PCN UKCPS Leeds City Station

[b789]

@samh47, use the following as your IAS appeal:

I appeal as the registered keeper. No driver has been identified and no admission is made as to the identity of the driver.

This appeal turns on one point only: UKCPS has no keeper liability.

UKCPS has expressly admitted that this Parking Charge was issued as a “Non-PoFA matter” and that it is not relying on Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.

That admission is fatal.

Schedule 4 PoFA is the only statutory route by which a private parking operator may transfer liability from an unidentified driver to a registered keeper. If UKCPS does not rely on PoFA, it cannot hold the keeper liable as keeper. That is elementary.

UKCPS has instead attempted to rely on an “assumption” that the keeper was the driver. That is not evidence. It is not law. It is not reasoning. It is legal gibberish.

There is no legal presumption that the registered keeper was the driver. The keeper is under no obligation to identify the driver. Silence is not evidence. A keeper appeal is not an admission of driving. The fact that a person is the registered keeper proves only keeper status; it does not prove driver identity.

Nor should the IAS attempt to repair UKCPS’s defective case by inventing a “balance of probabilities” finding that the keeper was the driver. The balance of probabilities is a standard of proof, not a substitute for proof. It cannot turn an evidential void into a finding of fact.

There is no admission, no photograph of the driver, no witness evidence, no evidence of who had access to the vehicle, no evidence excluding any other possible driver, and no evidence at all that the keeper was driving.

If keeper status alone were enough to infer driver identity, Schedule 4 PoFA would be pointless. Parliament created Schedule 4 precisely because an operator cannot simply pursue a keeper as if the keeper must have been the driver.

UKCPS’s position is therefore reduced to this:

“We are not relying on PoFA, so we will simply assume the keeper was the driver.”

That is not a case. It is a confession that UKCPS has no lawful route to keeper liability and no evidence against the keeper as driver.

The IAS should not rubber-stamp that fiction. If this appeal is rejected on the basis that the keeper was “probably” the driver, that would not be a reasoned legal finding. It would be the IAS doing UKCPS’s work for it by manufacturing an evidential basis that UKCPS has failed to provide.

For the avoidance of doubt, the appellant will not pay a non-PoFA charge based on an unevidenced assumption. If UKCPS wishes to pursue this further, it can explain to a County Court judge how it proposes to hold a registered keeper liable when it has no PoFA liability, no identified driver, no admission, and no evidence that the keeper was driving.

The answer is obvious: it cannot.

The appeal must be allowed.

You'll probably have to upload it as a PDF. Just type in the appeal box, see uploaded file.