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

Wheels back on - ANPR right of reply

Trev Whitehouse from ANPR has been in communication with The Parking Prankster, resulting in this 'guest post'. The Prankster invites other parking companies to put 'their side' if they wish.

Here is Mr Whitehouse's response to this earlier blog entry.

We can categorically deny that we reimburse the proprietor, this is a misinterpretation of the facts, naivety and a loop hole once exploited and now closed.

Collecting revenue from offenders and repaying the proprietor with payment would constitute a 'Service' and attract Vat on fees. We should remind you that Vat is accountable only on goods and service and not on damages that arrive from trespass on land. In any case collecting damages for the proprietor is our opinion a 'kick back' which is totally unethical. Unfortunately I do agree that there are too many companies who don't see it that way and may place them selves and the proprietors in deep and precarious waters with HMRC coming to the rescue. May I reassure everyone that every client of ours is charged £30 per sign per year plus vat and we are paid to deter not to chastise! Hence the would be offender causes our company to be in breach of our contract and in doing-so WE legally seek and spend all of the damages.

In regards to that particular case; We had not prepared for such a defence and expected arbitration to be a little more astute. Nevertheless may I re-assure our clients (proprietors) that we have since proven and justified that charging a proprietor for the deterrent value of the warning signs is liquidated damages and the pre-determined fee of £100 is a term and condition of parking that a motorist accepts by staying put. “If you don't agree with the fee... then move”

WHEELS BACK ON

ANPR Ltd

Pepipoo suffers DDOS attack

Pepipoo, the motorists fightback forum, suffered a short DDOS attack last night and this morning. This post has the details.

The web site is obviously getting up someone's nose, and someone has now resorted to illegal actions. There are several different forums, covering aspects such as speeding, council tickets and private parking tickets, which leaves a large field of possible Pepipoo-haters.

No doubt whoever it was will be unable to resist bragging about it to their friends and the culprits will become known in due course.

The Prankster loses to Smart Parking at POPLA!!!!!!!!

The Prankster lost his latest appeal at POPLA, which he fought mainly on the grounds that the Operator had not included their Parking Charge Notice with the evidence pack. This surprised The Prankster, as this was listed as a requirement in the Lead Adjudicator's secret May newsletter to the parking companies.

Here is The Prankster's appeal

The vehicle visited the site twice on the day in question and was therefore not parked for the duration the operator states. This is a first in-last out error.

The operator does not include a copy of the original parking charge notice (or a true copy of it)

The included extract from the POPLA May newsletter notes that this information is required in every case:

Extract from POPLA May newsletter:
Evidence

Just like every court, tribunal, ombudsman and arbitration service, in order to consider appeals effectively, POPLA requires certain basic information to be provided in every case.

This is what we require:
A copy of any notice issued under Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 must be produced.
The original parking charge notice (or a true copy of it)
· The appellant’s representations to the operator
· The operator’s rejection of those representations

Here is the adjudicator's decision.

Reasons for the Assessor’s Determination

On 10 April 2013 the operator issued a parking charge notice to a vehicle with registration mark CST U327. The operator recorded that the vehicle was parked for longer than the permitted time of 2 ½ hours.

The operator’s case is that the appellant’s vehicle was parked for longer than the permitted time. The operator has also submitted the Automated Number Plate recognition images to prove this. The operator submits that the signage at the site clearly displays the terms and conditions of parking.

The appellant’s case is that they were not parked for longer than the permitted time. The appellant submits that they left the car park and then re-visited the site later in the day. However, the appellant has not submitted any evidence to prove this

Upon considering all the evidence before me, I find that the appellant’s vehicle was parked for longer than the permitted time. I also find that the appellant was in breach of the terms and conditions of using the site.

Accordingly, this appeal must be refused.

Amber Ahmed
Assessor

The Assessor seems to have missed the Prankster's main appeal point, which was that the operator did not include a Parking Charge Notice with their evidence pack.

The Prankster has of course been spurred into immediate action. He raised a complaint with POPLA that the assessor did not consider all his points. He will wait until this is heard before publishing the full case. He wonders whether the Lead Adjudicator will reverse his requirement, published in the May newsletter, that the Parking Charge Notice must always be submitted with the evidence so that the operator will win the appeal. It seems POPLA's procedures are fairly fluid, depending mainly on the whims of the parking companies. Perhaps The Prankster underestimates the Lead Adjudicator's courage and will be pleasantly surprised.

Still, on the bright side, if Smart Parking choose to continue to court presumably The Prankster will finally get to know if they actually have a contract with Asda.

Meanwhile, here is a picture of a squirrel.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

BPA Sanction points, July

It looks like most AOS operators were behaving themselves in July, with only one instance of sanction points being awarded compared to the 13 instances in June.

If the AOS operators have started to behave themselves then this is a good thing. If the BPA Ltd have cut back on issuing sanction points because they are scared they will lose members to their new rival then this is a bad thing.

The Prankster awaits the passage of time...

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

POPLA may have pulled a fast one regarding paying before an appeal is heard

The Parking Prankster previously published a blog entry warning motorists not to pay if they wished to appeal to POPLA.

The Prankster today received an email from a concerned motorist who thought he remembered that this was not always the case. The POPLA website used to contain a statement to the effect that if the appeal was upheld that any monies paid should be returned. Now that his memory is jogged, The Prankster seems to remember the same wording. Unfortunately, neither The Prankster's screen dumps nor The Wayback Machine captures have a copy of the missing text.

However, as The Motorist also points out, POPLA's old appeal forms do not mention this while the new ones do.

Original form.

New form.

The Prankster would therefore like to ask the following questions.

1. When did the web site get changed?
2. Who decided to change the policy?
3. Were any motorist organisations consulted?
4. Why was the change not publicised?
5. Were the appeals withdrawn in June submitted before or after the policy change?

The Prankster will investigate further. If anyone has screen or site captures from the POPLA website, please get in touch.

If this turns out to be substantiated, The Prankster considers that this is further evidence of the non independence of POPLA; secretly changing a policy to the detriment of motorists due to pressure from the parking industry, without consulting any independent organisations, and implementing the change without publicity. How much worse can things get?

Highview Parking and the massive invisible erection

The Parking Prankster apologises if you arrived here by search engine, perhaps expecting to find something salacious such as the joke about Superman, Wonder Woman and The Invisible Man. This is a blog about parking.

The Prankster's has now received the evidence pack for his latest POPLA case with Highview Parking. (See here for details). The Prankster was surprised to see the following photo of entrance signage in the evidence pack.

This is because The Prankster's photograph of entrance signage looks more like this.

The Prankster wonders where the huge pole has disappeared to in Highview's picture.

Perhaps Highview consider that a picture of a massive erection right in front of their sign will offend the delicate sensibilities of the POPLA assessors. Perhaps the pole was invisible at the time Highview took their pictures, or perhaps it dropped in from outer space shortly after the photograph was taken.

Looking further into the evidence pack, The Prankster was initially impressed by the huge improvement in the map provided by the Highview cartography department. Presumably they were spurred into immediate action following the previous case where they sent in a map of the wrong car park.

The Prankster also thought it far superior to his map he sent in for the previous case.

However, on closer inspection The Prankster was once again disappointed. The map bears no resemblance to the current layout of the car park. The car parking areas along the back of the car park are not shown. The car parking areas on the left of the car park are laid out in square bays, not one long line.

Highview helpfully include photographs in their evidence pack which prove that the map is incorrect. One photograph shows the car park bays at the back, and another one shows the dividers for the square bays.

The Prankster therefore considers that any attempt to show that signage is sufficient cannot be considered seriously by the assessor.

However, the most important error in the map is the omission of the large number of car parking bays which are in front of the hidden entrance signage. Obviously, drivers parking in these bays never encounter any signage at all. The Prankster would hesitate to accuse Highview parking of deliberately omitting these bays from the map in an attempt to cover up their laughable failure to put the entrance signage actually at the entrance, and in fact to choose to site it in the worst possible place for visibility right behind a huge pole and further obscured by trees. However, he does think they need to get a new mapping department again.

Here is The Prankster's new map, showing the missing bays edged in black.

Luckily, this picture from the Highview evidence pack shows some of the 'missing' car park bays, before the entrance sign, and hidden from view by trees and...

...the massive erection which has once again appeared in front of the entrance sign. Perhaps it emerged triumphantly from the ground just before the photographer took the picture.

Anyway, all this is just an amusing diversion because The Prankster will not be mentioning signage in his appeal, preferring instead to concentrate on Highview's failure to decide his appeal within 35 days.

The Prankster will however be reporting Highview's signage to the British Parking Association Limited in due course. This is because he believes it violates the code of practice on signage.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster