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Looking at google maps the sign you would have seen is on a roundabout, so how can that be classed as adequate, as it could be blocked by a moving vehicle and you would be looking at vehicles coming from your right.  Secondly it does not state any penalty for exceeding the three hour max stay.  Appeal points for POPLA should include inadequacy and positioning of signage.  Others will assist with POFA compliance

POPLA has refused my appeal !! What do I do next pls?


POPLA Response =>

When assessing an appeal POPLA considers if the operator has issued the parking charge notice correctly and if the driver has complied with the terms and conditions for the use of the car park displayed on the signs located within the car park. Therefore, the driver is responsible for seeking out these signs, reviewing the displayed terms and conditions and complying with these. The signs on this site confirm free parking is permitted for a maximum stay of three hours and failure to comply will result in the issue of a £100 PCN. The operator has provided photographic evidence the vehicle remained on site for three hours and 41 minutes. The Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice (The Code) sets the standards its parking operators need to comply with. This sector Code of Practice has been jointly created by the British Parking Association (BPA) and the International Parking Community (IPC). It is largely based on the Government’s Private Parking Code of Practice, which was published in February 2022, and subsequently withdrawn in June 2022. The new Code came into force on the 1 October 2024 and applies to all PCNs issued after this date. The new coded supersedes all previous versions of the BPA code of practice. The appellant has not admitted to being the driver. I will therefore be considering their responsibility as keeper of the vehicle. In order for the keeper to be liable for the parking charge, the operator has to follow the strict requirements of Schedule 4 of POFA. Having reviewed the evidence, I consider that there looks to be a contract between the driver and the parking operator, and the appellant has not provided a current name and address for service for the driver. The notice also identifies the creditor. Further, on reviewing the Notice to Keeper provided by both parties, I am satisfied this complies with the relevant provisions and therefore, I am satisfied that the operator has met POFA to transfer liability. Section 18.2 of the BPA code of practice no longer applies. It is worth noting that section 18.2 has not applied to signage since version 7 2018 of the BPA code of practice. Section 3.1.1 of the Single Code of Practice states that there must be an entrance sign displayed and maintained at the entrance to the site, to inform drivers whether parking is permitted subject to terms and conditions or prohibited. Section 3.1.2 of the Code contains the principles the entrance sign must display, including whether public parking is available and if a payment is required. Its design must also comply with the standard format as described in Annex A. The entrance sign must take into account the speed of vehicles approaching the car park. Section 3.1.3 of the Single Code of Practice contains the requirements for signs displaying the terms and conditions. The signs must be placed throughout the site, so that drivers have the opportunity to read them when parking or leaving their vehicle. The terms and conditions must be clear and unambiguous, using a font and contrast that is be conspicuous and legible. The operator has provided multiple images of the entrance sign and also signage within the car park and after reviewing these, I am satisfied that there are plenty of signs located within the car park and at the entrance and that these signs meet the requirements of the Single Code of Practice. I recognise the appellant has provided two photographs however these images are not time or date stamped. As such, I am unable to determine when these were taken. As such, I am not satisfied these two images are sufficient to cast doubt on the evidence provided by the operator. Section 7 of the BPA code of practice is no longer applicable. Section 14.1 of the Single Code of Practice states that where controlled land is being managed on behalf of a landowner, written confirmation must be obtained before a parking charge can be issued. There is no requirement in the Single Code of Practice for operators to provide a copy of this contract as it may contain commercially sensitive information. The operator has confirmed it has the landowner’s authority to issue PCNs and, as it has signage and ANPR cameras in place which would not be possible without the landowner’s permission. As the appellant has not provided any evidence to demonstrate otherwise, I am satisfied that the operator has the appropriate authority on this site. Section 21 of the BPA code of practice is no longer applicable. ANPR cameras are used to capture vehicles entering and exiting the site to calculate the time a vehicle has remained in the car park. This ANPR data captured is then compared with the online transaction record, and if a vehicle exceeds the maximum stay, a PCN is issued. As NAPR operated car parks are fully automated, a parking operator is not required to provide evidence of a vehicle parked as the ANPR evidence proves the vehicle exceeded the maximum stay allowed. POPLA accept evidence from both parties in good faith unless the opposite is proven. The burden of proof begins with the operator to show it issued the PCN correctly. If they do that by providing ANPR images that support its version of events, the burden of proof then passes to the appellant. As I accept there is the possibility for inaccuracies, I am happy to accept any evidence that suggests the ANOR camera are inaccurate. However, as the appellant has not provided evidence to demonstrate otherwise, I will work on the basis that the technology is accurate. Section 13 of the BPA code of practice no longer applies. Section 5.2 of the Single Code of Practice requires a parking operator to allow a grace period in addition to the parking period. Annex B states the grace period is 10 minutes. In this case, the vehicle remained on site for an additional 41 minutes therefore, both the grace period and maximum stay have been exceeded. The appellant has told us in their response that the charge is disproportionate and not commercially justified. This matter was considered at length by the Supreme Court in the case of ParkingEye v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67. In this case, the Court recognised that parking charges have all the characteristics of a penalty, but nevertheless were enforceable because there were legitimate interests in the charging of overstaying motorists. This “legitimate interests” approach moved away from a loss-based analysis of parking charges: “In our opinion, while the penalty rule is plainly engaged, the £85 charge is not a penalty. The reason is that although ParkingEye was not liable to suffer loss as a result of overstaying motorists, it had a legitimate interest in charging them which extended beyond the recovery of any loss… deterrence is not penal if there is a legitimate interest in influencing the conduct of the contracting party which is not satisfied by the mere right to recover damages for breach of contract.” The Court did however make it clear that the parking charge must be proportionate: “None of this means that ParkingEye could charge overstayers whatever it liked. It could not charge a sum which would be out of all proportion to its interest or that of the landowner for whom it is providing the service.” It concluded that a charge in the region of £85 was proportionate, and it attached importance to the fact that the charge was prominently displayed in large lettering on the signage. While the specific facts of the case concerned a free-stay car park where the motorist had overstayed, I consider the principles that lie behind the decision remain the same. Taking these principles into account, I am not going to consider whether the loss is a genuine pre-estimate of loss or whether it reflects a correct loss to the landowner. Rather, I am going to consider the charge amount in the appellant’s case, as well as the signage. On this, I conclude the charge is appropriately prominent and in the region of £85 and is therefore allowable. The appellant states there is no proof of planning permission for signage and ANPR installations. POPLA is an appeals service only. Our remit extends solely to determining if the PCN has been issued correctly based on the evidence provided. It is not within POPLAs scope to comment on how a parking operator chooses to manage land it is responsible for. Therefore, should the appellant wish to pursue a dispute regarding this matter, they will need to contact the relevant authorities. On reviewing the operator’s evidence, the appellant expands on their initial grounds of appeal. As I have considered these above, I will not comment further. POPLA’s role is to assess if the operator has issued the PCN in accordance with the conditions of the contract. As the terms and conditions of the car park have not been met, I conclude that the operator has issued the PCN correctly, and the appeal is refused.

This decision reads less like legal reasoning and more like an exercise in box-ticking by someone who has memorised buzzwords without understanding the law that underpins them. The assessor’s analysis is fundamentally flawed, internally inconsistent, and demonstrates a worrying lack of comprehension of both Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 and basic principles of contract formation.

The opening premise that “the driver is responsible for seeking out the signs” immediately signals the problem. That is not the legal test. The burden is on the operator to prove that the terms were adequately brought to the driver’s attention such that a contract could be formed. Treating signage as something a motorist must actively hunt for is a complete inversion of contract law and serves only to excuse inadequate or poorly positioned signs. The assessor later gestures vaguely toward signage standards but never applies them in any meaningful way.

The discussion of the Single Code of Practice is equally muddled. Large portions of the reasoning consist of announcing that various sections of the BPA Code “no longer apply”, as if that alone resolves anything. Compliance with an industry code does not replace the need to prove contractual incorporation, nor does it relieve the operator of evidential burdens. The assessor appears to believe that citing the new Code is a substitute for analysis.

Keeper liability is where the decision collapses entirely. The assessor states that there “looks to be a contract” and that because the keeper did not name the driver, PoFA has been met. That is legally illiterate. Keeper liability does not arise because something “looks like” a contract, nor because a keeper declined to identify the driver. It arises only if every statutory condition in Schedule 4 is strictly complied with. The assessor does not identify those conditions, does not analyse them, and instead relies on impression and assumption. This is not how statute works.

Signage is dealt with in the same superficial manner. The conclusion that there are “plenty of signs” is meaningless. The relevant question is whether the signs were prominent, legible, and positioned at the correct decision points so that a driver would inevitably see and understand the terms before parking and leaving the vehicle. Operator photographs taken at close range, in good lighting, at an unknown time, prove nothing about the driver’s experience on the day. The assessor nonetheless accepts them uncritically.

By contrast, the appellant’s photographs are dismissed outright because they are not timestamped. There is no rule of evidence that requires photographs to carry embedded metadata to be admissible or credible. This is a standard invented by the assessor to reject inconvenient evidence. No equivalent scepticism is applied to the operator’s images.

Landowner authority is treated with breathtaking laziness. The assessor accepts that authority exists because the operator says so, and because signage and ANPR equipment are present. That is circular reasoning. The very purpose of requiring written landowner authority is to prevent enforcement without permission. The idea that enforcement infrastructure could not exist without authority is demonstrably false and legally irrelevant.

ANPR evidence is treated as conclusive proof of parking, despite the fact that ANPR measures entry and exit, not parking time. The assessor simply assumes that time on site equals time parked, and then shifts the burden onto the appellant to disprove the accuracy of the system. This again reverses the burden of proof. The operator must prove reliability, calibration, and that the alleged contractual term relates to the period measured. None of this is examined.

Grace periods are similarly mishandled. The assessor mechanically subtracts ten minutes from the ANPR duration without ever establishing when parking began or ended. The analysis collapses different concepts into a single time calculation and calls it compliance. It is not.

The reliance on ParkingEye v Beavis is careless and misleading. The assessor describes a £100 charge as being “in the region of £85” in order to squeeze the case into Beavis, ignoring that the Supreme Court stressed the importance of clear, prominent signage and proportionality in context. None of that analysis is actually performed. The case is cited as a talisman, not applied as authority.

Taken as a whole, this decision is not reasoned adjudication. It is a collection of assumptions, inferences, and boilerplate phrases deployed to justify a foregone conclusion. It suggests an assessor who lacks a working understanding of PoFA, contract law, evidential standards, and the limits of ANPR technology. Frankly, it reads as though it was written by someone intellectually malnourished and wholly unsuited to quasi-judicial decision-making. A career change would be kinder to both the assessor and the appellants subjected to this level of incompetence.

Send the following complaint by email to POPLA:

Subject: Formal complaint regarding assessor incompetence and defective reasoning

Dear POPLA Complaints Team,

I am writing to lodge a formal complaint about the reasoning and competence of the assessor who determined my recent appeal.

The decision demonstrates serious and repeated misunderstandings of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, basic principles of contract formation, and the evidential burdens that apply in civil disputes. Keeper liability was treated as a matter of impression rather than statutory compliance, signage was accepted on assertion rather than analysis, and ANPR entry/exit timestamps were wrongly equated with a proven period of parking.

The assessor dismissed appellant evidence on invented grounds, while accepting operator assertions and inferences without proof. Concepts such as landowner authority, grace periods, and the application of ParkingEye v Beavis were handled superficially and, in several respects, incorrectly. The phrase “there looks to be a contract” is particularly alarming in a decision that purports to assess legal liability.

This is not a disagreement over outcome; it is a complaint about the quality and integrity of the decision-making process. An assessor who reasons in this way should not be determining appeals that hinge on statutory interpretation and contractual analysis.

I ask that this decision be formally reviewed, that the assessor’s reasoning be examined as a training issue, and that POPLA confirm what steps will be taken to ensure assessors receive proper instruction in PoFA, contract law, and evidential standards before being permitted to determine further appeals.

I look forward to your substantive response.

Yours faithfully,

[Name]
[Reference / PCN number]

Just an update, I have received email from POPLA that the compliant has been excalated, not sure if they will re-evaluate my case but will let you know.