What follows explains why POPLA is wrong to claim it has lawful authority to adjudicate so-called “Penalty Notices” issued under the Railway Byelaws, and why its continued involvement exposes its operator, Trust Alliance Group Limited, to legal and regulatory risk.

  Byelaws - POPLA Position and DFT Response.pdf (Size: 505.17 KB / Downloads: 0)

POPLA is not a statutory tribunal. It is a private dispute resolution service operated by Trust Alliance Group Limited, trading as POPLA. Its published remit is to consider appeals against civil Parking Charge Notices issued by private parking operators. It has no criminal jurisdiction and no statutory power to determine liability under criminal or quasi-criminal law.

POPLA now asserts that it has authority to adjudicate “Penalty Notices under Railway Byelaws” based on correspondence with the Department for Transport in 2018. That correspondence is often relied upon by POPLA as justification for its role in railway land cases. When examined properly, it does not support POPLA’s position.

The DfT correspondence is not legislation, not a statutory direction, not legal advice and not a delegation of authority. It is a policy letter expressing a departmental view at that time. The key passage relied upon by POPLA states that nothing in the Railway Byelaws prohibits parking operators from offering an appeal process, and that the DfT would encourage operators to reinstate independent appeals. That is all. Encouragement is not authorisation. The letter does not confer jurisdiction, does not empower POPLA to determine liability, does not approve the creation of private penalties and does not permit POPLA to adjudicate criminal matters.

Crucially, the same DfT letter draws a clear distinction between penalties and prosecution. It confirms that prosecution for Railway Byelaw offences is a separate process which can only take place in the magistrates’ court. The letter does not state that a Penalty Notice creates criminal liability, nor does it authorise private companies to threaten criminal prosecution or criminal records as a means of securing payment. Those threats appear in operator notices and POPLA decisions, but they do not appear anywhere in the DfT correspondence.

POPLA went further than the DfT ever did. In its own internal guidance produced in response to the 2018 correspondence, POPLA invented rules that do not exist in law. It decided that it would presume the registered keeper to be the “owner” unless proven otherwise, borrowing concepts from local authority parking regimes. The Railway Byelaws contain no such presumption. DVLA keeper data is not proof of ownership, and nothing in the Byelaws allows a private appeals body to reverse the burden of proof. This was not interpretation of the law; it was policy fabrication.

The problem is compounded by how these Penalty Notices are actually used. Operators such as APCOA issue documents framed as criminal penalties, refer to offences, threaten prosecution and criminal records, yet demand payment to themselves, not to a court or the public purse. POPLA then adjudicates those demands as if they were civil disputes, giving them an appearance of legitimacy. That hybrid approach has no basis in statute.

The situation has become even clearer following the amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Act which took effect on 24 December 2025 and brought railway land within the definition of relevant land for civil parking enforcement. That amendment did not abolish the Railway Byelaws, did not convert Byelaw penalties into civil charges and did not give private companies criminal enforcement powers. What it did do was create a clear civil route for parking enforcement if operators choose to use it. If an operator now wants keeper liability, it must issue a civil Parking Charge Notice and comply strictly with PoFA. If it chooses instead to issue a Penalty Notice under the Railway Byelaws, it is choosing the criminal route, where only a magistrates’ court can determine liability. POPLA cannot sit in the middle and do both.

Against that background, POPLA’s continued reliance on a non-binding 2018 policy letter to justify adjudicating criminally framed Penalty Notices is untenable. It is applying its own invented rules, based on analogy rather than law, in a context involving threats of criminal consequences. That is not within its published remit and not something the DfT ever authorised.

As a private company, Trust Alliance Group Limited is not immune from legal consequences if it misrepresents its authority, misstates the law or facilitates practices that mislead consumers about criminal liability. The publication of the POPLA/DfT correspondence makes clear that POPLA’s authority has been overstated and that its current position rests on interpretation rather than law. Consumers, operators and regulators should understand that POPLA is not a court, does not have criminal jurisdiction, and has no lawful basis to adjudicate Penalty Notices issued for alleged breaches of the Railway Byelaws.

This matters because the use of criminal language and threats of prosecution to coerce payment is a serious issue. Where a private appeals service lends credibility to that practice without lawful authority, it risks crossing from error into unlawfulness.

Here is some media people can use in their submissions, particularly with respect to the IPC and its "independent" appeals service (IAS) as compelling evidence for why nothing short of a truly independent external appeals service with truly impartial qualified adjudicators will suffice.

It also helps to evidence that competing appeals services has created a race to the bottom where the IPC is happy to fill the void and provide a pro-operator model that funnels second stage appeals to a dismissal enabling the debt recovery wheeze and the additional £70 out of thin air to be tacked onto PCNs, all to the detriment of consumers.

First, the laughable ownership structure of the IAS with regards to the IPC, UNITI and Will Hurley:

   

Second, the embarrassing adjudication outcome stats for the IAS vs POPLA (which time and again also makes fundamental errors).  The numbers below are all taken from the respective annual activity reports for those years.  The IAS now actually has all its activity reports online but only the years below actually include the relevant stats for adjudication outcomes for the IAS.  

Important note for these numbers:

For 2018, the IAS only listed the percentage outcome and not the absolute numbers so the ones shown here were back-calculated and may differ slightly from the true value (whatever they might be).

   

Also something else to include is the embarrassing IPC corporate slide deck from 2016 likely made to woo operators over to the IPC from the BPA.  Of particular note is slide 7 where the IPC slide deck proudly states how the IAS has a 95% average "success" rate for operators vs POPLA's lower "success" rate in adjudicating PCN appeals.  

   

The slideshow is available at:
https://www.imperial.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IPC-membership-benefits.pptx

If that link magically stops working, I've made sure it is logged on the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250805234205/https://www.imperial.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IPC-membership-benefits.pptx

You might note the slide deck's author is John Davies of Gladstones.

Type of parking ticket: Parking Charge Notice (PCN) or Charge Notice (CN)

Have you received a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) for an alleged contravention at an airport? Perhaps you were caught out by a barrierless pick-up or drop-off zone, forgot to pay an excessive fee, or later received a Notice to Keeper (NtK), or if the vehicle is leased or hired, a Notice to Hirer (NtH).

You are far from alone. Thousands of motorists are being caught by these schemes. What many do not realise is that airport PCNs issued by private parking companies are, in practice, unenforceable against the registered keeper, provided the driver is not identified.

There is no legal obligation to identify the driver. None.

In most cases, the NtK is sent to the registered keeper. If the vehicle is leased or hired, the hire company will usually transfer liability to the hirer, after which a fresh NtH is issued. At that point, the operator still does not know who the driver was. The only way they ever find out is if the recipient tells them.

Unfortunately, many people do exactly that, often unintentionally, by using “I” instead of referring to “the driver”. Once the driver is identified, the parking company finally has someone they can pursue.

This is a critical point: the only potentially liable party under contract law is the driver. There is no presumption in law that the registered keeper or hirer was the driver. That position has been clearly supported by persuasive authority. In VCS Ltd v Edward (2023) [H0KF6C9C], HHJ Gargan stated:

“…it is consistent with the appropriate probability analysis whereby simply because somebody is a registered keeper, it does not mean on balance of probability they were driving on this occasion, because one simply cannot tell.”

So how do private parking companies usually attempt to bypass this problem? Through the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA). Under PoFA, and only if strict statutory conditions are met, liability for an alleged contractual breach may be transferred from an unidentified driver to the registered keeper.

However, PoFA does not apply to land that is subject to statutory control. Airports fall squarely into that category, as they are governed by airport byelaws. As a result, airport land is not “relevant land” for the purposes of PoFA.

The consequence is straightforward: where an alleged contravention occurs at an airport, a private parking company has no lawful mechanism to pursue the registered keeper if the driver is not identified. They can only pursue the driver, whose identity they do not know.

Most motorists are unaware of this and either pay out of fear or inadvertently identify the driver, handing the operator exactly what it needs. If the driver is not identified, the operator is stuck.

I have a 100% success rate in appeals against airport PCNs on this basis alone. A simple appeal along the following lines is sufficient:

Quote:“I am the registered keeper. [Operator] cannot hold a registered keeper liable for any alleged contravention on land subject to statutory control. [Airport name] is not relevant land for the purposes of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.

If the airport wished to pursue liability under its byelaws, that would be a matter for the airport authority and would involve a statutory penalty payable to the public purse. That is not what is alleged here. Your charge is a private contractual claim pursued for your own commercial benefit, and can only ever attach to the driver.

The registered keeper cannot be presumed or inferred to have been the driver, nor pursued under any theory of agency. Your Notice to Keeper / Notice to Hirer is therefore incapable of establishing keeper liability. You have no realistic prospect of success at appeal and are invited to cancel the charge.”

Type of parking ticket: Parking Charge Notice (PCN) or Charge Notice (CN)

How to get advice on your Parking Charge Notice (PCN)

If you have received a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) from a private parking company and would like advice, please start by creating a new thread using the PCN information form:

• Parking Charge Notice (PCN) checklist
  

• your PCN details will be in one place
  
• advisers can see the full picture immediately
  
• further questions and discussion can happen in the same thread
  

• This forum deals only with private parking charges, not council or Transport for London penalties
  
• Debt collector letters do not require urgent action
  
• Do not rush to pay simply because a demand looks official
  

Start Here: Private Parking Ticket Legal Advice (PPTLA)

If you have received a parking charge notice from a private parking company, you have probably been made to feel that you must pay quickly or face serious consequences.

That reaction is not accidental.

Private parking firms issue demands that are deliberately designed to look official, urgent, and intimidating. Most people who receive them pay without understanding what they are paying or why.

In industry terms, those people are treated as low-hanging fruit — easy targets who can be pressured into paying through fear and confusion rather than legal merit.

This forum exists to stop that happening.

• the British Parking Association (BPA)
  
• the International Parking Community (IPC)
  

• the language is misleading
  
• the threat of consequences is exaggerated
  
• the legal process is poorly understood
  

• what a private parking charge actually is
  
• why it is not a fine
  
• how parking companies use pressure tactics
  
• when and how charges can be challenged
  
• how claims are dealt with in practice
  

Who is behind this forum and where the advice comes from

PPTLA is closely linked with the information project Gullible Tree — both share the same purpose: to help motorists avoid being misled, frightened, or financially harmed by unregulated private parking companies.

• understand their legal rights
  
• draft effective appeals
  
• defend themselves against aggressive debt recovery tactics
  
• respond to county court claims
  

• relevant legislation
  
• case law
  
• industry codes of practice
  
• civil procedure rules
  
• real claims and defences
  

• This forum and the linked advice focus only on parking charges issued by private parking companies (such as ParkingEye, UKPC, Horizon, MET, NCP, and others).
  
• This is not legal representation and we are not solicitors.
  
• For council or Transport for London statutory Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs), which operate under a different legal regime, see the volunteer-run site Free Traffic Legal Advice (ftla.uk).
  

CCJs, credit records, and bailiffs — separating fear from reality

One of the main reasons people pay private parking charges is fear of a County Court Judgment (CCJ) or bailiffs turning up at their door.
That fear is almost always misplaced.

Private parking companies and their debt collectors rely heavily on public misunderstanding of how the court system actually works. This thread explains the reality, plainly and without drama.

• a parking company issues a county court claim, and
  
• the claim goes all the way to a hearing, and
  
• the motorist loses
  

• no CCJ is registered
  
• nothing appears on any credit file
  
• there is no lasting record
  

1. a court claim is issued
   
2. judgment is entered (either by default or after a hearing)
   
3. the judgment remains unpaid for more than 30 days
   

• a debt recovery letter allows bailiffs to attend
  
• unpaid parking charges automatically lead to enforcement
  
• credit damage happens before court
  

• a CCJ exists, and
  
• that CCJ has been ignored, and
  
• enforcement is specifically applied for
  

• anything under roughly £600 is usually not worth pursuing through County Court bailiffs
  
• the cost and effort outweighs the return
  
  

• carry no enforcement power
  
• do not involve the High Court
  
• do not permit bailiff action
  

• many charges are cancelled early
  
• many claims are discontinued
  
• some are struck out
  
• a very small number reach a hearing