Update - G24 are going to cancel the charge! The driver visited Braintree again yesterday and complained to one of the stores where he had been shopping that he'd got a ticket. They said to raise it with the tourist office on site as the car park belongs to the centre. The tourist office (little cabin opposite Next) wanted to see receipt/s as proof of shopping and said they wil take it up with G24 and were certain they would (probably) agree to wipe out the charge. Luckily, we had saved 3 receipts which proved we had been there throughout the afternoon. Got a message today from the tourist office saying G24 have agreed to wipe off the charge and a letter will follow from them. The people we communicated with were : Customer Services– Freeport Braintree. Managed by REALM Ltd. T: 01376 348 168 | F: 01376 323 722 I was about to draft a letter to G24 complaining : 1. No ticket was issued, so how could we be expected to extend it after 6 hours? 2. we would have been willing to pay £3.60 which they advertise as the daily car park charge/ further we weren't causing any inconvenience to the landlowner. 3. There was no notice in the car park warning that £100 would be charged if anyone overstays 6 hours. The key to resolving this seems to be keep hold of receipts and take up with the shopping centre management who don't want to lose customers, and who - in this case - are extremely pleasant and nice to deal with. THANK YOU for all suggestions posted and replies, much appreciateds.

I was not the driver but the driver and their family went to Freeport outlet village Braintree on 2 April and parked in their car park which was believed to be a free car park. Travelled 45 miles approx to go there. Today I received in the post what's headed a Contractual Parking Charge Notice with issue date 9.4.15, and showing images of the car entering at 13.05 and leaving at 19.45, by which time the car park was of course fairly empty. The notice is addressed to me as registered keeper. I was not in fact the driver. The charge is £100 for "over staying" by 20 mins !! It states permitted free parking 360 mins and actual parking period 400 mins. the letter states the vehicle was parked on private property at Freeport Outlet Village, Charter Way, CM77 8YH: "By entering and parking the vehicle on our client's private property the driver agreed with G24 Ltd (the creditor) to be bound by the terms & conditions of parking shown below. The terms and conditions were clearly displayed at the entrance to and in prominent places within the car park. In accordance with the agreement, by leaving your vehicle in the car park in breach of the terms and conditions of parking the driver is hereby required to pay a parking charge the sum of £100. within 28 days of the date of this contractual parking charge notice. Term breached : exceeding the maximum duration of stay permitted at the Freeport Outllet Village....CM77 8YH. Term applicable : that a sum ( the parking charge) of £100. is payable. To date the contractually agreed parking charge has not been paid in full and we do not know both the name of the driver and a current address for service for the driver. If the parking charge is paid within 14 days of the date of this contractuial parking charge notice it wil be reduced to £60. If no payment is recieved within 28 days G24 Ltd wil forward the outstanding debt to a debt recovery agency and the dirver may incur additional costs for late payment. You are now invited to : pay the unpaid parking charge or if you were not the driver of the vehicel to notify us of the name of the driver and a current address for service for the dirver and pass this notice to the driver. Please be warned that if after a period of 28 days beginning with the day afetr that on which the notice is given i) the amount of the unpaid charge specified has not been paid in full and ii) we do not know both the name of driver and a current address for service of driver, we will have the right to recover from you so much of that parking charge as remains unpaid. Please see the reverse of this notice for further information on how to pay........ TO AVOID ADDIITONAL COSTS, PAYMENT MUST BE MADE PROMPTLY. Any ideas on how to respond to this? What if, for argumentss sake, the driver is now residing abroad? That is not the case but I'm just curious to understand how this would be dealt with in that situation. Is it worth doing a land registry search to find out who is the owner of the land and writing direct to them to object to payment? Just not clear on what basis I would argue it's not payable. Although no money was paid so on what basis was there a contract? Would be grateful for input. Thank you. ps where's the spell checker?

Just to confirm - nothing happened in the end! It went away, never heard anything further. Thanks to the help I got here, I stood my ground and ignored them when they tried to get tough - they even got my email address and telephone numbers! THANK YOU

should Iwrite to them up front asking for proof of ownerhsip of debt and prooof that they are the land owner or acting on behalf of the land owner (and ask them to name the land owner ) ?

Hi Scouse Magic Thanks for response. I have perused some of the threads, but honestly cannot make clear sense of it all and how it relates to me. These are my questions - thank you in advance if you are able to reply: 1.How can I be sure AEJ do not own the land? 2.How can I find out who does own the land? 3.As long as the owner has authorised AEJ to pursue the debt on their behalf, or sold any legally enforceable debt to AEJ, where does the problem lie? In other words, why is the issue about land ownership rather than debt ownership? If AEJ can prove they own the debt but not the land, does that really prevent them getting judgement? You're saying the notices put up in the car park are AEJ notices - surely there must be some small print in them ( I shall have to look next time!) stating they are acting on behalf of the (named) land owner....in which case, they've got themselves covered (?) as long asd the named land owner properly authorised them to enter into contracts with users of the car park 4. If the vehicle owner was present with the driver, post Oct 12, is the situation any different now? 5. Presumably too late to appeal to POPLA now? If we did not appeal/ haven't appealed, does that make it harder to defend county court action? Is that a route we should properly have exhausted first? 6.Is this a good legal point: I did initially go online , intending to appeal ( on basis there were no parking bays available on date in question therefore no alternative but to park in a spot not causing obstruction to anyone else) ....but reason Id id not apepal was that I was being invited to first sign a contract to say I woudl be liable for any debt found to be due....I thought that was unfair so did not proceed to register my appeal. Finally, have received this letter: "You have recently been written to by our solicitors Graham White. As this matter has not been resolved and no payment has been made, the account has been referred back to me to consider the suitability of legal action for this account. Before commencing such action I have been isntructed by our client to give you one final opportunity to settle this matetr and I have been authorised to accept a lesser sum providing payment is made within the next 14 days. Please contact immediately on 01932 332048 to confirm what this amount may be and to make arrangments for the subsequent payment. Please do not ignore this letter - it is in your best interests to clear your liability."

thanks for reply. just to clarify - I was there, I was present as a passenger. Does this still apply? also, would the debt collector company not have authority to issue proceedings on behalf of the car park company?or wouldn't the car park company issue in its own name? sorry, don't mean to bog you down in these issues, just trying to get my head around it a bit better,thank you.

is this correct, quoted from candy_man's post above? "Due to the Protection Of Freedom Act that came into force on 1st October 2012, private parking companies now have a legal right to persue the registered keeper of the vehicle for any unpaid charges."

HELP !! Have received a letter threatening legal action recently from Roxburghe UK Ltd, followed by letter from Graham White Solicitors which states: "You were written to by AEJ Management Ltd. and their agent Roxburghe requesting settlement of PCN.Due to absence of payment or a valid appeal, our client has instructed us to recover the total amount due as shown above ( now £153). In order to recover the sum due AEJ Management may instruct us to take legal action in the county court and to prevent such action we would invite you to contact Roxburghe on 01932 332048 to confirm your proposals in respect of this PCN. Take note: the costs associated with issuing a claim and subsequent potential enforcement could be as follows ( these figures are for illustrative purposes only and would only apply in the event of a judgement being granted and subsequently enforced): Claim issue fee £30 Solicitors costs for issusing claim £50 Judgement costs £25 Warrant issue fee: £100 Solicitors costs for issuing warrant £2.25 Total additional costs: £207.25 You should note also that if any judgement is registered against you, it could seriously affect your chances of obtaining credit in the future,.......... Please contact Roxburghe UK Ltd. upon receipt of this letter. Alternatively you can make payment via their website"......signed Michael Sobell, solicitor Are solicitors really allowed to send out letters like this if there is no legal basis on which to demand that these fines be paid? What do I do ? ! I really don't want to get a judgement registered against me, and have just read post by Candy _man and apologise for not responding. What did you do in the end Candy-man? Any update on what's happened? Is it correct as Candy-man says that the rules may be different in relation to fines imposed pre October 2012? My fine was imposed in December 2012. Thanks again for all input.Much appreciated. slightly worried treeswinter

thanks....will keep you posted

Got letter yesterday in post from AEJ Management stating : A PCN was attached to the above named mentioned vehicle and the driver should have paid.....it is now too late to pay the discounted amount......the terms & conditions, to which the driver of the vehicle agreed to be bound by remaining within the car park, were clearly displayed in prominent places at the entrance to and throughout the car park and if you were the driver you must pay the total amount due. Under Important Notice at the end it staes: In the event of non payment we reserve the right to pass htis matter to our apponted debt collection agency and the costs of recovering this PCN will be added to the amount oustanding. then details of how to appeal and how to pay on the back. Am I safe to ignore this? I wasn't the driver.

hi nothing happened....as at today's date, heard absolutely nothing from them ! Really grateful to those on this forum who responded - otherwise we would have probably paid up not knowing any better. We had planned to ignore any communications in any event, but did not receive any.Hope this helps.

my husband parked on a single yellow line on our high street during restricted hours. He drove off as he was spotted by the PA . Today we got a PCN stating the LA belives a PC is payable due to being parked in a restricted street during prescrivbed hours. He was observed from 10.18-10.19 and notice states PA had started to issue a notice but he drove off. Can they enforce this even if he was stopped /observed for just 60 seconds? He had nowhere to park and had to drop off some urgent packages to post office. Thank you for any input on this as we are not sure what our position is..

thanks all, what a huge relief this is : the company concerned is : AEJ Management Ltd.

thank you for replies; I did post a response earlier but it seems like it's not displaying, so will try again. It's definitely headed PARKING CHARGE NOTICE/ not penalty charge notice. it has a notice number, and it's issued by a management companay ltd.It's issued by a parking officer, stating time and date, and when I lenter ticket details on line it shows a photo of car parked. It states" A PARKING CHARGE NOTICE OF £90 IS DUE WITHIN 28 DAYS OF THE DATE OF ISSUE"/DISCOUNTED AMOUNT OF £50 WILL BE ACCEPTED IN FULL AN DFINAL SETTLEMENT IF RECEIVED WITHIN 14 DAYS" "Parking officer xxx has reasonabel cause to belive that a parking charge notice has been incurred because of : .......(blank) Code No - C (please tick code as defined on reverse of this ticket).....there is nothing ticked on the reverse. It was stuck to windscreen in sam eyrllow/black outline pouch used by local authorities. THANK YOU.

Went to shopping retail park at weekend; I was not driving car ( it is registered in my name and a named driver was driving) . Car park was packed - no place to park anywhere, so we droive right to the back and decided to park alongside an unmarked kerb, still allowing space for cars parked along side/oppositeto reverse and get out. There were no notices anywhere that we could see which said no parking/ no yellow lines or marked boxes. When we returned we found PCN affixed to windscreen stating contrvention code C - park only within marked bays; £90 fine reduced to £50 if we pay within14 days. Very upsetting as we had been out budget shopping to save money! Not sure how to deal - are we really liable to pay this and should we bother appealing? I almost submitted the appeal form online when prompted to confirm if I was the driver and I stated "no" - they then wanted the driver to enter into a contract online a to pay anything found to be due! I thought that was unfair and so did not proceed further and the appeal has not been submitted. Can they get a judgement against me for this? I ahve no CCJ's and worried how this could affectme professionally + credit rating. What if there was a notice somewhere which we did not see telling us we could not park anywhere except within marked bays? Would apprecaite any comments at all. Thank you very much.