Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi, any advice would be appreciated.

UKPC issued this parking charge letter to me, because I am the registered keeper of the vehicle. The charging ticket showed the vehicle entered and exited the premise with a total time span of 2 hours 40 minutes and 42 seconds, which exceeded the maximum stay time of 2 hours 30 minutes.

The incident occurred on 4th August, 2024. The letter was dated as 7th August, 2024, and I received it via post on 12th August, 2024.

I found the parking charge notice was very unfair.

The driver (with two young children) after parked up the car in the retail park, noticed the UKPC sign. The driver took a picture of the signage and noted down the time of parking (which is already 9 minutes later than the arrival time shown on the parking charge notice) and went on with the shopping. The driver went to the McDonald's and ordered some takeaways before returning to the car.

The best effort was made to ensure parking time was within the stated maximum limit of 2 hours 30 minutes. Although we do not have proof of the time of leaving the park, we are confident the parking session was kept within the 2 hour 30 minutes limit. Unfortunately, the UKPC's allegation are based on the entry and exit time instead of parking time and no allowance for grace period was given. It seems all very harsh.

The wording on the parking charge notice seems to follow the rules set by POFA 2012. The definition of stay and parking were made very ambiguous and it was also not clear when and where they started to time the stay. It seems UKPC timed it from the moment the vehicle passed the entrance of the car park. This seems very unfair because the driver would not realised this is a private carpark and would not have time to read the terms and conditions shown on the UKPC signage.

I had a quick check of Highbridge Retail Park, the landlord of the retail park was Legal & General Asset Management, which is very unlikely to respond to my queries. The managing agent of the retail park is unknown. I have spoken with the manager of the McDonald's, who has agreed to email UKPC to request a cancellation of this parking charge notice (no guarantee).

I have not yet started UKPC's appeal process, but I have sent UKPC's complaint department an email as the keeper of the vehicle, informing them the McDonald's on duty manager is sending them a request for cancellation.

Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated.

I have attached the parking charge letter from UKPC below (not sure whether the link worked...).

Keep on with your Plan A with the McD's manager. You can still try and contact the landowner to find out who their managing agent is.

Fortunately, this is a UKPC PCN. No amount of appeal to them or POPLA will get this overturned. Unless Plan A is successful, this will go all the way to a court claim which is a good thing. A small claims track hearing in the county court is the ultimate dispute resolution service and only a judge would decide whether the keeper owes a debt to UKPC or not.

Experience tells us that as long as the advice is followed and a defence is made, UKPC through their roboclaim solicitors, DCB Legal, will eventually discontinue before they have to pay the trial fee. There is evidence of this over on the MSE forum with almost 400 discontinuations by them in the last two years.

The secret is to ignore any and all debt collector letters as they are useless and powerless to do anything except to try and scare the low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree into capitulating and paying. Eventually, once a claim is filed, you defend and ignore the attempts by them to settle for a reduced fee and they discontinue.

For now, you can try a basic appeal which will be rejected but you will get a POPLA code where you can argue the grace period and breach of their ATAs Code of Practice.

Have a look at the new Joint CoP for the information on grace periods:

The private parking sector single Code of Practice

Section 5.2 in particular.

The driver took a picture of the signage and noted down the time of parking

Has this been posted?

Sorry, I forgot to post the signage photo. The driver took it after parked the car to read the terms and condition and also to remember what time he/she should leave.

Thanks for all the input.

So sounds like the best cause of action is:

1) Wait to see whether this ticket can be cancelled by the McDonald's manager,

2) If not successful, then appeal with UKPC's internal appeal portal, the best defense would be

a) They timed from the entry and exit without giving time allowance for the driver to read the signage to accept the contract, without marking the entry and exit where cameras were operating and showing the driver the timestamp (like many supermarket carparks do), it would be impossible for drivers to accurately adhere to the time limit.

b) The photographic record from the driver showed that he/she parked the car at 17:18 which was 9 minutes later than UKPC's arrival time. This was the only known information the driver had at that time to enable him to abide to the parking rules set by UKPC. If any legally binding contract was formed between the car park operator and the driver, it should start from that time. In that case, the total stay in the car park would be 2 hours 31 minutes, and considering the time it takes to drive from the parking spot to the exit, the parking time should be well within the time limit stated in the signage.

c) No grace period was given to allow the driver to leave the premise, which conventionally should be around 10 minutes, which would also have nullified the stated violation.

d) UKPC possibly abusing the definition of parking vs stay on the signage, causing unnecessary confusion. It sounds like the driver can park the car and the car can stay in the car park for 2 hours 30 minutes. During enforcement, the rule was strictly based on physical presence within the premise perimeter, whether the vehicle is still in motion or not. It was not clear to the driver, how this 2 hours 30 minutes would be measured, therefore a reasonable grace period should also be necessary?

3) The above appeal is very likely to be turned down, but UKPC will send you a POPLA code to escalate the case to POPLA. The driver should then reiterate the defense all over again. Is it true that the new ATA code will not be implemented by the end of the year, and UKPC is not obligated to follow them at the time of the incident? So it would only be a defense from the moral high ground?

4) There is high risk that POPLA might be inundated with appeal cases and might not act in the best interests of consumers. If that happens, this case will go to the small claims court.

5) It is likely that UKPC will pull out before going to the court to avoid paying the court fees.

I should also ignore all the forthcoming debt collector letters and concentrate on the online appeal portal, POPLA appeal, and court letters only?

You only have to point out to POPLA that UKPC have failed to comply with their latest Joint Code of Practice at point 3.1.3(j) which states:

Quote

3.1.3. Signs within controlled land displaying the specific terms and conditions
applying must:

j) display the parking charge that the parking operator may apply for breaches of such terms and conditions as may apply in a large font;

Then also show them the difference between their crappy signs and the sign in the Beavis case which they love to harp on about:

Thank you so much. Indeed, the driver didn't realise the penalty would be £100 until after the parking charge notice was issued, otherwise the driver would not have stayed so close to the stated time limit.

Thank you for all the help.

It seems UKPC has cancelled this parking charge in full. McDonald's must have helped.