Been a bit busy lately so no update for a while, but here's what's been happening in the background:
The reduced charge that appeared when I checked the status of my appeal was explained when I received a nice letter from Civil Enforcement on 25th June stating that my appeal had been unsuccessful.
To recap, that appeal was mainly based on the vehicle being parked there by a legitimate customer and their signs saying that a parking permit must be obtained from reception where no permits exist.
The letter made no reference to anything I had said about the signage in the car park not matching what customers were supposed to actually do, or why they cancelled the 'twin' ticket that was issued to my wife's friend in exactly the same circumstances without her even appealing it (my wife's car can be seen following in their shot of her friend's car leaving on her ticket). What it did say was that 'There are many clear and visible signs displayed on the site' and they maintain the ticket was correctly issued in accordance with their terms and conditions.
The letter explained the drop to a £20 charge by Civil Enforcement invoking Paragraph 17.4 of the BPA code of practice, which says that if there is evidence that a legitimate customer has made a 'Major Keying Error' by either incorrectly entering their registration into the keypad or failing to do so at all, the issuing body should offer them the reduced, £20 charge. The letter concluded by saying that either not paying the £20 within 14 days or appealing the reduced charge would result in it being bumped back to £100.
Interestingly, the BPA website where you register your appeal once the ticket issuer has rejected the direct appeal to them, includes a number of case studies to help people decide whether or not to appeal, and one of them covers the keying error thing -
The parking operator issued the parking charge notice because the motorist parked without entering their registration details via an in-store terminal, when using a customer only car park.
www.popla.co.uk
This deals with a legitimate customer who claimed to have entered their registration but got a ticket anyway. The parking company provided evidence that their records showed that the customer's registration wasn't entered into their terminal and, critically, that that
the car park signs clearly stated that the full and correct vehicle registration had to be keyed into the terminal to qualify for free parking. That appeal was upheld and the ticket cancelled by POPLA because the parking company hadn't offered the reduced charge of £20 or checked to see if the customer had mis-keyed part of their registration.
In my case, however, there are no signs in the car park notifying customers of any need to key any details into any terminal and the original was issued due to breaching the 'Permit Holders Only' regulation, not 'Full and Correct Vehicle Registration to be Keyed into Terminal' requirement.
As such, even though it was very tempting to pay the £20 just to make Civil Enforcement go away, I appealed through the POPLA process using the unique code included on the appeal rejection letter.
That was on 27th June, and the status of my appeal is still showing that POPLA are waiting for the parking operator to provide their evidence, which I then get the opportunity to comment on. I would have expected Civil Enforcement to have sent in their evidence by now, unless of course, they have a huge backlog of POPLA appeals that they're spending a fortune in admin time trying to defend, or, heaven forbid, they don't actually have any evidence to counter my argument that their signs don't match their working practices.
My view of what's happening, in the light of the 'twin' ticket being cancelled after I included its unique reference number in my appeal without it even being challenged, is that Civil Enforcement hate getting appeals against their tickets as it damages their standing with the BPA, so are never prepared to uphold an appeal against a ticket they've issued.
Instead, they will always chance their arm by making a cynical offer of the reduced £20 charge for a 'keying error' even where their signs don't ask you to key in your reg and where someone has valid and evidenced reasons to have the ticket cancelled, in the hope that they will gratefully accept that offer and not appeal through POPLA.
That would explain why they cancelled my wife's friend's ticket without it being appealed - one less big red X against them with the BPA - and why I got offered the 'bargain price' of £20 for a keying error where the ticket should just have been cancelled due to their mistake in issuing it in the first place.
Anyway, I'll let you know the outcome when it finally gets resolved.
