I received a parking ticket for £90 or £45 if paid within 14 days, for parking in Lidl/Iceland car park which had an hour and a half limit.

I was 20 minutes over as thought it was a 2 hour limit. I had bought shopping in Lidl.

Is there a way out of paying this at the first appeal stage?

Any advice most greatfully received as I am on maternity benefit and totally skint...

Send them a letter advising them to take up the contractual invoice with the driver at the time of the alledged breach of contract.

Don't phone them, don't do anything else. Have Anthena sent you a copy of the alledged photo from the ANPR?

Thank you for replying so quickly. yes I have been sent the photos of my car already...

And does that photo show or identify the driver?

No not that I can see from the photos supplied.

Send some a letter something like... just remember to edit to suit your requirements.

Your Address

Your Town

Your Postcode

 

Date:

 

Athena ANPR Ltd

What Ever Address

 

Reference: {Either your vehicle registration or the letters own reference}

 

Dear Sirs,

 

Thank you for your letter dated [DATE OF LETTER], I confirm that I am the registered keeper of the vehicle {YOUR REGISTRATION MARK}.

 

I respectfully request that you take this matter up with the driver of the vehicle at the time in question.

 

It is my understanding that I am not obliged to provide driver information to anyone other than the Chief Constable or Cheif officer of Police.

 

Yours faithfully.

 

Sosp73

 

[Do not use your usual signature or best of all, only print your name]

Right okay thank you. I have gathered that this is the situation regarding driver and registered keeper from reading about other people's situations.

I have got four days left to appeal this before it moves onto the full £90 charge. I've been so rushed off my feet with my baby that it's taken me this long to get around to doing this. Have I left myself enough time to get this letter to them? Once they have received the letter will my £45 charge go on hold? I'm concerned that they might expect me to pay the £90 if they reject my letter. Being out of work at the moment and on stat maternity benefit means I really couldn't afford to pay the £90 as it's a weeks benefit...

Sosp73, Are you planning on paying this unlawful invoice? If so, it is waste of time appealing no matter what these cowboy companies will not listen to your appeal. Only want the £££'s.

If you are planning to appeal then don't bother with the above letter, an appeal means your admitting the contravention, and then you end up paying it.

Send that letter, do NOT send any money, do NOT tell them who was driving, do NOT send them any other "documents" that these people may request.

Yes I see what you mean. I'll post the letter and see what happens then. It's just a lot of money when you don't have it...

Thanks a million for your advice.

Yes I see what you mean. I'll post the letter and see what happens then. It's just a lot of money when you don't have it...

 

Thanks a million for your advice.

Sop,

Absolutely concur with the advice given above. Have a read of this guide in the stickies section of the forum. This will clearly explain the [problem] that is being perpetrated here, the legalities of the situation and your rights.

There are also template letters in the stickies section which will help when they refuse your appeal.

If this company runs true to type you will receive all sorts of empty threats from this company and they may involve debt collectors. You will quite probably be threatened with court action (although these companies seldom take people to court) - these are just threats to initimidate you into paying. Bear in mind that You have Rights, and the guide and the template letters make this clear.

If you have any questions or need any support - just post them here.

ANPR

My wife recently received an Athena ANPR ‘Parking Charge Notice’. I think these notices are designed to look like and fool people into thinking that they are issued by the local authority. I think people should not pay them. My reasons are set in detail out below because I think the level of analysis offered by others on this website are so poor.

Bottom line: ANPR’s claim is pretty shaky, although it is just about possible that they might be successful in a court hearing if the magistrate was completely weak-kneed. But charging £90 is so outrageous, that even if their claim were valid, we should FIGHT! If they wanted a tenner or even maybe £20, I might think “OK, fair cop” but £90 is just taking the p***. So I say…

DO NOT PAY THESE CHARGES!! DON’T BE A SHEEP!!! FIGHT!!! FIGHT!!!

The truth is, they are not going to take anyone to court for £90. So DON’T PAY THEM , they are just out to make money. They are not charging a reasonable fee, this is trying to use the law to extort and bully.

ANPR not empowered to issue penalty charges under the Road Traffic Act

ANPR is not a parking attendant within the meaning of section 63A of the [1984 c. 27.] Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and so has no authority to impose fines or charges. This is the prerogative of the relevant local authority. The “Parking Charge Notice” dished out by ANPR therefore is not a penalty charge (within the meaning of s66 of the Road Traffic Act 1991 (“RTA 1991”)).

Understanding how “real” penalty charges work

Before discussing ANPR “Parking Charge Notices”, it is very important to know how real “penalty charges” issued by the local authority work, so that you can see how differently thing will work in the case of ANPR Parking Charge Notices.

It is often thought that “penalty charges” issued by the local authority are criminal offenses. This is not the case. They are only charges, like council tax or other local authority charges, which if they remain unpaid, are made into county court orders by the county court, and then enforced by the bailiff in the normal way. It is true that there are criminal charges set out in the RTA 1991 (for example, removing a validly issued penalty charge notice from someone else’s car) but parking “illegally” is not a criminal offense as such. You cannot be convicted in a criminal court, however a proper “penalty charge” is very difficult to fight as if you do not pay, the Road Traffic Act simply empowers the local authority to turn the penalty charge into a county court judgment (RTA 1991 Schedule 6 para 7).

Furthermore, the local authority issuing the penalty charge is assisted by section 82(3) of the RTA 1991 which provides that the keeper of the vehicle is assumed to be the owner (section 82(2)). That is why real penalty charge notices are always issued to the registered keeper. However the registered keeper may write to the authority and say that he or she is not liable to pay the penalty charge, because that the vehicle had been permitted to remain at rest in the parking place by a person who was in control of the vehicle without the consent of the owner (Schedule 6(2)(4)©. This defense however may only be raised if the registered keeper raising this defense also specifies the name and address of the person who was in charge of the vehicle at that time. The authority will accept this and re-issue the fine to such person, because if the registered keeper is lying, the person named as being in charge will deny it, and the registered keeper will then be guilty of a serious offense (Schedule 6(9)).

Consequence of ANPR notices not being “real” penalty charges

ANPR “Parking Charge Notices” are not “penalty charges” issued pursuant to the RTA 1991 and so cannot be enforced through the county court in this way. Also ANPR cannot rely on the presumption that the registered keeper is the owner, as the RTA 1991 clearly specifies that this presumption only operates “for the purposes of this part of the Act” ie for the purposes of Part II of the RTA 1991 dealing with real penalty charges” issued by the local authority. This is not however a general presumption upon which anyone else, such as ANPR, may rely.

If ANPR want to enforce their Parking Charge Notices, they have to do it by issuing process out of the county court in the normal way. This gives the defendant a chance to defend the matter. When and if they issue papers, you can reconsider whether or not it is worth the time and effort to settle the matter.

If ANPR notice not a “real” penalty charge, what is the basis of their claim?

The basis of ANPR’s claim is either contract or tort.

If it is based on contract, then ANPR’s claim will be along the following lines: when you drove into the parking lot, there was a sign which set out the terms and conditions upon which you could park there. Those terms were that (1) the first hour and a half were free and (2) thereafter you would have to pay an amount of £90. By driving and parking your car, you accepted the terms and a contract came into being. You then chose to overstay the one and a half hours of free parking, and became liable to pay the sum of £90. By sending you a “Parking Charge Notice”, ANPR are doing nothing more than asking you to pay what you contractually agreed to pay. The fact that it is an outrageous sum is irrelevant in law because you were aware of it (you read the board) and you agreed to it (by parking your car). That is their case in contract.

Are there any possible defenses to this?

The first defense could be that you were not made aware of this term of the contract. Normally this would not be a defense, but here we should refer to the Red Hand Rule - The dictum of Lord Denning M.R. in J Spurling v Bradshaw (1956): Lord Denning in this case famously said:

“I quite agree that the more unreasonable a clause is, the greater the notice which must be given of it. Some clauses which I have seen would need to be printed in red ink on the face of the document with a red hand pointing to it before the notice could be held to be sufficient.”

This principle is even more applicable where you are parking in a garage where the ticket is issued by an electronic machine (Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking Limited, 1971) and presumably even more applicable where there is not even a machine, but only a signboard somewhere in the carpark.

Charging £90 for overstaying your free parking allotment can be seen as very unreasonable. I certainly see it that way, when the average parking charge in North London is not more than £3.50 per hour. If it is, then the question is, do the ANPR signboards comply with this Red Hand rule? if not, then the company has not done what it can to notify you of this unreasonable term, and you are not liable to pay. This will be a question of fact which the magistrate will have to decide. Therefore, in order to succeed with this defense, you will need to show (i) that the £90 is an unreasonable charge which needs to be drawn to the specific attention of the motorist (pretty easy to do I should think given that average parking in North London is usually no more than about £3.50 per hour) and (ii) that the sign did not comply with the Red Hand rule.

A second defense is the rule against penalties: This rule says that if a contract says that an amount of money will be payable in case of a breach, then that amount of money must be a reasonable estimate of the loss it will suffer by reason of such breach, and cannot be simply an arbitrary amount intended to terrorise (terrere) the other party away from committing the breach. This would only work if ANPR’s claim was that they entered into a parking contract with you on the condition you would park for no longer than one hour, and you breached that contract, entitling them to claim contractual damages of £90 (they are contractual damages because the amount is specified in the notice in the carpark). If this is their case, then you can argue that the amount of £90 is not a genuine pre-estimate of their loss, but a penalty in terrorem.

If ANPR’s claim is based on tort, then their argument goes something like this: ANPR only agreed that you could park for an hour and a half, and so by parking for longer than that, you were trespassing. This trespass is a tort, and caused them to suffer financial loss, which they are entitled to recover from you.

I think it is very unlikely that Athena ANPR could proceed on this basis, because it would be difficult for them to prove that they had suffered any loss, (particularly if you were parking in a parking lot, rather than for example parking on private land and thereby causing an obstruction) or if they were successful in doing so, that they had suffered a loss of £90. This argument based on tort should therefore be discounted, although it is cited on National Parking Control’s website at http://www.nationalparkingcontrol.co.uk/ethics.asp I think it would only be applicable to parking on private business premises, not a carpark operated as a carpark.

Are there any other defenses available against an ANPR Parking Charge Notice?

The first and obvious defense is not to admit that you were the person in charge of the vehicle at the time of the issue of ANPR’s “Parking Charge Notice”. The words “not to admit” (instead of “deny”) are very important; if you were in fact the driver at the time, then if you deny it you will be lying, and if you repeat that lie in court papers or under oath, you will be guilty of perjury. What you may do, however, is say that you do not admit that you were the driver, and put ANPR to the proof thereof. This they will be unable to do without the presumptions (described above) that the local authority could rely on if the charge were a real penalty charge under the provisions of the RTA 1991.

Summary

Your defenses to an ANPR Parking Charge Notice are as follows:

1. Do not admit that you were the driver and therefore the person responsible to pay the charge: ANPR cannot rely on the presumption in the RTA 1991 and cannot prove you were the driver.

2. If it is somehow proved that you were the driver, allege that the £90 is an exceptional amount which needs to be brought to the specific attention of those using the parking, and then deny that ANPR complied with the Red Hand rule.

3. in the alternative, and if it is proved that they did comply with the Red Hand rule, deny that the charge is reasonable, constitutes a penalty and is therefore unlawful.

This is a general summary: you may need to adjust your strategy when they tell you what the basis of their claim is.

Additional notes

ANPR make no secret of the fact that they obtain the details of the registered keeper direct from the DVLA. This does not in my view constitute an offense under the Data Protection Act (because they obtain this with the consent of the keeper of the data), however the DVLA have committed an offense. If you receive an ANPR Parking Charge notice, write to the DVLA and ask them to explain to you why they have disclosed your personal details to a private and third party company. The DVLA can of course disclose this information to the police or other authorities, but I am not aware that they are entitled to disclose it to other members of the public. Keep writing letters to them – never give up.

DONT BE A SHEEP - FIGHT!!!

ANPR

 

My wife recently received an Athena ANPR ‘Parking Charge Notice’. I think these notices are designed to look like and fool people into thinking that they are issued by the local authority.

Gosh, surely they wouldn't do that intentionally to mislead us would they?!

 

I think people should not pay them. My reasons are set in detail out below because I think the level of analysis offered by others on this website are so poor.

erm, 99.9% of the advise on here concludes you should not pay them which hardly strikes me as poor advise, plus all of the advise in the rest of your post, although generally sound and welcome, is exactly the same advise that many people offer on here day after day. So why you suggest the advise is poor seems very unfair*

*for unfair you could read wrong if you like.

A couple of points. In the light of the recent Excel lost case, it would appear that most PPC's cannot make any charges for land they don't own.

The DVLA will sell registered keepers details to anyone who has reasonable cause to do so.

It could be argued that at the point the PPC gets your address, they have not proven beyond any doubt that you in fact were parked in their car park, e.g a cloned car number. Thus are obtaining car details without just cause, and it may be this that should be a complaint against the DVLA.

If everyone who recieved a PPC ticket did this, the DVLA may grind to a halt.

If everyone who recieved a PPC ticket did this, the DVLA may grind to a halt.

The draw back of that could be that while trying to handle all these complaints, they screw up even more of the SORN declarations meaning more people get 80quid fines; fail to process more changes of keeper meaning ex-owners are still getting PCNs; and loose even more categories of vehicle off peoples licences when they renew resulting in some people actually loosing their jobs!

The DVLA forum board has enough of these horror stories already so we really wouldn't want to add to them by moving some of the problems off the parking forum would we electron?

Even before the Excel case it was well known that a claim under contract, besides having fulfill all the usual contract requirements of which there are many, could only be pusrsued successfully by the PPC is they had sufficient proprietary rights to be able to make the 'offer' of parking (or were acting as 'agents' of the landowner. It is very very very rare indeed for any landowner to grant these rights - especially to companies that operate based on unlawful and sometimes illegal methods. The landowner then becomes a party. And of course tort is against the landowner. Bear in mind that retail park outlets almost never own their own car park. See how vanishingly small the chances are that the basic entitlement for PPCs to operate is present. then add all all the contractual issues, unlawful paperwork etc etc. Its a mail [problem]. ignore them and leave them hanging in the wind sending their letters.

sosp73

I have received a similar letter and fine. Did you send them the template letter and if so, what was the outcome. Just wondering if it is worth sending the letter.

Nope - they WANT you to contact them.

If you send them a letter you will be put on the responder high priority pile and be sent more junkmail.

Considering you are only a first time poster, caiaphas, I would say your'e description of advice on here being 'poor', is very unfair.

I am only 1 among many hundreds of people on here that have followed advice gleened from this site, and have found it to be sound advice every time.

First time posters should take time to read the stickies and to trawl through the many threads about this sort of activity and follow the consensus of opinion, its worked many times before, and continues to do so.

It would also help to take note of the number of posts by each contributor.

People such as crem, lamma, Al27, to name just three, are excellent sources of advice that I have followed many times.

jed

ANPR

Bottom line: ANPR’s claim is pretty shaky, although it is just about possible that they might be successful in a court hearing if the magistrate was completely weak-kneed.

 

Any case brought by a PPC would be in the COUNTY COURT, Magistrates Courts are for criminal offences and traffic matters.

, this is trying to use the law to extort and bully.

These companies do not have the law on their side they use bluff and bluster instead.

 

 

If ANPR want to enforce their Parking Charge Notices, they have to do it by issuing process out of the county court in the normal way. This gives the defendant a chance to defend the matter. When and if they issue papers, you can reconsider whether or not it is worth the time and effort to settle the matter.

 

Any case brought to the County Court should be defended. to suggest it may not be worth the time and effort to defend it is nothing less than stupid.

 

If ANPR notice not a “real” penalty charge, what is the basis of their claim?

 

The basis of ANPR’s claim is either contract or tort.

 

Summary

 

Your defenses to an ANPR Parking Charge Notice are as follows:

 

1. Do not admit that you were the driver and therefore the person responsible to pay the charge: ANPR cannot rely on the presumption in the RTA 1991 and cannot prove you were the driver.

2. If it is somehow proved that you were the driver, allege that the £90 is an exceptional amount which needs to be brought to the specific attention of those using the parking, and then deny that ANPR complied with the Red Hand rule.

3. in the alternative, and if it is proved that they did comply with the Red Hand rule, deny that the charge is reasonable, constitutes a penalty and is therefore unlawful.

 

This is a general summary: you may need to adjust your strategy when they tell you what the basis of their claim is.

An even simpler 'defence' Totally ignore them.

 

Additional notes

 

ANPR make no secret of the fact that they obtain the details of the registered keeper direct from the DVLA. This does not in my view constitute an offense under the Data Protection Act (because they obtain this with the consent of the keeper of the data), however the DVLA have committed an offense.

 

Absolute tosh!!!!!

 

DONT BE A SHEEP - FIGHT!!!

regards

Hi I got a letter a few month ago from Atena and now I have a new letter from Legal recoveries and collections LTD (LRC) stating that there is an outstanding account by their client of £115. Should I contact them or just ignore it. I did send atena a email asking for them to prove who was driving but I have not heard back from them.

ignore them. its a mail [problem], writing to them is playing along with the [problem] ! its like asking for a seat at a crooked card game that you already know is crooked.

Hi I got a letter a few month ago from Atena and now I have a new letter from Legal recoveries and collections LTD (LRC) stating that there is an outstanding account by their client of £115. Should I contact them or just ignore it. I did send atena a email asking for them to prove who was driving but I have not heard back from them.

AS you have now found any attempt to reasonably communicate with a PPC is a complete waste of time.

Just ignore these clowns they will go away eventually.

regards

Hi I've read this forum and followed the advice. I have just received a letter from legal reocvery and collections limited saying £115 or court proceedings - still ignore? I'm feeling nervous now -any advice would be welcome. thnx.

Carry on ignoring- debts collectors can't actually do anything.

Hi, I had several letters from that debt collector, read the words they say possible courts proceedings. I got 4 letters but IGNORE them all no matter how scary they make you feel.

After each letter I came back here and read some more to reassure myself that they where just scaring me into paying and then I put the letter away and forgot about it.

Its been about 2 months now since the last letter and I suspect they have given up on me because I never caved in...

Matt