Readers’ emails: Time to issue Parking Charge Notice

From: Martin
Subject: Length of Time To Recive a Parking Charge Notice

Hi there,

I was wondering if you could offer a quick bit of advice.
We received a parking charge notice that was issued buy a private parking company (Excel Parking), it was caught via ANPR.

The date of the offence was 21/07/2014 but the date of notice was issued on 12/09/2014 and delivered on 16/09/2014.

Is this a fair amount of time to send this notice?
The Martin Lewis template for appealing mentions something about the “Notice to Keeper” has to sent within 14 days?

Thanks for your time and I hope you can advise.

Regards,
Martin.

Hi Martin,

If Excel are claiming keeper liability, then they must have issued the Notice to Keeper within 14 days of the parking event. In your case it appears that they have not done that. In that case, they may only pursue the driver, and they may only do that if they know who the driver is (for example by you giving this information away in an appeal letter). This is explained in our keeper liability piece.

If an out of time NTK from Excel mentions keeper liability, then this would be a serious breach of the BPA Ltd’s Code of Practice, and you should make a complaint to both the DVLA and the BPA Ltd. This, however, would not necessarily mean that Excel cannot continue to pursue the charge against the driver.

Given they have timed out on keeper liability, and assuming they don’t know who the driver is, you would be well within your rights to tell them that since the keeper liability does not apply, they should pursue the driver, and that you have no obligation to disclose who that is, and that any further correspondence will be treated as harassment.

Best of luck, PC.