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Met up with a colleague with a view to sharing a car to a meeting (all green and on message). Met him at JL car park but noticed parking signs limiting stay etc. So we both headed to Tesco and parked well away in the corner. Didn't see signs there but the inevitable happened and the Parking Charge Notice from Euro Car Parks has just arrived.
Problem being that it was the OH's car and she hadn't opened post for a few days. This gives me tonight to settle the reduced fine of £60.
However, the date of event was 27/9 and the notice states that date issued in 14/10. Do these companies have to issue within 14 days for the Notice to be valid or is that just police issued fines?
Further complication is it is a lease car so they say that they wrote to the registered keeper to get our details. They don't say when they did that. Date of issue would still be the same though I assume?
If the 14 day thing doesn't apply then I'll just pay up but if they've breached the rules then it could be worth appealing.
Any ideas please?
Off the top of my head after last time I had this a few years ago, either the ticket is PoFA compliant in which case, they need to issue to the registered keeper in 14 days. You can't ignore PoFA tickets but if outside the 14 days for first contact, you don't have to incriminate yourself, just tell them it's out of date and stick to your guns.
If it's not PoFA, then they probably know it's outside the 14 days and are just trying it on and it's fine to ignore.
In my case, the lease company only forwarded one side of the ticket so I couldn't tell if it was PoFA or not. Wrote back and told them but didn't hear back for a year when debt collectors started chasing them. I pointed out they failed to send me the whole ticket despite me asking so it wasn't my problem. Never heard about it again.
This is a notice to hirer rather than notice to keeper. So the lease company has provided our details, which is fair, but this actual letter is from the parking company.
That's the bit I'm unsure of. They should, according to a bit of googling, have provided me with a copy of the hire agreement, but didn't.
I can't find a reference in the POFA about the serving notice within 14 days
Just pay the charge, you used Tesco land outside of the contract you entered into, not seeing the signs isn't an excuse, there will have been many. Tesco aren't providing free parking for you to car share, if you don't like it, take it up with Tesco. The supermarkets only enforce on car parks they have problems with, which you contributed to.
And yes the 14 days relates to POFA, not sure how that works where the car is a lease but the you're lucky they didnt just pay and pass the charge onto you with an admin fee.
For PCN's issued in a car park controlled by ANPR then PoFA definitely states they must be issued in 14 days.
I've just won what could have been a very costly set of tickets on this point at the small claims court...
Did you park there too long or not ?
Sorry, but as evangelical bike riders you should be a good boy....
PoFA 2012 Schedule 9, section 4 I believe is where the 14 days from the day after the event is mentioned.
Thanks all
Stumpyjohn - the sanctimony took longer than I expected, rules work both ways, yes we broke them but seemingly so did the parking company.
Onzadog - thanks. That refers to the notice to keeper and this is a notice to hirer. It doesn't provide any specific mention of when the notice to keeper was issued.
I have on my notice to hirer:
Date of event 27/9
Date issued 14/10
Date 14/10
Just pay the charge, you used Tesco land
+1
Probably not what you want to hear, but paid locations are available to avoid charges like this and can be researched before departure.
Supermarkets don't exist to offer free car parking to anyone for any period of time.
@andrewreay - i agree with you and if the parking company has adhered to their legal requirements I will pay. However, I suspect that issuing the notice beyond the 14 day limit breaches that requirement.
Therefore, one breach each and a draw. Or are you suggesting the rules only apply one way?
Chances are, they'll have informed the hire company within 14 days looking at those dates, so that possible get out isn't going to work if it is PoFA.
If it doesn't say it's PoFA then it's a different story.
Given that you could, in theory, have parked on a stranger's drive with no comeback, how come it's the big companies that get the protection?
Even get the feeling that a lot of the legislation in this country is not there in the name of fairness or for the benefit of the people.
Just playing devils advocate and highlighting some of the hypocrisy in our societal rules.
Hmmm. If the rule breached was about a grace period, clarity of signage or anything fundamental, contest away.
But you're arguing a technicality - a meaningless 24 hour difference in notice period (if at all) where I can't think of a real world impact. On the other side, you've clearly breached the spirit of the rule restricting parking.
Go ahead and be Mr Loophole. But those that believe in Karma might wonder what becomes of taking the technical highground in a minor case such as this. In future, what might come the other way?
Your conscience, your choice.
I'd go with the karma argument if it was an independent country pub on a busy weekend. You could reason that you've cost them money at a time while they're trying to recover from lockdown. But karma against tax avoiding mega corp Tesco who farm "enforcement" out to parkingsharks.com, not so much.
I have no guilt or conscience issues about leaving a car in a near empty car park, attached to a shop in which I spend thousands a year. I didn't murder anybody! They issue thousands of these weekly I suspect, its not asking too much for them to do it legally is it?
As I've mentioned, if they are playing with a straight bat then I'll pay, if they're not then I won't. This is all I'm trying to ascertain.
It seems that Onzadog makes a good point in that their obligation is to inform the keeper within 14 days and they could well have done that, tho the letter that we have doesn't provide a copy of that communication, which I understand it should have.
Letter of the rules stuff and they fail in sections 13 and 14 of POFA, its just whether the stress of fighting it is worth it. On the other hand, is it morally acceptable to not fight it...
Oh, and there is no mention on the notice of POFA at all. Not sure if that makes it harder or easier to appeal
That refers to the notice to keeper and this is a notice to hirer.
AIUI,
They have 14 days from the alleged infraction to issue notice. If it's a lease car then the registered keeper is not you, it is whoever you have a finance agreement with. Is your date issued the date they notified the keeper or the date they notified you on information provided by the lease co? If the former then you have an argument, if the latter then you're shit out.
I think.
But you’re arguing a technicality
Surely technicalities apply both ways. One could argue that being charged £60 for overstaying on a near-empty, free car park is also a 'technicality'.
Tell you what I'd do OP. I'd contact Tesco and see if they'll cancel it for you as a 'gesture of goodwill' given that you're a regular customer.
Cougar
You're right I think about who they needed to issue a notice to. However, they don't tell me in the notice to hirer when they made that contact. They should have provided a copy of that notice (to keeper - the lease company) with our notice (to hirer) but didn't.
It'll take time and stress but they've clearly dropped a hollock on this. They of course know this but care not a jot!
I'll also try the Tesco route but its so late in the process, wrg to reduced fine option that it may realistically be too late.
If there's no declaration that it's PoFA then my understanding is that it defaults to the old rules. Back when you could refuse to give them details of the driver. I believe there are template letters online that say something along the lines of
As this penalty charge notice is not compliant with PoFA 2012 I, as hirer of the vehicle, am not obligated to identify the driver of the vehicle to you and will not be doing so.
The catch with this is if you were the only person insured by the hire company to drive it.
Fighting it basically means holding your position and nerve and keep stepping it up through each step of the process until it gets decided at independent arbitration. They're just betting on you bottling it before you get there.
The parking company hasn't done anything wrong, the 14 days isn't a limit on issuing the PCN, it's to do with having to identify the driver. The lease company did this within the 14 days, no technicality involved.
As for the contract breach, which is what the charge is for, you breached the terms of the contract you freely entered into, it doesnt disappear after 14 days same as any other contract dispute.
Regarding the comments above, there's nothing stopping the same rules being applied to your drive, you'd have to pay the parking company to enforce Land find one prepared to do it) as they are the ones that have jumped through the hoops to get access to the DVLA, businesses like Tesco get it for free or even make money out of it as more than enough people don't think the rules apply to them so the cost of the enforcement is more than covered by the PCNs.
OP your argument is with Tesco, they get to decide who does and doesn't get to park on their land and what the terms are, it doesnt matter what you think or whether you think it fair or not. If you don't like it shop somewhere else, probably Waitrose as they don't enforce in their car parks, I'd avoid ASDA, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Lidl, Aldi and Booths though as they all enforce on car parks that suffer abuse, bit like the car park you parked in. The supermarkets don't enforce on car parks they don't need to, Rawtenstall is a good example, Tesco, Asda and Lidl don't have ANPR as they don't have issues with the car parks being rammed with non customers, Sainsburys in Burnley does enforce as everyone used to park there and walk into town, or if the Clarets were playing at home.
Stumpy - not quite right I'm afraid, the lease company identified the hirer not the driver.
Yes fair point, gives you a loop hole but you still breached the contract.
Sainsburys in Burnley does enforce as everyone used to park there and walk into town, or if the Clarets were playing at home.
Aye, they've got matrix signs on the entrance which flash up your registration. "AB69 XYZ, you have two hours to comply!" or some such.
I did, as I've admitted several times already. They also breached the contract...
I'll give it a shot at appealing with Popla after the parking company inevitably reject my intial appeal!
If there’s no declaration that it’s PoFA then my understanding is that it defaults to the old rules. Back when you could refuse to give them details of the driver. I believe there are template letters online that say something along the lines of
As this penalty charge notice is not compliant with PoFA 2012 I, as hirer of the vehicle, am not obligated to identify the driver of the vehicle to you and will not be doing so.
If you refuse this and the Parking Co then bounce it back to the keeper having served that within the 14d, what does your contract with the lease co say?
Could you be in worse with admin costs or whatever?
RE-reading this it can't be an exercisable loophole surely.
If it is then the lease companies are missing a trick.......I've written some copy for them.
"And best of all, if you lease through us you get free parking in any private car park. Save hundreds every year - just park, don't buy a ticket, and when the parking company send us, the registered keeper, the request for driver identity we'll just sit on it until the 14th day and then send it back. They can't then serve you within the 14 day period and you can get out on a technicality. Simples!"
From that Arval link - and I suspect the others will be similar - you (your wife) might already have been hit with admin charges that are added to the monthly payment and will shortly be ringing bells in the accounts department at her work or if a personal lease coming direct to you. And if you continue to argue the point those admin charges will be getting higher for the work they spend saying to the parking co that they've done what they have to do.
What does your lease agreement say? Morally and fiscally, paying the £60 and whatever admin leaseco already have added sounds like the right thing to do.
I did, as I’ve admitted several times already. They also breached the contract…
I’ll give it a shot at appealing with Popla after the parking company inevitably reject my intial appeal!
Or you could pop over to Tesco and speak to the Store Manager nicely and see if they’ll cancel the ticket.
Just pay the fine, you shouldn't of parked there. Trying to justify it with the reason they didn't get the fine to you quick enough sure to the car being a lease is a bit off.
Just pop in see the store manager and use your argument that you spend thousands there. Maybe point out that you pay his wages as well?
Maybe it's me, but if I wanted to leave my car parked up for a number of hours/days etc I'd be looking for somewhere legal to do it - usually a council/NCP car park or maybe a street (but never residential), and I'd have already accepted I was paying.
I didn't perhaps add that I had never intended the stay to exceed the maximum duration, just wanted somewhere convenient to meet up and use one car. We got delayed as the M6 was shut and we moved about a mile in three hours.
To be honest, even though I wanted to tap into others' experiences, I expected almost universal condemnation - this being righteuos STW after all. Just fascinates me that a still signifcant portion of respondents seem only to care about personal responsibility and are happy for corporate responsibility to be a 'nice to have'.
Anyway, appeal underway, lesson learnt.
I care about corporate responsibility so wouldn't be giving my money to Tesco
I also care about personal responsibility and wouldn't have tried to park free where it is not allowed
See how you can care about both?
I see, which is why I said a portion, not all. If everybody plays to the same rules then all's good isn't it.
I break the rules, they don't = my problem
I play to the rule, they break them = their problem
In this case nobody played to the rules so why should one party be penalised?
I still don't follow what they did that's outside the rules, what are the rules in this case?
Did they really write to them to ask your details, or did they actually inform the registered keeper within 14 days which is the rules. Then the lease co identified you as the 'driver' (rather your OH).
What does your OH's lease agreement say about fines, etc? That'll be what you're in for in the end. Have you told your lease co you are going to appeal (or company if it's a company car)?
https://www.osv.ltd.uk/parking-ticket-on-lease-car/
Read this in conjunction with PoFA Scheudule 4 (if you can be bothered with the latter). It covers the rules for both ANPR and non-ANPR car parks as the provisions for PoFA differ.
There are handy flowcharts and a section on hire cars also.
In this case nobody played to the rules so why should one party be penalised?
So far only one side is proven and admitted not playing by the rules.
The same side that is busy trying to latch onto any possibly way to get out of paying.
I suspect you might find your "loophole" isnt infact a loophole.
otherjonv - they are outside the rules not (necessarily) because of the time delay for them to send a notice but because of the subsequent information that they are obliged by law to provide us. This includes a copy of the original notice to keeper (the lease company) - otherwise how can we tell that they did in fact issue the notice within 14 days? They are also obliged by law to provide photographic evidence, they haven't thus far. They are further required by law (all detailed in the POFA 2012) to obtain a copy of the lease agreement and supply that to us - surprise, surprise they haven't done that either. A few other things as well not listed here.
Trail rat - these are not loopholes, they're constituent parts of a well defined legal framework. A framework designed to prevent cowboy tactics and intimidation.
Not much to add other than the car park may not even belong to tesco, our local huge superstore tesco has a car park that is actually owned by a parking company (it serves a number of shops)
Trail rat – these are not loopholes, they’re constituent parts of a well defined legal framework. A framework designed to prevent cowboy tactics and intimidation.
When you report a successful appeal - I'll take your word for that.
As you are admitting to the crime but now looking at technicalities, have you spoken to your wife and asked her why she delayed opening the letter? That has caused your issue with last day opportunity to pay a winning fee price not the fact it was possibly issued late.
So you got caught and admit you overstayed but you are contesting whether you should pay or not...you should as the delay wasn't caused by the parking company.
However, aware that isn't what you want to hear...so contest away...
@dickbarton - it's not (only) to do with dates, rather the dox that are required to be supplied to the hirer by the parking company; as well as all the usual stuff (evidence of the infringement, how to pay, discount for early settlement, etc.) they're supposed to supply the hirer a copy of their own hire agreement, which they get from the lease co, which shows the hirer has agreed to being liable for fines and parking tickets. cb says they haven't supplied all this.
***
Thanks cb. I've had a look at POFA too and I agree with you. If they haven't sent them so far then I think you have a valid loophole, in your reading do they have the chance to serve again?
I'm surprised though, that for a company that's business is parking charges, they aren't absolutely on point with this in the first instance, with the number of lease cars on the roads can't be the first time they've had to deal with a hirer and can't surely be the first time anyone's rejected / appealed.
I'm now thinking that perhaps it's not them but the lease company haven't suppliedthe docs, and they will be getting another request to provide to ParkingCo and will be adding another load of admin charges to your fees. One of the links above said £25-50 per time, check your lease agreement and make sure you aren't going to win a Pyrrhic victory!
The first thing you should do is appeal. You then have a further 14, 21 or 28 days to build your case, or decide to pay.
depends - if the grounds for appeal are that they haven't supplied the docs required, and that gets sent back to leaseco to rectify because they didn't, you might end up with more in admin fees from the leaseco than the fine in the first place.
Now whether you can avoid / counterclaim for them on the grounds of their shoddy paperwork surrounding your offence (which let's not forget you admitted, on STW, second only to Hansard, the London Gazette and bloke down the pub as absolute records of fact!!) - that'll really be a ground breaking case. They're readying the Central Courts for the press interest as we speak 😉
If I have read it correctly, you just had to pay a £60 fine. How much time are you willing to spend on trying (and potentially failing) to recoup £60? That would be the first question I would ask myself as I value my time and £60 doesn't buy much of it.
The parking co probably can't get the documentation required, that will be down to the lease co and they probably won't hand it over, GDPR and all that.
Anyway you carry on, the PCN has served it's purpose, it's acted as as deterrent to stop you parking there again. Personally I'd have paid the £60 and got on with my life. You do realise the parking co will have whole teams of minimum wage employees dealing with people like the OP, and will have heard all the excuses and loopholes (perceived and otherwise) before, they are not going to get upset about it like the OP, at some point an algorithm will tell them to drop it, or possibly take it to court.
So many high horses.
If you want to take the moral route, the OP got stuck behind a large traffic jam and returned far later than he intended. It wasn't his fault. Morally, parking enforcement / the car park owners should take this into account.
If you want to take the 'you did the crime' route, then the legal process is well-defined and has to be followed for any case to be valid. Murder enquiries will be thrown out of court if the prosecutors do not follow due process, let alone some bloke overstaying the free parking at the back of a near-empty car park belonging to a store where he's a regular customer.
You can't have it both ways and cry about loopholes. It's either a legitimate charge or it isn't.
I'd like to see that appeal pan out, I used your car park to car share and got stuck in the motorway, please can I be let off despite doing exactly what you were trying to prevent.
In this case the loophole is around the compulsion to name the driver, not the issuing of the PCN. In this case the law needs changing to extend the deadline to say 3 months and deal with the anomalies around lease cars.
I’d agree cougar, it has to be done properly.
However, i think I’m in the ‘just pay it and get on with life’ camp.
My attitude would probably change if it was £260 though, that’s a lot to me.
But £60? Life’s too short imo.
In this case the law needs changing
Yes, agreed, but.
It hasn't been.
I should just ask Cougar to write my replies, sums up what I've been trying to explain.
They have informed me that the clock has stopped so to speak in terms of the option to pay the reduced fine if (almost certainly when) they reject my appeal.
As I understand it, I can then pay up or appeal to Popla with the same evidence supplied to the parking company. If I do that and lose, then I have to pay £100.
Not heard from the lease company yet but if they are charging us and I win the appeal then they will have to drop their charges as well (as I understand via reading cases).
We'll see, will update win or lose!
My attitude would probably change if it was £260 though, that’s a lot to me.
But £60? Life’s too short imo.
Cynically,
That's likely why it's set at the figure it is. They aren't stupid. Too low and they reduce their profit, too high and people are more likely to fight rather than just roll over and pay it.
Private companies cannot issue penalty fines beyond recouping losses. Eg, if your illicit parking obstructed legit customers from their weekly shop then a £60 'fine' might be reasonable. Hence it's now a "charge" rather than a penalty. First two hours free, after that it's £60. Whether that's a reasonable stance I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
@cb at the risk of repeating myself and others,
Have you spoken with Tesco yet? The parking enforcement company are acting on their instruction.
@cougar, not yet, was a rush to get the appeal in for reasons given. I will do.
OP got stuck behind a large traffic jam and returned far later than he intended. It wasn’t his fault. Morally, parking enforcement / the car park owners should take this into account.
Please show working on this one. Was this the motorway on the way to the Tesco the carparks for ?
Don't see why they should consider it at all
But good luck anyway
Private companies cannot issue penalty fines beyond recouping losses. Eg, if your illicit parking obstructed legit customers from their weekly shop then a £60 ‘fine’ might be reasonable. Hence it’s now a “charge” rather than a penalty. First two hours free, after that it’s £60. Whether that’s a reasonable stance I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.
Yes they can. Beavis vs Parkingeye
- the Supreme court ruled that it could be high enough to be a deterrent "(the company) had 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", but not so high as to be unconscionable.
https://gatehouselaw.co.uk/the-law-on-penalties-after-parkingeye-v-beavis/
.