PESS Parking Invoice via PCS Parked in no parking area

[b789]

Thank you @Vivd23 for clarifying that. Now you can submit an appeal, which will be rejected, because there is no money in it for them, but they will be obliged to give you a POPLA code where the secondary appeal can be made and it will cost them if they wish to contest that appeal.

You are dealing with a scummy firm of ex-clampers whose greed knows no bounds but you may as well treat them with the concept they deserve. So, I suggest you use the following appeal, which you must ONLY do as the Keeper. They have no idea who the driver is and you are not obliged to tell them. If using their appeals website, make sure you do NOT select any options that say that the appellant is the driver. Nothing that says "I did this or that", only "the driver did this or that":

I am the registered keeper and dispute this Parking Charge Notice.

Your Notice to Keeper (NtK) does not comply with Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA). You have therefore failed to establish any statutory right to recover this charge from the keeper. PoFA exists precisely because, absent compliance with its strict conditions, liability incurred by an unidentified driver does not simply transfer to the registered keeper.

The driver has not been identified and nothing in this appeal identifies them.

For the avoidance of doubt, there is no lawful presumption that the registered keeper was the driver. Nor is there any basis for inviting an inference of driver identity merely because the keeper declines to identify another person. If you intend to try and rely upon Elliott v Loake, you would be well advised to read it first. It was a fact-specific criminal case involving affirmative evidence linking the defendant to the vehicle. It did not create some convenient private-parking presumption that "registered keeper = driver".

Parliament went to the trouble of enacting Schedule 4 PoFA to provide parking operators with a defined statutory route to keeper liability where the driver is not identified. You cannot simply ignore that statutory mechanism, fail to comply with it, and then attempt to achieve the same result by inventing a presumption that Parliament did not create.

Your position is therefore very simple:

either prove the identity of the driver, or establish keeper liability under Schedule 4 PoFA.

At present you can do neither.

Please therefore cancel the charge. If you genuinely believe you have discovered some alternative legal mechanism by which an unidentified driver's alleged contractual liability can be imposed upon a registered keeper despite non-compliance with Schedule 4, feel free to identify the statutory provision or binding authority upon which you rely. I will be interested to see it.

Otherwise, provide a POPLA code and spare me any template nonsense about Elliott v Loake, "reasonable assumptions", "balance of probabilities" or any supposed obligation upon a keeper to identify a driver. None of those things cures your failure to establish liability against me.