10 PCNs from Parking & Property Management Ltd

[Popeye]

@Popeye, just keep your expectations realistic about what the IAS actually is.

The IAS is not an independent tribunal in any meaningful sense. It is owned by United Trade and Industry Ltd, the same company that owns and operates the IPC trade body. It exists within the same commercial structure as the parking firms whose tickets it is asked to adjudicate. Decisions are anonymous and unsigned, and although the IAS claims its assessors are legally trained, there is no transparent way to verify who is deciding your case or what their qualifications actually are.

Within the parking industry itself, the IAS openly reports that it allows fewer than 20% of appeals. By comparison, POPLA allows more twice that. That is not a reflection of legal merit, it is a reflection of the different commercial models. So by all means use the IAS as part of the paper trail, but do not treat it as a forum where you should expect a genuinely neutral assessment of your arguments.

What you are doing procedurally is sensible. Submitting one appeal first and waiting to see the operator’s evidence pack before tailoring the others is a good approach. When PPM upload their evidence, you will get a short window to comment on it. When that happens, post it up here before you respond, because what matters is not what they assert, but what they can actually prove.

On the PCN that has already been passed to BW Legal, you can safely ignore debt collection correspondence. Debt collectors have no standing and cannot determine liability. What you are waiting for, if it ever happens, is a proper Letter of Claim (LoC) from BW Legal acting as solicitors rather than as a debt collector. If that arrives, you show it here and we can deal with it at that stage.

The important thing is this: your case does not turn on winning at IAS. Your case turns on the operator’s inability to establish Hirer liability under PoFA, the absence of a Notice to Hirer (NtH) for at least one PCN, the residential authorisation issue, and the management handover failure. Those are legal issues that only really bite in court, not at IAS.

Operators like PPM tend to push cases like this further precisely because they assume most people will fold once the sums mount up. That is why they escalate to debt collectors and then to solicitors. What they do not like is a defendant who understands the legal structure and does not panic.

So use the IAS as a procedural step, not as the endgame. When their response arrives, post it here. When BW Legal move from debt collection to pre-action, post that too. You are still in a strong position and nothing in your update weakens the underlying case.

Hello b789,

I hope you're doing well, I see the site is taking off, which is excellent.

it took a while for PPM to respond to the appeal and me responding to their prima facie but it's all done now and you you said, IAS is a kangaroo court so I have little faith they will adjudicate fairly but I have completed all the appeals and now it's with the IAS.

On the 3 PCNs which I haven't appealed, I recently started receiving debt collection letter and I expect more to follow but I'm ignoring them as advised.

I'll update when IAS responds.