03-04-2026, 12:34 AM
(03-04-2026, 12:03 AM)b789 Wrote: The IAS decision reads exactly as expected from an anonymous kangaroo court. The adjudicator claims their role is to determine whether a parking charge has a lawful basis. In reality the decision appears to begin with the operator’s conclusion and then work backwards to justify it.
The operator asserts compliance with the PoFA. You explained in detail why the Notice to Hirer fails to comply with Schedule 4 paragraphs 13 and 14. The adjudicator’s response to that statutory argument is simply to say the notice is compliant. No analysis of the statute. No explanation. Just an assertion
That is not legal reasoning. It is the equivalent of saying “the operator says so, therefore it must be so”.
This becomes even more obvious when looking at the central PoFA issue. In a hire vehicle case the statute requires the Notice to Hirer to be accompanied by the hire agreement and the signed statement of liability. Those documents were not enclosed. Instead the notice said they were available “upon request”. That wording is plainly inconsistent with the legislation, which requires the documents to be served with the notice itself. The appeal explained this clearly. The adjudicator’s treatment of the point consists of a single sentence declaring the notice compliant. The statute itself is never addressed.
If this is supposed to be an adjudication of legal arguments, it is difficult to see where the adjudication actually took place. It's a farce and shows why the IAS is not fit for purpose.
The same pattern appears in the treatment of the residential rights argument. The adjudicator correctly acknowledges that leasehold rights would ordinarily take primacy over a parking contractor’s signage. That is well established law. However, the decision then performs an unexplained leap by announcing that those rights have somehow been “waived” because you participated in the permit system. No authority is cited. No contractual variation is identified. The conclusion simply appears out of thin air.
Apparently a parking contractor can extinguish property rights granted by a tenancy simply by operating a permit database. That is quite a remarkable development in land law, although it seems to exist only within the pages of this decision.
The reliance on the operator’s “exemption list” is equally revealing. The operator’s entire case is that the vehicle did not appear on its internal system until December. You produced documentary evidence that the managing agent had already authorised the vehicle before enforcement began. Rather than addressing that evidence, the adjudicator speculates that the managing agent might not have updated the system correctly. Even if that speculation were true, it would demonstrate an administrative failure by the operator or its client. It would not demonstrate a breach by you. Yet the operator’s database is treated as definitive while the managing agent’s written authorisation is effectively ignored.
In other words, the operator’s internal record is treated as reality even when the evidence shows that the record itself was wrong.
The ANPR timing evidence illustrates the same problem. The operator states that the vehicle remained on site for nineteen hours. In a residential car park that simply means the resident parked overnight in their own bay. Presenting that fact as if it were evidence of misconduct only highlights how little substance there is behind the allegation.
Taken together, the decision gives the clear impression that the operator’s narrative was accepted first and the reasoning was added afterwards to justify the outcome. None of this has any real legal significance. IAS decisions are not binding and carry no weight outside the scheme itself. A court examining the same facts would be concerned with whether the statutory requirements of Schedule 4 were met and whether you had authority to park. Those are objective questions of evidence and law, not matters decided by a cowardly anonymous assertion that the operator must be right
For anyone wondering why the IAS so utterly unfit for purpose, this decision provides a neat illustration. A detailed statutory argument is dismissed without engaging with the statute, documentary evidence from the managing agent is overridden by the operator’s own database, and novel legal theories about “waiving” leasehold rights appear without any authority at all.
That is not adjudication in any meaningful sense. It is simply the operator’s case repeated back as a decision.
From a strategic standpoint there are two possible paths now.
The first is the passive route. This is the usual approach with private parking disputes. The operator will likely pass the charges to a debt recovery agent and eventually to a bulk litigation firm. Debt collector letters themselves have no legal significance and can be safely ignored. Their sole power is to try and intimidate the low hanging fruit on the gullible tree into paying out of ignorance and fear.
If a compliant Letter of Claim (LoC) arrives later, that is the point to respond formally. At that stage the PoFA hirer-liability defect and the residential authorisation evidence become central.
The second path is proactive litigation, where you bring a claim yourself seeking declaratory relief or damages. In theory you could pursue a claim for misuse of personal data under UK GDPR on the basis that the operator had no reasonable cause to obtain or process your data because the vehicle was authorised. However, courts generally expect a claimant to demonstrate tangible damage or distress. In most parking cases defendants prefer to wait for the operator to issue proceedings because it keeps the burden on them to prove the claim.
There is also a practical risk with initiating proceedings yourself. Doing so would consolidate the dispute and bring all issues before the court immediately. While you appear to have strong arguments on PoFA compliance and residential rights, bringing the claim yourself removes the tactical advantage of forcing the operator to prove its case first.
For that reason the usual advice in residential parking disputes is to wait and let the parking company decide whether to litigate. Many such cases never reach court once the operator realises the evidential issues involved.
Regarding political escalation, involving your Member of Parliament can sometimes be useful, particularly where a residential managing agent has allowed a parking contractor to target legitimate residents. MPs occasionally intervene with managing agents or housing companies where enforcement is clearly unreasonable. It is unlikely to directly affect the legal merits of the case, but it can create pressure on the managing agent to instruct the parking company to cancel the charges.
At this stage the most useful preparation steps are administrative rather than procedural.
Preserve the IAS decisions, the operator’s evidence pack, and all correspondence with the managing agent. Retain the tenancy agreement, bay allocation evidence, and the email confirming the vehicle was authorised before enforcement began. When the Hertz SAR arrives, examine it carefully to confirm exactly what documents were supplied to PPM and whether the statutory timing requirements in paragraph 14 were met.
If a Letter of Claim arrives later, the response can be structured around three points. The operator cannot rely on PoFA because the Notice to Hirer was non-compliant. The vehicle was authorised by the managing agent before enforcement commenced. The operator’s case relies solely on an internal administrative record rather than evidence of lack of authority.
If you want, you can also post the operator’s full evidence pack when it arrives. It is often possible to identify additional weaknesses in their contract with the landholder or in the wording of the signage that can become important if the matter ever reaches court.
Hello B789, thanks for the thorough response.
I have attached their evidence pack they submitted to the Kangaroo court.
In their evidence submission, they produced 3 signs, only two exist in reality, the other they made it up, notice the poor spelling and AI generated look it has, it's not anywhere on the compound; only the first two are posted in the car park. I submitted several pictures, different angles of the actual signs but they ignored them like everything else.
I think I will take your advise and wait for their move, in the meantime I will follow up Hertz for the SAR (they haven't provided it yet) and maybe escalate eith my MP and also the Property Redress scheme for the failure by management to respond to my complaint in December.
Slow and steady.
