Debt Recovery Plus APCOA Broad Street, Halifax

[samh47]

Hi,

A doctor friend of mine seems to have misplaced his letters or at least not seen the PCN until he saw this letter, what recourse does he have?

[b789]

@Samh, there is nothing whatsoever to be concerned about with that Debt Recovery Plus letter.

Any debt recovery letter can be safely ignored. Debt collectors such as DRP are completely powerless to do anything other than send increasingly threatening-looking letters in an attempt to intimidate the low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree into paying out of ignorance and fear. They cannot issue proceedings themselves, cannot obtain a CCJ and have no enforcement powers whatsoever.

The other important point here is that the underlying operator is APCOA. They are about as benign as private parking operators get and, in practice, do not take motorists to court over these PCNs. If your friend does absolutely nothing, the useless debt recovery letters will eventually stop and that will be the end of the matter.

However, as he apparently never saw the original Notice to Keeper (NtK) or subsequent APCOA correspondence, it would be useful to establish exactly what was sent and when. The Keeper can submit a Subject Access Request (SAR) directly to APCOA requesting:

Please provide all personal data held concerning me and vehicle [VRM] in relation to Parking Charge Notice [PCN number], including copies of the original Notice to Keeper, all subsequent correspondence, photographs, ANPR records and the address to which each item of correspondence was sent.

That should give us the original NtK and allow us to see whether there is anything worth addressing. There is no reason whatsoever to contact DRP or pay the £170 they are demanding.

Under no circumstances must your doctor friend identify the driver. APCOA have no idea who the driver is and the ONLY way they could find out is if the Keeper tells them, inadvertently or otherwise. There is no legal obligation on the Keeper to identify the driver to an unregulated private parking firm. Tell the Keeper to only refer to the driver in the third person. No "I did this or that", only "the driver did this or that".

Once the SAR response arrives, post the original APCOA Notice to Keeper here, suitably redacted, and we can look at it properly.

[samh47]

Thank you so much for this, I have spoken to him and reassured him there is nothing to worry about, he has sent the email out to APCOA.