Free Traffic Legal Advice

Do nothing. SABA have 6 months in which to lay information before a magistrate. They won’t, because there is no money in it for them as any “fine” would go to the public purse, not SABA.

However, they will tell you that if you don’t pay it, they will issue a county court claim for the alleged debt. They can’t, because you cannot prosecute a statutory offence in the county court.

It is all part of a giant scam that should be reported to the police (not Action Fraud) as the Penalty Notices are instruments of fraud and an illegal attempt to extort money from you under the false pretence that you are criminally liable.

If they were ever so stupid as to try this on, either in the magistrates court or the county court, they would be spit to strict proof of their standing to issue Penalty Notices.

You cannot prosecute a safely ignore all debt recovery letters. Debt collectors, just like SABA, are powerless to actually do anything in this case beyond making unlawful threats in the hope that you are low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree and are likely to pay up out of ignorance and fear.

Keep us updated on their responses. We don’t need to see any debt recovery letters but any correspondence from SABA themselves must be kept as evidence of their illegal activity, especially if they threaten debt recovery through the county court for a Penalty Notices are.

I am the Registered Keeper. My details are:

Full name: [ ]
Postal address: [ ]

This location is subject to Railway Byelaws and is not “relevant land” for PoFA 2012; you cannot transfer liability to the keeper. POPLA is not competent for Byelaws matters and is not a TOC approved Independent Appeals Body (IAB).

You now have the keeper’s details. You therefore have no “reasonable cause” to obtain them from DVLA. Any DVLA request would be unnecessary and unlawful, contrary to UK GDPR Article 5(1)(c) (data minimisation) and without a valid Article 6 basis. If you believe an offence occurred, lay an information before the magistrates under the Single Justice Procedure within six months. Otherwise, erase my data when no longer necessary for this purpose.

As to any further demands, I refer you to the response given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971).

You appeal on day 27 after the date of the alleged contravention

I am the Keeper. This location is subject to Railway Byelaws and is not “relevant land” for PoFA 2012; you cannot transfer liability to the keeper. POPLA is not competent for Byelaws matters and is not a TOC approved Independent Appeals Body (IAB).

If you believe an offence occurred, lay an information before the magistrates under the Single Justice Procedure within six months. Otherwise, erase my data when no longer necessary for this purpose.

As to any further demands, I refer you to the response given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971).

Subject: Your misuse of PoFA on railway land and impending CMA complaint

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your email perfectly illustrates why I made it crystal clear in my original appeal that this is railway byelaw land and therefore not “relevant land” for the purposes of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. Yet you have blithely asserted that your Penalty/“Parking Charge” Notice “does comply with PoFA” and that the registered keeper “will remain liable”. That is simply wrong in law. PoFA cannot create keeper liability on land subject to statutory control by railway byelaws, however many times you type the words “PoFA 2012”.

The fact you have a 'sent date' within 14 days is irrelevant. On byelaw land, your only lawful route is a byelaw prosecution in the magistrates’ court under the Single Justice Procedure within six months of the alleged offence. There is no parallel civil keeper-liability regime you can conjure into existence by misquoting PoFA and hoping the keeper does not know any better.

Equally absurd is your attempt to manufacture an obligation for me to identify the driver or to get the driver to appeal. PoFA imposes no such duty on a keeper in any circumstances, and the Railway Byelaws certainly don’t. Your demand that I “must” hand over the driver’s name and address within seven days, coupled with the threat that the keeper will remain liable if I do not, is a textbook misleading statement about my legal position and alleged obligations.

You then compound this by claiming that I have “marked” that I was not the driver. My appeal did no such thing. It simply identified me as the keeper and correctly pointed out your lack of any lawful keeper-liability route. If your “appeals” staff or in-house “legal” team are incapable of understanding the difference, you may wish to consider investing in competent legal counsel, or at the very least some basic training on PoFA, railway byelaws, and the concept of relevant land. At present, your grasp of the law appears to begin and end with copying boilerplate PoFA wording into emails where it plainly cannot apply.

Your mendacious assertions about keeper liability, my supposed obligation to identify the driver, and the inevitability of the keeper “remaining liable” are not just embarrassing; they are likely to amount to unfair and misleading commercial practices. I will therefore be reporting this matter to the Competition and Markets Authority for suspected breaches of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act in relation to:

* misrepresenting the legal position on liability and consumer obligations;
* implying a statutory or contractual liability that does not exist; and
* using misleading, aggressive wording to pressure a consumer into making payment or disclosing third-party data.

I will also be bringing your conduct and this correspondence to the attention of the DVLA, your Accredited Trade Association, and the relevant Train Operating Company, as I do not consent to my keeper data being used to underpin a fictitious “PoFA liability” that is legally impossible on this site.

For the avoidance of doubt, I will not be naming the driver, I do not accept any keeper liability, and I am fully aware of the legal framework you are attempting – unsuccessfully – to misapply. Any further repetition of these false assertions about PoFA and keeper liability will simply be added to my evidence bundle for the regulators.

Yours faithfully,

[Name]