Free Traffic Legal Advice

It’s normal.
If you appeal on a single point, they can’t ignore it.
If you appeal on two or more points, they just ignore the points for which they have no easy answer.
If you appeal similarly to POPLA, you may well get the same treatment.
However if this comes to an appeal to a county court claim, the court won’t ignore the inconvenient points.
You should submit a POPLA appeal, if only to show that you have done all you can to avoid this going to court. Basically reuse what you already have.
However the majority of court claims are discontinued, and you have a number of good points to incorporate in an appeal if it comes to that.

OK thanks! I've submitted the following appeal to POPLA (just rehashed my original appeal)

Dear POPLA Adjudicator,

I am appealing against Parking Charge Notice reference 3154961961805, issued by UK Parking Control Ltd ("UKPC") in respect of an alleged contravention at Beckton Triangle Retail Park, 5 Claps Gate Lane, London, E6 6LG on 15/07/2026. UKPC rejected my initial appeal to them by letter dated 11 August 2026, without addressing the substance of the points raised below. I ask POPLA to allow this appeal and cancel the Parking Charge on the following grounds.

**First ground of appeal: the Notice to Keeper does not comply with Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012**

Schedule 4, paragraph 9(2)(a) of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 sets out mandatory requirements for a notice to keeper. It states that the notice must:

"specify the vehicle, the relevant land on which it was parked **and the period of parking** to which the notice relates."

The Notice to Keeper I received specifies only a single timestamp — "on the 15/07/2026 at 19:06:05" — as the moment the vehicle was recorded. It does not state a period of parking, i.e. it gives no start time and end time for the parking event to which the charge relates. A single point-in-time observation is not a "period of parking" within the meaning of paragraph 9(2)(a).

This defect also causes the Notice to Keeper to fail paragraph 9(2)(b), which requires the notice to "inform the keeper that the driver is required to pay parking charges in respect of the specified period of parking." As no period of parking has been specified in accordance with paragraph 9(2)(a), the notice cannot, and does not, properly inform me of a requirement to pay in respect of any specified period, and so paragraph 9(2)(b) is also not satisfied.

As the Notice to Keeper fails to meet these mandatory statutory requirements, it does not comply with paragraph 9 of Schedule 4. Consequently, the provisions in paragraph 6 of Schedule 4 which would otherwise transfer liability from the driver to the registered keeper do not apply. I am not obliged to name the driver, and in the absence of a compliant notice to keeper, there is no lawful basis on which keeper liability can be pursued in this case. I would ask POPLA to note that UKPC's rejection letter of 11 August 2026 did not address this point at all, and offered no response to it.

**Second ground of appeal: UK Parking Control Ltd has not evidenced that the signage terms were legible**

The Notice to Keeper asserts that "the Terms and Conditions of the car park were clearly and prominently displayed." The burden of proving this rests with UK Parking Control Ltd. However, the photographic evidence of the signage provided in support of this Parking Charge is not legible — the text of the terms and conditions cannot be read from the photograph, even on close inspection.

For a Parking Charge to be enforceable, UK Parking Control Ltd must be able to demonstrate that the terms were brought adequately to the attention of the driver by way of clear and legible signage, in line with the British Parking Association's Code of Practice, of which it is a member. In its rejection letter, UKPC asserts that its signage "complies fully with section 18 of the British Parking Association Code of Practice" and is "ample, clear and visible," but has not produced any legible image of the actual signage terms in support of this assertion. As the photographic evidence relied upon fails to establish that the signage was legible, UK Parking Control Ltd has not discharged its burden of proving that the terms were adequately displayed, and I do not accept that a contract on those terms was validly formed.

For these reasons, I ask POPLA to allow this appeal and cancel Parking Charge Notice reference 3154961961805 in full.

Yours faithfully,

For what it's worth, I ran the response through Claude and it analysed it against what I originally appealed based on. I know AI is never 100% accurate but thought I'd try it out! Here is its response


"Being straight about it — this isn't a toss-up, but it's not open-and-shut either. Here's how I read it, ground by ground.

Ground 1 (no period of parking) — your stronger ground, genuinely.
Para 9(2)(a) of Schedule 4 POFA 2012 doesn't carve out an exception for attendant-observed contraventions — it just requires the notice to specify "the period of parking." UKPC's rebuttal ("this wasn't ANPR so no period was needed") doesn't actually engage with the statutory wording; they're asserting an exception that isn't in the Act. Your vehicle was on site for some duration before the warden's 19:06 observation, and the NTK only captures a single moment of that, not a period. This is a well-established line of appeal and has succeeded at POPLA plenty of times.

The honest caveat: POPLA assessors are not perfectly consistent on this. Some have accepted UKPC's kind of argument — that for a contravention which is true at a single moment (parked outside a bay, as opposed to an overstay), a single observation time is adequate specification. It's a real split in outcomes, not settled law, so I'd rate this "more likely to succeed than not" rather than "certain."

Ground 2 (illegible signage) — weaker than when you filed it.
Your original point was solid: the image on the PCN itself was too blurry to read. But UKPC has now supplied a second, clear, contemporaneous photo (timestamped 19:06:02 on the actual day) of a wall sign near where you parked. That's a real evidentiary cure — it goes a decent way to discharging their burden on this specific point, whatever you think of the rest of their pack.

The other "signage evidence" photos dated 3 Feb 2020 are worth flagging (they're not evidence of what was displayed on 15/07/2026), but I wouldn't oversell that point — it's a credibility ding on the quality of their evidence pack, not a rebuttal that cancels out the one photo that is dated correctly and legible. An assessor is likely to weigh the good photo over the stale ones rather than throw out the good one because of the bad ones.

Net assessment: I'd put this as a reasonable-to-decent chance of success, carried mainly by Ground 1, with Ground 2 now doing less work than it was when you first appealed. If I had to bet, I'd lean toward "arguable win, not a sure thing" — worth pursuing, but I wouldn't walk in assuming it's in the bag. The comments stage is really your chance to sharpen Ground 1 (hold UKPC to the actual statutory text, not their "ANPR only" gloss) rather than lean on Ground 2, which has been partly answered.

Hi all

Any thoughts on this please? Only got a handful of days left before I need to reply to POPLA and it’s quite daunting doing this!
Would really appreciate it!

No idea who Claude is but I think you should continue to focus on the fact that the operator has wrongly stated the requirements surrounding the period of parking.

By that way, additionally, their NtK does not satisfy the second requirement of 9(2)(b) since the notice never specified "that the parking charges have not been paid in full" - 9(2)(b) actually has two requirements but your comments only refer to the first requirement. Draw the Assessors attention to the fact that the second requirement is not met either.

Thanks for the reply. Claude is an AI agent, like ChatGPT. so I'll focus on that. Is the rest of my draft letter OK you think?