How much does a POPLA appeal cost the BPA Ltd (update)

In a previous post The Prankster revealed that POPLA was costing the British Parking Association Limited £50k a month, or about £137 per appeal.

POPLA are hiring 7 more assessors. We don't know their exact salary. However, London Council's tender to the BPA Ltd shows the broad salary range.

We can guess that assessor annual salaries (including national insurance and pension) will therefore be broadly £31,370 each. With 7 assessors, that comes to around £18,000 extra money per month. Let's assume they will also need some extra costs for office space and make the completely arbitrary decision that will come to £2000 a month, rounding up the costs nicely to £20,000 extra per month. (The Prankster will revisit this once actual costs are known.)

Overall then, POPLA will now be billing the BPA Ltd £70k a month. For this, they will get 600 adjudications, taking the cost per adjudication down to around £117. This is lower than the previous cost of £137, due no doubt to economies of scale (or bad guesses by the Prankster).

As the maximum parking fee is currently set to £100, this means that the parking industry overall will lose at least £17 even if they win at POPLA and the motorist pays up.

Every appeal is therefore a lose-lose proposition for the parking operator. No wonder they are finding ever more imaginative ways to refuse to provide a POPLA code.

The inevitable conclusion is therefore that there will be some level of appeals at which the industry bankrupts itself. The Prankster expects that the BPA Ltd will realise this at some point, and start to pressure parking operators to cancel charges which they cannot win at appeal. No doubt the BPA Ltd are mightily fed up with ParkingEye and their invisible contracts and imaginary pre-estimates of loss. How many more POPLA losses will it take before the BPA Ltd have stern words with ParkingEye?

The Prankster would like to blog your story if the Parking Operator tried to diddle you out of POPLA by hiding the POPLA code, offering to appeal on your behalf, issuing an out of date POPLA code or just plain refusing to provide a POPLA code. Please email The Prankster. (prankster at parking-prankster.com)

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster