Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi all,

Hoping someone here can help or offer advice.

I recently received a PCN (Parking Charge Notice)
10135769439 from Civil Enforcement Ltd after parking at Swanley Town Council car park (New Barn Road), England on 3rd May 2025 from 15:20 to 17:02.

Here’s what happened:
• We arrived at the car park with our young daughter and got a bit distracted with settling her, so we forgot to pay immediately.
• A bit later, we checked the Swanley Park website, which stated that you could pay for parking before leaving.
• We followed that advice and paid via YourParkingSpace, booking a session from 16:14 to 19:14.
• I’ve now realised we accidentally selected the wrong car park on the app (we picked The Birches instead of New Barn Road), even though it’s the same town and just a short distance away.
• The payment included our full stay time and even extended beyond it. • The vehicle registration and date are correct, and I have proof of the payment.

I appealed to Civil Enforcement explaining all this and included the evidence of my payment, but they’ve rejected it. Now they’ve given me a POPLA code, and I’m not sure what to do.

If I go to POPLA and lose, I’ll owe £100 (instead of the discounted £60 if I just pay now). But I feel like it’s so unfair since I did pay for parking and just made a simple mistake selecting the car park name from the list.

Has anyone successfully appealed a similar case with POPLA? Is it worth risking the £40 discount to fight this?

Thanks for reading — any advice or similar experiences really appreciated.

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Companies such as CEL often don’t receive 1p of the money you pay to park, they hand this over to the land owner in return for which they get to keep all the money they manage to extract from people who don’t comply with their rules. So they don’t care about your mistake, they just want your money.

I’m just trying to explain their modus operandi, but without more information in the form of the documents requested above we’re only able to guess. Being fair or unfair doesn’t come into it. You’ve got to play their game and fight on technical details.

Photo of sign - you can pay before you leave

Website - https://www.swanleypark.co.uk/parking-charges/

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You’ve been asked to show the original Notice to Keeper (NtK) but have failed to do so. However, reading your appeal, you have probably blown any guaranteed win by identifying the driver.

For future reference, never identify the driver. The driver is always liable but they had no idea who the driver was until you told them. They know you are the Keeper, so you should only reference the driver in the third person. No “Imdid this or that”, only “the driver did this or that”.

You can try and appeal to POPLA but I doubt that you’d have any success there. Mitigation is not considered. If you feel the PCN has been isued unfairly, you will have to be prepared to fight this all the way to litigation, which, if the advice is followed, would most likely end up as a discontinuation.

No guarantees, but based on experience with CEL, a highly likely outcome.

But might be a risk of legal fees ?!

Costs are very limited in the Small Claims track, so your exposure to costs would be limited. A loss in court would generally be in the region of £200-220

...and the back?

Is this car park owned by the town council or is it just called that? If the council leases or licences the land to CEL, or appoints them to enforce through private contractual terms, then:

The car park is not considered "relevant land" under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA) if it remains under statutory control (e.g., by the council).

CEL cannot rely on PoFA Schedule 4 to pursue the registered keeper if the driver is unknown.

Contact Swanley Town Council directly to inquire about the enforcement arrangements for the New Barn Road car park. Also check for Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs). Search local authority records for any TROs applicable to the car park, which would signify statutory control.

I’ve just called swanley park and the lady told me my PCN has been cancelled! Woooo