This is an outrageous attempt at extortion. I will cover the criminal aspect of this case separately.
In this case the private parking company (LDK Group Ltd) uses a CCTV/ANPR camera fixed to a building on the far side of a public road, aiming across the carriageway towards a short strip of perpendicular bays on private land. The still images on the Parking Charge Notice (PCN) show the vehicle on the public road, at most slightly overhanging the public footway, with at least one set of wheels still on the carriageway. The private bays are further back, beyond a second set of double yellow lines and behind an “entrance” sign. The footway has highway furniture (for example a cycle lane sign) and appears to be adopted highway, not part of the private car park.
Contractually, a private parking firm can only form a parking contract and issue charges in respect of land it is authorised to control. A vehicle using or briefly stopping on the public highway or its footway is not on “relevant land” and is not within the area where the operator’s terms apply. Any alleged contract with the driver therefore never comes into existence if the vehicle never crosses the boundary into the private bays. Whether stopping on the double yellow lines or footway is permitted is a matter for the highway authority and public traffic law, not the unregulated private parking firm. On these facts the Keeper can safely say that no contract existed, no breach occurred and no civil debt is owed.
The evidential position supports that. The two CCTV stills are only 37 seconds apart, show the vehicle has moved several feet, and do not show it in any bay or clearly stationary on the private land. That is consistent with passing traffic or a brief manoeuvre on the highway, not with parking on private land. The burden is on the operator to prove that there was a period of parking on land they control. Their own images contradict their allegation that there was a breach of “terms and conditions of parking on private land”.
LDK’s notice also attempts to rely on Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA) to pursue the registered keeper, but the notice is defective. It does not specify a clear “period of parking” as required; instead it gives a single contravention time plus an “entry time”, which is not the same as a defined period of parking. The keeper liability wording does not properly reflect paragraph 9(2)(e): it states that the driver is required to pay and merely tells the keeper to name the driver if they were not driving, rather than inviting the keeper to pay or identify the driver. In any event PoFA can only apply to “relevant” private land, not to a vehicle that remained on the public highway. On either basis the operator cannot lawfully hold the Keeper liable under PoFA.
To obtain Keeper details from DVLA the operator must have “reasonable cause” to believe a parking contravention has occurred on land they manage. If their camera position means they routinely capture vehicles on the public road and then treat those captures as car-park contraventions, they have no reasonable cause for those DVLA requests when the images clearly show the vehicle was never on their land. Using that data to issue demands and threaten debt recovery or court is unlawful processing under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018: the data has been obtained and used without a proper lawful basis, not fairly, and in a way that is excessive for the true facts. That is both a breach of the DVLA KADOE contract and a personal data breach affecting the Keeper.
LDK are members of an Accredited Trade Association (ATA), the BPA, and on paper, their sites are supposedly “audited” for compliance with the ATA’s Approved Operator Scheme (AOS) and the Private Parking Single Code of Practice (PPsCoP). In reality, this site is being operated in a way that allows highway traffic to be mislabelled as private car park contraventions. The BPAs audit and badge do not excuse that behaviour; instead they raise systemic questions about how the ATA’s code is being applied and whether it is protecting consumers as claimed.
From April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC) governs unfair commercial practices. Presenting stopping on the public highway as a “breach of terms and conditions of parking on private land”, dressing it up with defective PoFA wording, and using it to pressure keepers into paying to avoid debt recovery or court is capable of being an unfair commercial practice. It is misleading about the legal basis of the charge, omits the material fact that the vehicle was never on the operator’s land, and shows a lack of professional diligence. A reasonable consumer is likely to be misled into paying a charge they do not owe. This is exactly the kind of pattern that can be reported to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) under the DMCC for investigation and potential enforcement.
The Keeper therefore has several strands of recourse. First, they can robustly deny liability to LDK on the grounds of not being on relevant land, no contract, no breach and non-compliant PoFA wording, pointing out that the company’s own photographs exonerate the driver. Secondly, they can complain to DVLA that their data was obtained without reasonable cause, and to the Information Commissioner that it has been processed unlawfully and unfairly. Thirdly, they can complain to the BPA that its member is misusing CCTV and issuing charges where there is no private land contravention, and they can copy that to the CMA with a DMCC-focused narrative explaining the misleading and coercive nature of the practice.
Finally, because the PCN and follow-up threats have been based on unlawful processing of personal data and a non-existent legal liability, the Keeper has a potential claim for compensation for distress and anxiety under the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). However, any such claim would usually only be worth a modest sum and would depend on evidence that the distress suffered goes beyond ordinary annoyance. As a result, for now, the Keeper should treat this primarily as a matter of defeating the PCN and making strong regulatory complaints, keeping the option of a small damages claim or counterclaim in reserve if the operator escalates the matter to court.
As for the “criminal” aspect, from a criminal-law perspective, what matters is not whether the parking charge is “unfair” in a civil sense, but whether there is evidence that the operator is deliberately making false assertions to obtain money and data.
On the facts as described above, the operator’s own CCTV stills show that the vehicle never left the public highway and never entered the private bays they manage. Despite that, they are issuing a PCN that states there was a breach of terms and conditions of parking on private land, quoting contract-law concepts and PoFA-style keeper liability, and demanding payment with threats of debt recovery and court action. To get the Keeper’s address they must also have certified to DVLA that they had reasonable cause to believe a parking contravention had occurred on land they control.
If that pattern is deliberate rather than a one-off mistake, it is capable of engaging the Fraud Act 2006. Fraud by false representation occurs where a person makes a representation that is false or misleading, knows that it is or might be false or misleading, and intends by it to make a gain for themselves or cause loss to another. Here, the representations are: “you parked on our private land in breach of our terms”, “you owe us £100”, and “we have reasonable cause to obtain DVLA data”. If the operator knows perfectly well that the vehicle was still on the highway and that no such contract ever existed, yet uses those statements to get keeper data and demand money, that fits squarely within the structure of fraud by false representation. The fact that the demand is dressed up as a “civil parking charge” does not, by itself, prevent it being treated as fraud if the underlying basis is knowingly false.
There is also a potential criminal angle under the Data Protection Act 2018. DVLA is the data controller for keeper records, and the operator only has a route to that data because DVLA relies on their certification of reasonable cause. If an operator knowingly misuses that route to obtain personal data in the absence of any genuine contravention on their land, and then uses that data to send threatening demands, that can be characterised as obtaining and using personal data without a proper lawful basis. In extreme or repeated cases, that behaviour can move beyond regulatory breach and into the territory of criminal misuse of personal data.
People often use the word “extortion” here. In English law the nearest offence is blackmail, which requires an unwarranted demand with menaces. A demand for money backed by the threat of lawful civil proceedings is not usually blackmail if the person honestly believes the money is owed. It only starts to resemble blackmail if there is no honest belief in any debt at all and the threat is being used purely as a lever of fear. In practice, police and prosecutors are very slow to treat parking charge demands as blackmail, even when the underlying claim looks hopeless, so the more realistic criminal route is to frame it as fraud and misuse of data.
The key practical point is this: when a firm systematically issues tickets in situations where its own evidence shows no contravention on its land, and it repeatedly uses those false assertions to tap into DVLA data and demand money, that is not just sharp civil practice. It is capable of amounting to criminal conduct under the Fraud Act and the data protection regime. Whether the police or CPS will act is another question, but there is nothing fanciful about describing the behaviour, in complaints to regulators or to your MP, as potentially fraudulent use of DVLA data and false representation to obtain money.
So, what next? You appeal only as the Keeper, outlining everything I have described above. You can then follow up, if they reject, with the regulatory complaints. But step one is to get a strong appeal/complaint on record.
Use the following as your appeal:
Re: Parking Charge Notice [PCN number], Vehicle [VRM], Date [date]
I write as the registered keeper. I deny any liability for this charge and require you to cancel it immediately.
Your own CCTV stills show the vehicle entirely on the public highway and/or its footway, with at least one set of wheels on the carriageway at all times. The private bays you manage are further in, beyond the inner double yellow lines and behind the entrance sign. At no point is the vehicle shown on your private land. You therefore have no contractual nexus with the driver, no “relevant land” within the meaning of PoFA, and no lawful basis to issue a parking charge.
Any suggestion of keeper liability under Schedule 4 PoFA is misconceived. PoFA cannot apply where the vehicle was on a public highway, which is excluded from the definition of relevant land. In addition, your Notice to Keeper is not compliant: it does not state any clear period of parking, only an “entry” time and a single contravention time, and your wording does not invite the keeper to pay as required by paragraph 9(2)(e). You cannot, in law, transfer any liability to the keeper.
In order to obtain my details from DVLA you must have certified that you had “reasonable cause” to believe a parking contravention occurred on land you manage. Your own images prove the opposite. You have therefore obtained and used my personal data without reasonable cause and without a lawful basis, in breach of UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and your KADOE contract with DVLA.
The pattern here is that you are using off-site CCTV to harvest VRMs of vehicles on the public road, falsely re-describing those incidents as contraventions “on private land”, and then using that false basis to obtain keeper data and demand money with threats of debt recovery and court. That conduct is capable of amounting to fraud by false representation under the Fraud Act 2006, as well as an unfair commercial practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. If you do not cancel this charge I will treat your refusal as a deliberate decision to persist in that course of conduct.
As you are members of the BPA’s Approved Operator Scheme, if you refuse to cancel you are required to issue a POPLA verification code. For the avoidance of doubt, any use I make of POPLA will not prevent me from reporting this case, with your images and correspondence, to DVLA, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the BPA, the Competition and Markets Authority and my Member of Parliament, and from inviting them to consider both the regulatory and criminal aspects of your behaviour. I also reserve the right to report this as a suspected fraud to the police.
I require written confirmation that this Parking Charge Notice has been cancelled and that my personal data has been erased from your systems, save for a single suppression record. I will not be naming the driver and I do not consent to any further use or sharing of my personal data except as strictly required by law or for the purpose of cancelling this charge.
