The British Parking Association has a long-standing debt to London Councils for running the POPLA service.
The Prankster has now learnt that the BPA has settled around £511k of the debt, leaving around £200k still outstanding.
It is not immediately apparent where this money was found from. The 2014/15 accounts showed there were reserves of around £936k at 31 March 2015, so it is likely the monies came from the reserves.
The Prankster first predicted that the POPLA costs would cause the BPA serious financial problems in October 2013. However, it does not seem that this will be terminal for the BPA; only very painful.
The BPA have avoided this problem with their new contract with the Consumer Ombudsman by going for a fixed price contract. However, this has caused a different kind of problem. The new POPLA has issued a large number of shoddy decisions cause by poorly trained assessors who have not properly considered the issues raised. The new assessors churn out template responses without apparently giving much thought to the particular circumstances of each appeal.
The Prankster therefore considers the time has come for the Government to step in and run a fair and independent appeals service staffed by competent assessors who have enough time to properly asses and rule on each case.
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The Parking Prankster
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If they increased the cost of the DVLA request from £2.50 to £5.00 this would bring in £10 million pounds a year, (based on 4 million requests); plenty to run an independent appeal service.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, the BPA Ltd's accounts are now restricted to members only, having previously been publicly available.
ReplyDeleteAlso, John McArdle is stepping down as Honorary Treasurer.
The accounts cannot be restricted to members only. The BPA Ltd as a Limited company has to file annual accounts with Companies House.
ReplyDeleteBPA's accounts for the year ended 31st March 2016 were filed at Companies House in August. Interestingly "Trade Creditors" has increased from £316k in 2015 to £723k in 2016, which would suggest some provision was made for the London Councils debt.
ReplyDeleteThe mediation for the outstanding 200k is set for 27 Sept.
ReplyDeleteLondon Councils has dragged its feet for nearly 2 years.
Lester and TrouserFire are old mates
A government led appeals service which all PPC's were obliged to co-operate with, would lead the the death of many PPC's. The evidence of their incompetence, duplicity and outright fraudlulent behaviour would be available for all to see.
ReplyDeletelets not forget , parking eye received a loan from the UK government to set itself up , and upto a couple of years ago the government held 8% of the shares , and profits
ReplyDelete