PCN for not parking correctly in space

[NaiveDL]

This case concerns a Parking Charge Notice (private parking firm) issued by Bank Park Parking Management, relating to an alleged contravention on Sunday, 15 March 2026. The notice itself is dated Friday, 20 March 2026, and I first became aware of it via received initial notice.

The notice appears to have been issued as By post (ANPR/camera). Driver identified status: NO. Equality Act considerations: No. The location is stated as Tandem Centre, High Street Colliers Wood, London, SW19 2TY.

A preliminary Protection of Freedoms Act (PoFA) assessment indicates COMPLIANT: Likely PoFA timing compliant for paragraph 9 (postal NtK, no windscreen NtD). Route applied: PoFA paragraph 9 (postal NtK, no windscreen NtD). The notice is treated as given on Tuesday, 24 March 2026 (9 days after the alleged event).

Current stage:
- Notice responded to: Yes
- Debt recovery letters: No
- Letter of Claim: No
- County Court claim: No

Response/appeal already sent (verbatim where possible):

This was their response:

Thank you for your recent communication concerning parking charge reference 3338160741109.
On the day in question your vehicle was parked outside the demarcation of a parking bay, The signage at the aforementioned car park clearly states that
vehicles must be parked fully within the confines of a single marked bay.
The appeal has been reviewed, having considered and investigated your appeal the PCN has been issued correctly. We operate under the code of practice
for Parking Enforcement on private land and public car parks as issued by the International Parking Community (IPC) and our Parking Charge Notice’s are
not deemed to be unfair at law – IPC Code of Practice: https://theipc/code-of-practice
Our appeals process is now concluded, you may now choose one of the following options:
1) Pay the parking charge detailed above at the reduced rate of £60.00 to Bank Park Management Ltd. PLEASE REFER OVERLEAF FOR PAYMENT
OPTIONS AND ADDRESS DETAILS.
2) Make an appeal to the independent adjudicator If you believe this decision is incorrect, you are entitled to appeal to the Independent Appeals Service
(IAS). In order to appeal, you will need your parking charge number, your vehicle registration and the date the charge was originally issued. Appeals must be
submitted to the IAS within 28 days of the date of this letter. Please note that if you wish to appeal to the IAS, you will lose the right to pay the discounted
rate of £60.00, and should the IAS reject your appeal you will be required to pay the full amount of £100.00. If you opt to pay the parking charge you will
be unable to appeal with the IAS. Please note Please visit www.theias.org for full details.
3) If you choose to do nothing the parking charge will automatically increase after thirty-five days from the date of this letter to £100.00 and the matter
will be passed to our debt recovery agent, at which point you will be liable to pay an additional charge of £70.00, in accordance with the terms and
conditions of parking, and further charges will be claimed if court action is taken against you. Any unpaid court judgement may adversely affect your credit
rating.
Yours sincerely,
Appeals Department
Bank Park Management Ltd

Additional notes provided:
I sent an appeal something along the lines of this, using chatgpt, I don't have a copy of what I sent.

"Compliance with Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 is central to this appeal, as the operator has issued the Parking Charge Notice to me in my capacity as the registered keeper of the vehicle.
There is no evidence or allegation that I was the driver at the material time. The operator has therefore sought to rely on the provisions of Schedule 4 to transfer liability from the driver to the keeper.
A creditor may only recover unpaid parking charges from a vehicle’s keeper where the strict requirements of Schedule 4 are fully complied with. This is set out at Paragraph 4(1) and 4(2) of Schedule 4.
Paragraph 4(2)(a) requires that the conditions set out in Paragraph 6 are met. Paragraph 6(1)(b) in turn requires that a Notice to Keeper is given in accordance with Paragraph 9.
Paragraph 9(2)(a) requires that the Notice to Keeper must specify “the period of parking to which the notice relates.”
The Notice to Keeper in this case fails to meet this requirement. It provides only a single timestamp rather than a defined period of parking. A timestamp does not constitute a “period of parking” as required by the Act.
This failure is fatal to the operator’s ability to transfer liability to the keeper.
As the operator has not complied with the mandatory provisions of Schedule 4, they have no lawful basis to pursue me as the registered keeper. I am under no obligation to identify the driver, and I decline to do so."

I also saved the photos of the contravention of the vehicle not parked in the bay properly, but it only show time stamp between 11:11:41 to 11:12:53. No driver was shown in the photos

Please can I have advice on the strongest next steps and defence points for this case.

[b789]

Welcome to the forum @NaiveDL. The initial appeal was never likely to succeed. That is just the standard rubber-stamp rejection stage and nothing about that outcome is surprising.

The realistic position is that an IAS appeal is also very unlikely to succeed. The odds of the IAS allowing an appeal on a technical legal point like this are about as likely as a rock having a conversation with you. That does not mean the point is bad. It means the IAS is just a corrupt forum that is only interested in protecting the IPC members. The IAS is not where this is likely to be won.

The real issue here is that the Notice to Keeper (NtK) does not comply with Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA). If an operator wants to hold the keeper liable, every relevant condition in paragraph 9 must be met. It is not enough for some or even most of them to be met. They all matter. Paragraph 9(2)(a) requires the notice to specify the period of parking to which the notice relates. This NtK does not do that.

What it says is:

“Not parked correctly within the markings of the bay or space. Tandem Centre. High Street Colliers Wood, London, SW19 2TY on the 15/01/2026 at 11:33:13.”

That is not a period of parking. It is a single timestamp. A single moment in time is not the same thing as a parking period. That defect is fatal to keeper liability.

It makes no difference that there may be extra photographs elsewhere showing a short passage of time. The NtK itself must comply with PoFA. The operator does not get to repair a defective notice by pointing later to other images. In any event, the additional images here are still insufficient. Even taken at their highest, they do not show anything approaching the minimum consideration period of at least 5 minutes. So even on the wider evidence, they do not get close to showing that any contract could properly have been formed and breached.

That is why the key point is this... If PoFA fails and the driver has not been identified, the operator has nowhere sensible to go. They can pursue the driver if they can prove who that was, but they cannot simply jump from “we have the keeper’s details” to “the keeper must pay.” Parliament gave them a statutory route to keeper liability, but only if they comply fully with the conditions. Here they have not done so.

So the practical position is straightforward. An IAS appeal is still worth doing, not because there is any real faith in the IAS, but because it puts the point on record and shows from an early stage that the keeper liability case is defective. But the place where this is ultimately likely to be won, if it ever has to be won, is court. If Bank Park were foolish enough to issue a claim, the defence would be that they failed to comply with PoFA paragraph 9(2)(a), they cannot transfer liability to the keeper, and the driver has never been identified. On that basis, they are likely to fail.

So the real question is not whether the IAS is likely to be fair. It is not. The real question is whether you are prepared to see this through if necessary, because that is where the strength of the case lies. If you are prepared to fight it all the way, then this is a case worth standing on and I am more than happy to assist you in achieving that.