Free Traffic Legal Advice

I am the registered keeper. APCOA cannot hold a registered keeper liable for any alleged contravention on land that is under statutory control. As a matter of fact and law, APCOA will be well aware that they cannot use the PoFA provisions because Heathrow Airport is not 'relevant land'.

If Heathrow Airport wanted to hold owners or keepers liable under Airport Byelaws, that would be within the landowner's gift and another matter entirely. However, not only is that not pleaded, it is also not legally possible because APCOA is not the Airport owner and your 'parking charge' is not and never attempts to be a penalty. It is created for APCOA's own profit (as opposed to a byelaws penalty that goes to the public purse) and APCOA has relied on contract law allegations of breach against the driver only.

The registered keeper cannot be presumed or inferred to have been the driver, nor pursued under some twisted interpretation of the law of agency. Your NtK can only hold the driver liable. APCOA have no hope at POPLA, so you are urged to save us both a complete waste of time and cancel the PCN.

Thank you for your recent correspondence in relation to the above-mentioned Parking Charge Notice.

In your appeal you have explained that you are the registered keeper of the vehicle and declined the invitation to provide us with the full name and address of the driver.

On this occasion, we will waiver this PCN as a goodwill gesture, but must inform you that the terms and conditions in this location advise the driver that they must pay for each visit to the site. Signage is displayed at the approach to this drop off area, along the location and upon exit, advising all motorists that a payment to use the drop off area is required to be made online or by phone. As stated above, the terms and conditions of using the drop-off zones are displayed by way of clear signage. It is the responsibility of the motorist to read and comply with the signage on site

In theory yes, although I would argue that misuse of private car parks is what causes businesses to hire these awful parking companies in the first place, so deliberate misuse indirectly supports their continued spread.

Also, if a single individual were building up significant numbers of parking charges, it may cause the company to focus their attentions somewhat - as an example, a company I was helping to fight charges from UKPC (they operated a large fleet, so inevitably got many tickets) found that after a series of successful appeals, UKPC started sending them bespoke notices that dealt with the shortcomings of their usual boilerplate.

It wouldn't make it invalid, but delivering outside of the relevant period of 14 days would mean they cannot recover the charge from the registered keeper using the provisions of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. It doesn't affect whether or not the driver might be liable, although if they don't know who that is, then tough for them. That said, with an issue date of 12th July, if sent by 1st class post, it will be presumed to have been delivered 2 working days later, unless the contrary can be proved - proving when you received it would be tricky.

They would struggle to make the charges recoverable from keepers, due to the drop off zone not being relevant land for the purposes of Schedule 4 of PoFA. From Heathrow's perspective, I don't know why they don't just install barriers like the drop off areas at Manchester, for example, which forces payment to be made before leaving. I've never driven to Heathrow, so I don't know if something like the road layout prevents this.

As you've mentioned, they probably make money on all the people who just see "fee - i need to pay" (which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do)