed independently. What I am corresponding with you about at the moment concerns my appeal, not any complaints I have submitted to your member. If I wish to bring its handling of such complaints to your attention at some future point, I will do so. If I do not wish to do so, I will not do so. Kindly keep your focus on the matter in hand: my appeal, and your member's failure to issue a substantive response.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

[***]

Attn: [***],

9 June 2025
[***]

Dear [***],

I received an email from you dated 6 May 2025 in which you said you were unable at that time to provide a full response to me about this matter, because the matter was complex, and in which you promised either to send a full response or a further update within 10 working days. Nearly five weeks have now passed but I have received no further communications from you.

Please can you provide an email address at which I can write to you, so that I can keep a full record of our correspondence using my email client, as per normal business procedure, rather than having to type inside a box on a webpage and to save after cutting and pasting.

Yours sincerely,

[***]

Dear [***],

Thank you for your email, the contents in which have been noted.

Please may I remind you to communicate with us in a respectful and polite way.  Please note our policy below:

UnreasonableComplaintsandVexatiousCommunicationsPolicyMarch2025.pdf

I will be in touch once I have completed my investigation with Parking Eye.   

Kind regards

Gemma Dorans

AOS Investigations Team

Dear Ms Doran,

Why did you send me that document about unreasonable complaints and vexatious communications? I have no intention of reading it at the present time.

This is patently obviously an open and shut case - your member breached your code by failing to respond substantively to my appeal within 28 days. When this was brought to your attention, you suggested they may have issued a response that got lost in the post. Please be aware that statements you make have consequences in how you are viewed.

Would you be so kind as to tell me a target date by which you aim to tell me what you have decided after you have conducted your investigation?

Yours sincerely,

[***]

Dear [***],

I have investigated your complaint with the Operator and can advise as follows.

The Operator has confirmed that the signage at the Welcome Break confirms tariffs apply after 2 hours.  The vehicle remained within the car park for 2 hours and 34 minutes and Parking Eye have no record of a parking period being purchased.

Parking Eye have confirmed an appeal was submitted by the registered keeper stating that the driver will not be identified.  An appeal response was issued to you asking for confirmation of the driver which Parking Eye are entitled to do.  Unfortunately, no details of the driver were received.  Usually if no response is received to their request for further information, a formal response is sent regardless.  On this occasion this did not happen.  To rectify the matter a formal response will be sent to your appeal today via email and further investigations will take place to ascertain why this did not happen on this occasion.

Parking Eye have also confirmed that 5 separate submissions were received through the complaints process dated 6 March, 24 March, 29 March, 5 April and 17 April all raising the same grounds of appeal and confirming you did not agree to Parking Eye’s privacy policy.  A response was sent to you to confirm that as you did not agree to the privacy policy, they were unable to process your complaint in line with their obligations under GDPR.

We believe the appropriate rectification has occurred regarding your appeal response being issued today and therefore will close the case. 

Kind regards

Gemma Dorans

AOS Investigations Team

Dear Ms Dorans,

Please forward this reply to your line manager.

You stated unambiguously that your members have 28 days to respond substantively to an appeal. They did not respond to my appeal within this period, and therefore they  may not do so afterwards. Any communication they send me will not be a substantive response to my appeal because a substantive response must be issued within 28 days.

Your use of the words "unfortunately" and "on this occasion" suggest that you are taking the mickey. It does not matter what you consider to be unfortunate, and it is obviously only this member's failure to respond to this appeal that we are talking about, not any other "occasions" on which they may or may not have done something else.

Complaints are separate from appeals and follow separate rules, so what you say about complaint handling is irrelevant to the matter of your member's failure to issue a substantive response to my appeal.

Their failure to respond is not a matter that can be subject to "rectification" several months later.

I consider the PCN to be void. It is obvious that liability may not be transferred to a keeper resident in Scotland. It is also obvious that I do not have any obligation to agree to your member's "privacy policy" (which the law mandates to protect me, not to protect a gang of car park scammers who are in the business of demanding money with menaces), so this correspondence is now closed.

You are hereby notified that I will not accept any further correspondence from your member on any matter, and any communication they send me will be considered harassment. Since you clearly speak on their behalf by telling me what they will do later today, I am sending this notice to you so that you can forward it to them. If you send correspondence on their behalf, you can also receive it on their behalf. Let me spell it out: if Parking Eye contact me again in any matter, their action will be considered to be harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

Kindly acknowledge receipt of this email and confirm that you have forwarded it to your line manager.

Yours sincerely,

[***]

[***]

Attn: Dave Smith, Head of Communications, British Parking Association

Dave,

Any comments on this matter before I circulate it? I consider the PCN to be void for reasons stated. Might be useful reputation-wise if you can confirm agreement from your end. Just to give you the heads up.

Best to let me know by 1pm today if you can.

Regards,

[***]

Dear Mr Boynes,

This is just to confirm that

1. Your PCN [***] is considered fully void because you failed to respond substantively to my appeal within the period of 28 days set down by the BPA and because no substantive response is possible because you are out of time.

2. There will be no identification of the driver.

3. There is no lawful basis for transferring liability to a keeper resident in Scotland.

4. I am circulating information about your actions.

5. I expect confirmation by 1pm today that you agree that the PCN is void.

Yours sincerely,

[***]

Reference: Parking Charge Notice - [***]
POPLA Ref: [***]

Dear Sir / Madam,

Thank you for your appeal in relation to the Parking Charge incurred on 02 February 2025
at [***], at Welcome Break Charnock Richard-Chorley (South) car park.

We have reviewed the details outlined in your appeal, but we are not in receipt of
sufficient evidence to confirm that the terms and conditions were not breached. Our
records confirm that no parking was purchased on the date of the parking event, despite
there being payment methods available.

We are writing to advise you that your recent appeal has been unsuccessful and that you
have now reached the end of our internal appeals procedure.

If you wish to have your case independently assessed, please be advised, there is an
independent appeals service (POPLA) which is available to motorists who have had an
appeal rejected by a British Parking Association Approved Operator. Contact information
and further information can be found enclosed. See also www.popla.co.uk

By law we are also required to inform you that Ombudsman Services (www.ombudsman-
services.org/) provides an alternative dispute resolution service that would be competent
to deal with your appeal. However, we have not chosen to participate in their alternative
dispute resolution service. As such should you wish to appeal then you must do so to
POPLA, as explained above.

Please note, if the Parking Charge was issued in Scotland/Northern Ireland, only the
driver can appeal to POPLA (Parking on Private Land Appeals).

As a gesture of goodwill, we have extended the discount period for a further 14 days from
the date of this correspondence. If you appeal to POPLA, you will not be able to pay the
discounted amount in settlement of the Parking Charge, and the full value of the charge
will be outstanding. In addition, if your appeal to POPLA is unsuccessful, you will no
longer be able to pay the discounted amount and the full value of the charge will be due.

A payment can be made by telephoning 0330 555 4444, by visiting
www.parkingeye.co.uk/payments or alternatively by posting a cheque/postal order to
Parkingeye Ltd, PO Box 117, Blyth, NE24 9EJ. Please ensure you write your reference
number on the reverse of any cheque/postal order so the payment can be allocated.

If you have received this correspondence via email, please allow 24 hours for our
systems to reflect the discounted value before making a payment via our automated
payment line or website.

Yours faithfully,

Parkingeye Team

Dear Mr Boynes,

I have received a further email from your company today. (See below, and attachment.) It was sent from a "no reply" address, so I am replying to you directly.

It is not a response to my appeal, because

1. Under BPA rules such responses must be issued within 28 days.

2. Whoever wrote it seems to think my appeal was on the grounds that a car park operator's terms and conditions weren't breached. It wasn't.

3. Whoever wrote it seems to think I am under some kind of obligation to prove something, insofar as they write that "we are not in receipt of sufficient evidence to confirm that the terms and conditions were not breached". I am not under any obligation to prove anything.

Please confirm by 1pm that the PCN with my name on it is void. If you wish to try to find the driver, you can do so - but as I have indicated several times, do not expect any assistance from me.

Yours sincerely,

[***]