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Chequers Lane, Dagenham - Private Parking Management (PPM) - Parking Charge - TheParkingmeister - 07-08-2026
Hello there! It has been a while.
We have received 13 Parking Charge Notices for company vehicles for stopping on Chequers Lane on Dagenham Docks, waiting to access a waste management site which has limited capacity. Chequers Lane is an industrial estate road..... that happens to be privately owned by the Greater London Authority (GLA). The issue is, it's just a road, it's purpose is to serve the commercial premises on the road, it looks like public highway, and there is nothing that clearly differentiates it from the adopted public highway. There is no entrance signage, and PPM even had their enforcement signage on a section of Public Highway on Choats Road, the road leading to Chequers Lane. This has since been removed following complaints to Barking & Dagenham Council, their Counter Fraud Department, BPA and a BBC Radio 4 show about Dagenham Docks and unfair parking practices.
In 2025 we received 9. All 9 were issued and delivered outside of the relevant 14-day period required by POFA 2012 to invoke Keeper Liability. The first 4 were appealed and rejected by PPM. They were then appealed to POPLA, and PPM failed to submit evidence within 21 days. One fella at POPLA, Alex, was actually very helpful when I called and concluded all four on the POPLA portal immediately with a successful decision. The 5th Notice to Keeper, PPM included pictures of the wrong vehicle. They accepted that appeal and attributed the mistake to an "admin error". The following four were appealed, and again, rejected by PPM. These four were appealed to POPLA, and PPM withdrew from all 4.
2025 Notice to Keeper and successful POPLA decisions
However, despite being clearly non-POFA compliant, forfeiting their right to pursue the charge by withdrawing from POPLA and having written confirmation from the Landowner, GLA, that non-POFA charges are not pursued passed the initial appeal stage, PPM passed these four onto a debt collection agency TNC Collections, who started sending letters. They did eventually get cancelled and I got two apologies from PPM. They seemed quite upset about being reported to BPA, DVLA, Trading Standards, the ICO and Action Fraud. Lucky for them though, nobody cares! They don't have a Kadoe contract so DVLA don't care; BPA is BPA, they never care; Trading Standards only investigate something if it gets numerous reports; ICO don't care as it's not personal data; and Action Fraud only seems to take reports regarding online fraud.
I thought PPM had maybe learnt their lesson. But apparently not. They gave us a 2026 new year gift of 4 more Parking Charges. But this time they weren't even claiming we were parked. They were issued for.... get this....... being "STOPPED IN A NO WAITING ZONE".
2026 Notice to Keeper, Appeal Rejection, my POPLA appeal template and POPLA outcomes.
PPM failed to provide evidence that they had the legal standing to enforce the charges on the land and all four POPLA appeals were allowed on that point alone.
PPM have said they are unfamiliar with the Codes Signage Requirements and they were unaware that they had to provide evidence of Landowner Authority to POPLA..... as it was there first time doing it.
PPM 0 - Me 13
Anyway, BBC Radio 4 did an episode of The Patch on Dagenham Docks and the unfair parking practices by PPM
I actually had a 40 minute discussion with the presenter Polly Weston, and it was refreshing to converse with someone who had done their homework and was standing up for the little guy as they say. I was actually in the show for like 5 seconds, but they cut out the part where I explained how I didn't pay any of them lol, but I get why, and I support the narrative of the show. Screw PPM and all the parking companies.
RE: Chequers Lane, Dagenham - Private Parking Management (PPM) - Parking Charge - b789 - 07-09-2026
@TheParkingmeister
First, well done. That is a serious amount of persistence, and the POPLA results speak for themselves. Thirteen charges challenged and thirteen charges defeated is not a fluke; it shows a fundamentally defective enforcement operation.
One point I would treat with caution, though, is the suggestion that PPM do not have a KADOE contract. If postal Notices to Keeper were sent to the registered keeper, and the keeper’s details were not provided by the company, lease firm, fleet manager or some other intermediary, then the data must have come from a DVLA route somewhere. That may have been PPM directly, or it may have been through an agent, back-office provider or another DVLA access route. So the question is: who requested the keeper data, on what date, through what DVLA route, and what reasonable cause was asserted?
What is more important is that PPM now appear to be trying to invoke PoFA keeper liability, but repeatedly failing to do what PoFA requires. If the Notices to Keeper were not given within the relevant statutory period, keeper liability is dead. If the notices were in time but failed to include all the mandatory wording and information required by Schedule 4, keeper liability is still dead. PoFA is not a general right to chase the keeper. It is a conditional statutory mechanism, and the operator has to comply with it strictly.
The 2026 notices make the position even more questionable because the alleged breach appears to have changed from parking-type allegations, such as parked without a valid permit or outside a bay, to “stopped in a no waiting zone”. That is not just a cosmetic rewording. It changes the nature of the alleged conduct from parking in breach of displayed terms to stopping or waiting on what looks and functions like an industrial estate road.
That brings in another appeal point: material changes under section 3.4 of the Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice. Where there is a material change to pre-existing terms which would not be immediately apparent to drivers, the operator must put additional temporary notices at the site entrance for at least four months, making clear that new terms, conditions or charges apply. If PPM changed the enforcement regime from parking/permit/bay-type restrictions to “no waiting” enforcement, they should be put to strict proof of when that change was made, what the old terms were, what the new terms were, where the new signs were installed, and what temporary entrance notices were displayed for the required four-month period.
If there was no proper entrance signage at all, that point becomes even stronger. They cannot sensibly claim compliance with a requirement to place temporary notices at the site entrance if drivers are not clearly being told, at the point of entry, that they are leaving the public highway and entering controlled private land with materially changed terms.
The GLA/GLAP point should also be kept precise. Public ownership alone does not automatically kill private enforcement, because a public authority body can own land in a private/proprietary capacity. The key issue is the actual legal status of Chequers Lane. If it is adopted highway, traffic-authority land, or land where parking/waiting is subject to statutory control, then private PoFA keeper liability is highly questionable or unavailable. If PPM say it is purely private controlled land, then they must prove the contract, the boundary, the entrance signage, the operative terms, and landowner authority. POPLA allowed the appeals because PPM failed to prove even that basic authority.
So the headline is simple: PPM appear to be trying to run a private parking model on an industrial access road, using highway-style “no waiting” language, with inadequate entrance signage, questionable boundary control, defective PoFA compliance, no proven landowner authority at POPLA, and likely non-compliance with the PPSCoP material-change requirements. That is not robust parking management. It is an enforcement trap that collapses as soon as it is properly challenged.
For reference, the attached POPLA decision records the operator’s case as “stopping in a no waiting zone” and allowed the appeal because PPM failed to provide a contract or witness statement proving authority to manage and issue PCNs at the site. The PPSCoP material-change point is supported by section 3.4, which requires additional temporary entrance notices for at least four months where materially changed terms would not be immediately apparent to drivers.
RE: Chequers Lane, Dagenham - Private Parking Management (PPM) - Parking Charge - TheParkingmeister - 07-09-2026
The BBC Radio 4 lady said they had obtained a spreadsheet from DVLA containing every request for keeper details made by organisations through KADOE, and that PPM did not appear on it at all. I then remembered DVLA had previously told me in response to my complaint, that PPM had not acquired our details through KADOE. I can only assume they were obtained through DVLA's V888/3 postal form. Which would maybe explain why every Notice to Keeper was served late.
Section 3.4 was the part I forgot to put in my appeal, not that it needed it, but it really just accentuates how totally clueless PPM really are.
The public highway section of Choats Road, which had PPM's signage along it, was confirmed by the Council to be public highway, with no contracted private parking enforcement, but instead, a TRO enforced by the council for none other than...... a no waiting restriction. Initially they didn't seem too concerned, saying the signage was on the fence on private land and nothing to do with them. So, I reported it to their Counter Fraud department, as ultimately any revenue they may have generated on the public highway where they have no legal standing, has been collected fraudulently. The signage on Choats Road has been removed now. Whether it was due to the fraud report or BBC journalists investigating, who knows. But GLA/GLAP had refused to speak to the BBC regarding it, and since I made GLA fully aware of what PPM were up to, I can't imagine they were very happy about the idea of being exposed on BBC Radio 4 and probably told PPM to remove the signage.
Anyway, our vehicles are still delivering there regularly, so I suspect it is only a matter of time before they try again and I get another bunch of Parking.... I mean, Stopping Charge Notices.
RE: Chequers Lane, Dagenham - Private Parking Management (PPM) - Parking Charge - b789 - 07-10-2026
@TheParkingmeister, I have now looked at the actual DVLA KADOE volumes data, and it explains why PPM may not have appeared on the spreadsheet in the way you expected.
The relevant entries are not listed simply as “Private Parking Management Limited”. They are listed through Unity.
The wording used in the DVLA data is:
“Unity (Services) Limited on behalf of Private Parking Management Limited”
and, for Q3 of 2025/26:
“Unity (Services) Ltd t/a TNC Collections on behalf of Private Parking Management Limited”
So the position now looks to be that PPM were not necessarily requesting the keeper data under their own direct visible name. Instead, Unity/TNC appear to have been the KADOE route or intermediary used to obtain keeper data on PPM’s behalf.
The extracted PPM-related KADOE volumes are:
2021/22: 1,179 requests
2022/23: 1,092 requests
2023/24: 837 requests
2024/25: 931 requests
2025/26 to Q3 only: 1,289 requests
The 2025/26 figure is especially interesting because it splits across two entries:
April to September 2025: 619 requests under “Unity (Services) Limited on behalf of Private Parking Management Limited”
October to December 2025: 670 requests under “Unity (Services) Ltd t/a TNC Collections on behalf of Private Parking Management Limited”
So for 2025/26, before the financial year had even finished, PPM-related KADOE requests through Unity/TNC had already reached 1,289. That is higher than the full-year totals shown for each of 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25.
Across the years shown in that extract, the total number of PPM-related KADOE requests through Unity/TNC is 5,328, with 2025/26 still only shown to Q3.
That changes the earlier assumption. It now seems less likely that the keeper data was obtained by V888/3 postal requests. The DVLA KADOE volumes appear to show an electronic KADOE route being used through Unity/TNC on behalf of PPM.
That makes the late Notice to Keeper issue worse, not better. If PPM had access to keeper data through an electronic KADOE route via Unity/TNC, there is even less excuse for Notices to Keeper being served outside the statutory PoFA period. PoFA does not give an operator extra time because it uses an intermediary. If they want keeper liability, the NtK still has to be given within the relevant statutory period and must still comply with every mandatory requirement of Schedule 4.
So the better formulation is:
PPM may not appear as the direct KADOE customer in the DVLA data, but the DVLA KADOE volumes show Unity/TNC making KADOE requests on behalf of Private Parking Management Limited. The relevant data-access chain therefore appears to be DVLA → Unity/TNC → PPM.
That does not fix PPM’s position. It simply identifies the route by which the data was probably obtained. They still have to justify the reasonable cause for each request, prove landowner authority, prove signage and contractual terms, prove that “stopped in a no waiting zone” was capable of being enforced as a private parking charge, and prove full PoFA compliance if they are trying to hold the keeper liable.
The DVLA KADOE data is published on GOV.UK here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/who-dvla-shares-data-with
Open the document called “KADOE volumes”. In the latest file, PPM-related entries appear via Unity/TNC, not directly as “Private Parking Management Limited”. Search within the spreadsheet for.
“Unity (Services) Limited on behalf of Private Parking Management Limited”
and
“Unity (Services) Ltd t/a TNC Collections on behalf of Private Parking Management Limited”
RE: Chequers Lane, Dagenham - Private Parking Management (PPM) - Parking Charge - TheParkingmeister - 07-10-2026
I guess she didn't look very carefully at it then. Must have only looked at the 2018-2021 sheets lol.
In terms of our Parking Charges last year, DVLA said in their response to my complaint that: "This information was not provided by KADOE, it was released manually by DVLA rather than electronically. Therefore, there is no KADOE contract involved in this case."
I generally find that issued Parking Charges that are based on site ANPR data are sent quicker, presumably because the process is automated. Where as, when a "parking warden" takes manual photos, it doesn't seem to tie-in to those automated systems for a number of operators, most notably CP Plus t/a GroupNexus, who seem to use an entirely different portal for manually photographed and issued charges.
It is very interesting that Unity (Services) Ltd are obtaining keeper details on behalf of Private Parking Management Limited just for PPM to send it back to them to send the scary letters as TNC Collections. Had our keeper details been obtained through KADOE by Unity (Services) Ltd, presumably they would have been the more appropriate subject for my complaint to DVLA considering they have the KADOE contract and are the data handler.
Not that it matters, DVLA would have referred me to BPA regardless.
RE: Chequers Lane, Dagenham - Private Parking Management (PPM) - Parking Charge - b789 - 07-10-2026
DVLA are useless and even complicit in the corruption of the private parking industry. Remember, they rake in £2.50 a pop for each KADOE request. Multiply that by how many million request each year?