Readers’ emails: Failed POPLA appeal
From: George
Subject: Failed POPLA appeal
Hi, I’m writing to enquire as to whether or not there’s any point in me taking this parking charge further, after the POPLA appeal failed. I was given the ticket for parking in my sister’s parking space using her permit which unfortunately fell down from the dash into the footwell. This is the only point I made in the POPLA appeal, as I hadn’t read anything on your site and expected them to cancel the ticket on the benefit of the doubt. If need to give you more details I’m happy to, but what do you think my chances are in court?
Yes, unfortunately you didn’t read up on the subject before you appealed. POPLA don’t uphold appeals based on mitigating circumstances. Ironically in this case, your mitigating circumstances are probably valid; assuming your sister is the land owner and she has given you permission to park there, that would most likely have precedence over any contract between you and the parking company communicated via signage.
So what are the next steps? Well, a POPLA loss is not binding on you. The parking company will still have to make a county court claim and win to enforce the charge. Although the number of court claims has increased over the past year, it is still unlikely that you will be taken to court; it costs the parking company more money than they win to take a ticket to court.
If you did end up in court then you would have every chance to defeat the claim, assuming you did your research and wrote a good defence. There is a great deal of help out there in the forums, plus the guides written by Parking Prankster. The claims that parking companies win tend to be those that aren’t defended well, relying on points of mitigation rather than law.
I have gone through the appeal process and have received a 38 page document back from Excel Parking Service Ltd who are the agents for Peel Centre car park in Stockport. I took all of the advice from this site to try and fight my corner and included all info on the contractual status they hold and the cost side of things. They seem to have answered all the points i have raised however i still cant get my head round how they are allowed to conduct themselves in the way they do! It seems private car parks are a license to print money and they are in no way acting outside the law. Does anyone know if anything can be done to fight this further or have I been well and truly stumped?! Im happy to provide the case summary for anyone who knows more about this. Cheers