Thursday, 8 August 2013

BPA Ltd announce free for all. Parking Companies allowed to define appeal criteria

The Parking Prankster has decided now might be the time to buy shares in parking companies. In a recent letter to him, the British Parking Association Limited effectively stated that parking companies are free to decide themselves what is or is not an appeal. Thus, they are also free to refuse to hand out POPLA codes and stop those rather inconvenient appeals.

The Prankster has decided to choose whichever parking company has the most stringent and nonsensical appeals policy and then heavily invest in them. He can then sit back and watch the money roll in. If any parking companies wish to get in on The Prankster's investment round first before all the loot is gone, please email him at the usual address, explaining why your appeal process is most likely to generate large amounts of wahoola.

The Prankster previously blogged about this here.

Here is The Prankster's appeal letter.



Here is the reply from CP Plus.


Thank you for your letter concerning the above Parking Charge Notice.

The Protection of Freedoms Act does not apply in this case, but it relates only to specific aspects of certain types of case and our ability to issue and enforce charges is not predicated on it applying or we would not issue charges after the deadline you refer to had expired.

If you wish to appeal this charge, please inform us of your reasons for doing so, so we may take these into account and consider your appeal. Until you do so, we will not be able to accept or reject an appeal, and either revoke this charge or provide the POPLA code requested. We will hold the charge at the current rate for a further 14 days.

The Prankster considered he had appealed, so replied.


CP Plus then never contacted The Prankster again, but instead (as already documented) The Prankster received a letter from Debt Recovery Plus. The Prankster then complained to the BPA Ltd asking them to address the following five points:

  1.  Failure to complete appeals process within 35 days by writing to me to accept the appeal or reject the appeal and send a POPLA code
  2.  Failure to automatically send POPLA code after rejecting an appeal
  3.  Rejecting an appeal without final confirmation to myself…
  4.      …or Referring case to Debt Collector while appeal is still active
  5. Pursuing the registered keeper after admitting that the NtK was out of time

The Prankster also asked the BPA Ltd to do the following:
Please also require CP to either accept my appeal, or reject my appeal and provide a POPLA code
 Here is the reply from the BPA Ltd


The Prankster is obviously disappointed that the BPA Ltd has not addressed any of his points satisfactorily. He considers that it is not the province of the parking company or the BPA Ltd to define what a valid appeal point is. This should be left to POPLA. If POPLA decide that an appeal is fanciful or nonsensical then they can withdraw the appeal and not charge the operator £27.

However, he is wildly excited about this new investment opportunity and hopes that this blog post is not read to widely before he gets a chance to put his money into this new goldmine.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster


2 comments:

  1. Hmm, so the BPA obviously think parking companies don't need to adhere to Pofa schedule 4 requirements in order to use the powers granted under Pofa schedule 4, anyone see a wee little hole in that logic, maybe Trev's got a job at the BPA and he's on the case, that would explain it I guess

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  2. So basically in one sentence, The BPA is saying that they are pointless and their own codes of practice don't apply and are unenforceable.

    A bit like a Parking Charge then?

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