PPS - Parking in No Parking area - Uxbridge Industrial Estate

[TheParkingmeister]

This place might ring a bell. I posted on FTLA about one here at the start of last year, and there were a few other posts regarding this location, including one poster who had an unsuccessful POPLA appeal but had an admission from Flexible Resolution Services that it was essentially the wrong decision.

With that in mind, I'm wondering how best to tackle this.

The NtK has no period of parking specified but has a time of 14:47 and the two timestamped images show 14:40:31 and 14:40:41.

On their online portal there were 10 photos with timestamps from 14:40:31 to 14:48:05, but the last one with the vehicle in was timestamped 14:47:02. The two after were photos of some signage. I have included the first and last photos of the vehicle with livery and reg edited out (images inbetween are just more images of the vehicle), and the two photos of signage as well as the NtK at the link below:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...ayBDn42kik

- The NtK fails to SPECIFY a Period of Parking
- The photos show the vehicle there for 6 mins 32 seconds.
- The signage is purely prohibitory, "No parking, waiting, loading or unloading on roads at any time." Etc. So there is no offer to park under certain terms and so no basis of a contract.
- This prohibition is also not prominent on the signage and can not be read whilst driving. Stopping is certainly required to do so.
- The relevant land is stated to be "UXBRIDGE IND EST, Wallingford Rd, Salisbury Rd, Arundel Rd, UXBRIDGE, UB8 2RZ". The vehicle was stopped outside Tomato Plant Limited UB8 2SR.

As I was typing this I remembered I have the evidence from last time.

Including:
- their contract with "TRADE SALES";
- their signage which I suspect is in breach of section 3 and Annex A of PPSSCOP.
- their signage site map.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...XHBKjF9N8Y

[b789]

Hi @TheParkingmeister. Can you please do me a favour and fill out the PCN details form here and paste the summary so I have a separate record of this PCN.

Uxbridge Industrial Estate is a very well known entrapment site. The PCN appears seriously flawed. The Notice to Keeper (NtK) does not specify any period of parking, so there is an obvious PoFA 9(2)(a) failure. The location is also not identified with any proper precision, and the signage is prohibitory and therefore incapable of forming any contractual offer in the first place. On paper, those are strong points.

The problem is that this is not really a case that is likely to be killed off at the appeal stage. An initial appeal is still worth doing to set the position down, but POPLA is not a forum I would place any faith in here. Even where the legal defects are obvious, POPLA too often waves these cases through regardless. In reality, this is the sort of charge that would stand the best chance of being defeated only if the matter ever reached a defended court claim.

That, however, is where the Catch-22 comes in. The registered keeper is the employer, and if they have already made clear that they will not tolerate debt recovery letters and will simply pay and pass the cost onto the driver, then the case is likely to be frustrated before it ever reaches the only stage where it could properly be beaten. In other words, there may be a good defence in law, but the employer’s commercial attitude is likely to prevent the matter ever getting to the stage where that defence could be used.

So the realistic advice is this: submit a proper initial appeal to preserve the points and see whether PPS folds, but the driver needs to understand that, unless the employer is willing to hold firm beyond the debt collector stage, this will probably end up being paid regardless of the legal merits.

[TheParkingmeister]

Much appreciated. Obviously not what I wpuld like to do lol, but given the unpredictable nature of POPLA, it is probably the best option