3 hours ago, Draxy said:

 

The PCN has been issued on 28/10/2018, 06:31 PM

My reason of not paying them was actually because I haven't received my first notice for £60 and I told them that I'm happy to pay that but not more

 

Thanks for keep me updated 

They should have snapped your hand off offering to pay.

At the end of the day your choice, but I didnt know this was an un-adopted,  private road because the signage is poor and has been for 4.5 years.

I only parked here as the Tesco car park was full.

So if you parked at 6.31pm it was already dark, the signs are not illuminated and in darkness and NPM would have taken their photos using a floodlight & flash.

I have photographic evidence of this taken at the end of October, same time.

My parents were there that night/time so if you need a witness I am sure they will be happy to oblige.

Hi,

I have just replied a second time to NPM's Letter Before Claim. 

I have stated the debt is denied as the PCN was disputed.

I have given the reasons why and requested from them several documents and information.

I await their reply and to be advised if they still intend to take me to court.

They recently lost a court case for a claim for an unpaid PCN in this same road.

When was your PCN issued because NPM were suspended from operating here in the middle of November and as far as I know they are still not operating here.

What time of day did you or the driver park in the road?

Happy to help you in anyway I can.

Sorry for the delay in posting this update.

Your website was down whilst being re-designed.

The website is looking good,

You would have thought they would have crawled away by now and if they had it would have been less damaging to them to have done so.

My Father went through all their lies in detail for our MP and she forwarded this to the NPM MD about a month ago and so far no rely.

However, they sent the LBC 10 days after, so that was a sort of response!

Now waiting for a response to my rejection of their LBC.

Will keep you updated.

They have probably issued hundreds of tickets over the last 4.5 years since Tesco Express opened in this road and you are right they haven't changed their behavior or signs in that time despite many complaints, but I think the tide is about to turn and this case being dismissed is just another part of making this happen.

It is still hoped by Tesco's staff that they have permanently lost the contract in this road, but their Landlord/Landowner is being evasive in confirming this. I am not sure how many cases have been taken to court for this location. This may have been the first one and a test case. Obviously most PCN's have been paid through ignorance, fear and drivers wanting to qualify for the 14 day discount.

Someone on this thread stated they had it in writing from Trading Standards that they had not approved the signage in this road as was quoted by the NPM Managing Director in the Chronicle & Echo in September 2014. I now have that added to my growing defense file.

BTW I became aware of another IPC Code of Conduct that NPM have been breaching. It is Part C 2.1 regarding the issuing of tickets on non ANPR sites like this one. They are supposed to attach the ticket to the vehicle or hand it to the driver, but they don't. They sneakily take their photos when the driver goes out of sight, then afterwards the office get the keeper details from the DVLA, then send the PCN in the post to the keeper. This is also breaching POFA 2012. Here is the exact wording in the IPS Code of Practice V6 amended 14th June 2017:

2. Notice to Driver (Non-ANPR cases)

Schedule 4 to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 prescribes the steps you must follow to

pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle for an unpaid parking charge. You should fully appraise

yourself and those within your organisation with the Act and the processes therein

to make sure that you are compliant with the legislation. Below is a short summary of the

requirements. However, it is you that has the responsibility for ensuring compliance with the

Act.

2.1 The Notice to the Driver must;

(a) Be in writing.

(b) Either be affixed to the vehicle or given to a person who appears to the

Operator to have control of that vehicle.

© Specify the vehicle and the land on which it was parked.

(d) Identify the period of parking to which the charge relates and the

circumstances by which the charge became payable.

(e) Describe the means by which the contract was brought to the attention of the

driver.

i think they will know I am aware of the case as NPM probably have spies on this forum and also the one that helped the girl to win her case.

My Father has already made the landowner and Tesco aware that NPM lost the case to reinforce the complaint they received.

Dont worry I will and i'm getting a better defence by the day

Thanks.

Had some good news today.

The woman who was taken to court by NPM for not paying the PCN for her car being parked in this same location as I was won her case today.

This was her second appearance in court.

The first time the Judge adjourned because NPM were not properly prepared, but the Defendant was.

Today the case resumed and the Judge dismissed it!

Oh happy days!!!!

This is a big boost to my confidence.

Will they still bother to carry out their threat to take me to court especially when they have fallen at one of the same first hurdles as this case?

Yes I agree with as to why they told lies to my MP,

but she did not accept the these and has written to the MD again to challenge them.

It is unlikely they will respond.

I am not looking for reasons to fail and do not intend to do so.

I most definitely believe that I am right, otherwise like many I would have already thrown in the towel.

As Margaret Thatcher once said "The lady's not for turning"

I worked out a few typos in your message but one I was unable to do so which is the word "orer" in the the sentence

"I will be seeking full costs recovery orer under.........."

Thanks for your response.

Was worried that there were no views yesterday.

Obviously everyone was busy!!

I have read that whilst the road is unadopted and is private it is the Landowners responsibility to maintain it.

NPM have also stated in their response to my MP's complaint letter:

"St Edmunds is an un-adopted road.

An un-adopted road is a private road.

It is a road that is privately owned property and is limited to the use of the owners who share the use and maintain the road without help from a government agency.

Even though the road is un-adopted most regulations will still apply.

As this road is private the landowner does not wish to mark the road with any type of linage, which they are well within their rights to do so".

With regards to there not being a contract they wrote:

"Drivers are allowed and given time to read NPM signage to determine if they wish to park on Private land or not.

If a driver chooses to park on the private land, then they agree to abide by the terms and conditions of parking.

If drivers park and leave their vehicle a PCN will then be issued".

In another part of the letter they wrote

"The NPM contract is entered once the vehicle is stationary, unattended or stopped"

I cannot see how you can read the signage without parking and leaving your vehicle!!!!

Should I respond to the LBC with just a letter or also complete the relevant sections of the Annex 1.

(i.e. My details at the top of page 10, Tick Box D I dispute the debt (using reasons you have given?),

Tick Box I and ask for more information like the Landowner Authority,

and sign and date Page 12 below Box I)?

Thanks for the info...

Hi everyone.

I have not been on here for sometime as I was waiting for the LBC, which has finally arrived. I will upload it later with personal details covered.

Whilst waiting for the LBC my Father contacted Tesco Head Office about the issue of shoppers receiving PCN's in this road because the signage is poor (e.g. none at the entrance of the road, these refer to Land/Site, not Road & most do not face the driver) and consequently they park unaware that the road is Private/Un-adopted with no parking allowed.

Also NPM have been breaking IPC Codes of Conduct, like alluring drivers to park where it is forbidden by parking their own vehicles there & using portable floodlights and flash to take PCN photos at night because their signs or not illuminated.

As a result of this Tesco complained to their Landlord, who is the Landowner of the road and hence the NPM contract was suspended whilst investigations took place.

Management and staff at the store have assumed that the NPM contract has been cancelled because no one has been seen there for a few months now and one member of the NPM staff, who previously worked here, told staff that the company no longer manage the parking in this road anymore.

The NPM signs are still there except the one nearest the front of the store, which someone has removed.

However the Manager who was my Fathers contact at Tesco told us that the Landlord have completed their investigations and that the NPM contract is going to be reinstated after road repairs have been completed.

We cannot see that any repairs are required, & have not seen a copy of the investigation report.

The last 3 emails to this Tesco Manager have not received a reply, so he contacted Head Office, who have also been unable to contact this Manager.

instead they contacted the store and who confirmed their belief that the NPM contract has been cancelled & consequently they have made the following statement to my Father "I hope we have reassured you that this type of charge will not be incurred on our Customers any more and you can freely parkin the road when using this facility".

If this is definitely true we don't know why the other Tesco Manager misinformed us and then went silent on us. Something is not right, but my Father will get to the bottom of this.

My Father wrote a complaint letter about NPM to our MP, but she messed up and forgot to include enclosures with her first letter.

A second letter had to be sent which included these and a detailed reply was received, which sounded very good and believable, but a lot was untrue and are an attempt to wriggle out of the points of our complaint, so a third letter was required. This has not been responded to, other than receiving the LBC.

A complaint to the IPC about NPM breaking their code of conduct was hard work getting a response and turned out to be a waste of time as they just made up excuses for their member for each code that they had broken!

Parking Signs being approved by Trading Standards may be nothing to do with them.

However, over 4.5 years ago Gary Gearey, the MD of NPM was quote in the Northampton Chronicle & Echo newspaper that Trading Standards had approved the signs at this site, so if this was untrue I would love to have a copy of the email that supports this.

As promised here is the Letter Before Claim from NPM.

Does it legally comply?

It is interesting to see they have issued this themselves and not used a Solicitor.

I did have two QDR Solicitor letters before this and I saw that Gladstones messed up on one of their LBC's that caused issues with the court proceedings.

Any advice please on how to respond would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your continued support.

I have read Daewood V Camden (newspaper report). Camden Council won the case against the Dr Daewood parking on his own land so how does that support my case?

NPM LBC.pdf

sorry, I thought this was a construction site.

Anyways, who is the landowner as it isnt Tesco Knowing this may be helpful re contracts and planning for signs

The document is a pdf from the Council website. The quality is poor. As they say you cannot polish the s word. Tesco property manager phoned me this afternoon. I am sending him all the complaint details and he is going to speak to the Landlord. If he gets a response it will be that the Parking Management Company is a member of the IPC and signs at the site approved by the IPC and Trading Standards. I have told him why to dismiss these statements.

He confirmed who I know to be the Landlord and owner of the land.

The Tesco Store has been open for over 4 years now

Application Correspondence (PUBLIC)1.pdf

I didnt think it was a done deal that the road will be adopted at all.

I would think like you that all of the part causing issues will be adopted.

Yes the tarmac and normal line marking are part of the problem.

It looks like a finished adopted road and as there are no signs stating otherwise obviously shopper are none the wiser until that PCN drops through the letter box!

We may have had some temporary success.

The NPM Cowboys, their floodlighting and flash cameras were not present last night when it was dark

they maybe lying low at the moment unless they were all at a staff Bonfire Party that Mt Gearly was holding!

I know who I would have liked to have seen as the guy on top of the bonfire

Sorry if that last sentence is breaking group rules.

i have continued to push Tesco's into taking action.

They have tried to fob me off and pull the wool over my eyes, but they apologised in the end for doing so and have stated this will be passed onto the area manager.

I now have the correct planning application number and confirmed that the Tesco's landlord is the the same company, who own the whole site.

Also seen the deeds to the land.

Read the attached with interest.

Have they broken their agreement for the planning consent by not painting double yellow lines before Tesco's etc moved in or because the road is un-adopted is that a get out for them?

planning.pdf

I started by looking at planning applications and luckily before I purchased a land registry document I discovered the planning department were looking at the wrong address!!!!! Phoned them back and as this is complicated I have had to submit my request by email.

Not sure I am understanding the significant of the red and blue borders on this site plan from the planning documents. Anyone else understand what they are showing us? I can make assumptions.

site plan from the planning documents.pdf

Yes I know complaining to the IPC is a waste of time. I foolishly used their corrupt IAS appeal process and despite flaws with the evidence given by NPM, which I highlighted to the Adjudicator, my appeal was rejected and the IPC would not accept my complaint of how this was handled because it would affect the independance of the Adjudicator (LOL). The purpose of the petition and contacting the press is to highlight what a rogue company NPM are and the more people who are aware that they are not following even the IPC Code of Conduct the better, then more like myself will refuse to pay.

I already know who the Landowner is and I have looked them up on companies house, to find out the name of the Director.

I have been trying hard to stop them wasting time and money with DCA's and Solicitors by asking them to instruct NPM to take me to court, but they don't seem to understand English, so now I am just going to ignore them until I receive a letter from the court. ZZPS stated that thier client belive they have strong case so why have they been wasting all this time. Don't they have to take you to court within a specific time period? What is amazing is that this has been going on for over 4 years as this media story confirms. Same issues of people not seeing the signs, signs being in darkness. How can they keep passing the IPC audits of this site? And yes I know all about how the IPC have won business from the BPA.

https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/misleading-signs-have-led-to-hefty-fines-at-car-park-off-wellingborough-road-in-northampton-1-6277100

Newspaper exposure being worked on.

Response from Tesco:

I am very sorry that you and other customers have received parking charges for parking on the unadopted road entrance by St Edmunds Hospital. I can only imagine the inconvenience and upset caused by this. I have looked into this and unfortunately we do not have any jurisdiction over the car park or the company that hands out these parking charges as this is separately owned, we do not own the car park here. The only thing I can suggest is that you contact the company directly but I can see that you have already done this. I am very sorry but there is not much that I can do for you. It pains me to say as I could not imagine being in the situation you are in right now. I wish you all the best in your efforts and I sincerely hope that this doesn't continue. Thank you

I pointed out I was not referring to the car park, which is not controlled by NPM.

My friend knew that from comment on here about trespassing, but when you are within inches of a big black guy do you continue to argue? At least he didn't take my friends camera away! He caught my friend when he was looking through the photos on thr corner of the street. He told my friend he was weird as he had been hanging around for 42 minutes. At first the NPM guy suspected my friend was there monitoring them so they drove round without stopping a few times. Hence why he was there so long!

My friend did get right in their face, but dearn't take a photo of the guy as he was getting aggresive saying it was private land and he would expel him off the site, even when he moved to the front of the Tesco store.

He said the landowner was the Landlord of Tesco, so this was still private land!

My friend did get photos and they have been included in a petition that has been started.

I posted a link to it on this group but it was removed.

Only one photo was used.

Not very clear as it was dark, but you see enough.

The local paper have a full set of the photos

Tesco's have been made aware of this petition through a tweet, but have chosen to ignore this.

I think they are scared of upsetting their Landlord.

In the past the Manager of the store alluded to this situation.

Well true to form the next stage of the game has happened.

I have received a letter from a Solicitor

So what now?

Ignore this completely this time?

It has been said that this letter is from the debt collector ZZPS who have had permission to use the QDR Solicitors letterhead

Is there any truth in this?

The link to facebook was only one of the three posts that were removed.

There were two others.

One had some very useful data about NPM and the other was a link to the petition to NPM and the Landowner to improve the signs at this site and comply with the IPC Code of Conduct.

qdr.pdf

Tonight someone went on site to get photographic evidence of NPM taking photos of cars when it is dark and the signs on the building that drivers park alongside are in darkness. They hand hold a powerful floodlight in front and behind the cars and take their photos with flash. The IPC code of conduct states:

"If parking enforcement takes place outside of daylight hours you should ensure that signs are illuminated or there is sufficient other lighting. You will need to ensure all signs are readable during the hours of enforcement as they form the legal basis of any charge.

Be clearly legible and placed in such a position (or positions) such that a driver of a vehicle is able to see them clearly upon entering the site or parking a vehicle within the site".

The Parking attendant asked the person taking the photos to leave the site as it was private land and he threatened to expel him if he didn't do so.

Obviously at this point the NPM employee could have been told that he had no control over trespassers, but the person decided to just tell him that that he was breaking the IPC code of conduct by taking photos of cars to issue PCN's when the signs were not illuminated

His responded by asking to be reported!!!

Also the NPM parking attendant parked his car by the building which could be considered as another code of conduct rule broken.

The Tesco Manager has already complained about this underhand practice.

"14.1 You must not use predatory or misleading tactics to lure drivers into incurring parking charges.

Such instances will be viewed as a serious instance of non-compliance and will be dealt with under the sanctions system as defined in schedule 2 to the Code".

NPM were supposed to have uploaded the "Landowner Authority" to the IAS for the appeal,

They stated they had done so, but had not done so.

I asked to see a copy of this even post the appeal being rejected and this was not supplied.

The Landowner in an email confirmed NPM had authority but this was just an email not a signed document.

Yes the IPC may be Gladstones, but they have a created a Code of Conduct and if a complaint is made against one of their members they should investigate this as per their set out process and if the operator is found guilty they should have penalty points issued against them.

If these are sufficient then they should no longer be able to obtain vehicle owner data from the DVLA.

No data, no business!!!

However, their complaints process is probably as corrupt as their IAS appeal process,

therefore it is unlikely that my complaint would be upheld,

but I would be interested to read their reasons why.