First Parking/DCB(L) Hire Taxi ANPR PCN PAPLOC - 18 mins stay - Appealed - St George's Wharf sth Lon

[lookinforinfo]

If you have thrown out your PCN by mistake please send them an SAR so that we can see whether it is compliant.

[lookinforinfo]

You weren't parked there. You are a cab driver so went there to pick up a passenger. That is not parking. You may have been waiting as the passenger was late but you were not parked,. If you look at the Homeguard v Jopson  court case you will see that just as the Judge decided that Jopson wasn't parked neither were you.

The PCN is not compliant with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 for two reasons at least. The main one being they took too long to send you the PCN. That means that only the driver is now responsible for the charge but the keeper is not responsible at all.

As you have already outed yourself as the driver that is one argument you cannot win. However the other fail by First Parking is that they have failed to mention the parking period. What they  have done is to use the arrival and departure times of your car as the parking period. You could not possibly be parked whilst driving from the entrance to the passengers door . Nor could you be classified as parking when you left the site. As those two driving periods could easily have taken up at least three minutes that means you would have been stationary for a maximum of 15 minutes.

As you are allowed a 5 minute Consideration period and a 10 minute grace period at the end of your time even if a Judge decided that you had been parked [which I think unlikely they will think that] you then have the counter argument that you left within the stipulated legal time  so you did not breach their alleged contractual times.

I am surprised that a company as big as Addison Lee does not have a service to help their drivers in circumstances like yours.

[lookinforinfo]

Thanks for posting your PCN and you have the perfect out.

You are hiring your car. This makes a difference for the parking rogues and so few of them get it right and I would think that your one comes under that category..

. Under Schedule 4 S13 [2] the keeper complies with the Act by  2)The creditor may not exercise the right under paragraph 4 to recover from the keeper any unpaid parking charges specified in the notice to keeper if, within the period of 28 days beginning with the day after that on which that notice was given, the creditor is given—(a)a statement signed by or on behalf of the vehicle-hire firm to the effect that at the material time the vehicle was hired to a named person under a hire agreement; (b)a copy of the hire agreement; and (c)a copy of a statement of liability signed by the hirer under that hire agreement.

Once the keeper has sent those to the rogues, only the hirer is ten responsible for the charge. BUT if the rogues have no sent you copies of the documents sent to them by the keeper in addition to the PCN they cannot pursue you.

SChedule4 S14 [2]  he creditor may recover those charges (so far as they remain unpaid) from the hirer.

(2)The conditions are that—

(a)the creditor has within the relevant period given the hirer a notice in accordance with sub-paragraph (5) (a “notice to hirer”), together with a copy of the documents mentioned in paragraph 13(2) and the notice to keeper;

If they haven't sent you those documents in addition to the PCN then the Hirer  has no liability to pay the charge.

So the question is-did they include  those documents sent by the keeper to you? If they didn't you are off scot free.

As an aside the PCN is a joke. I understand that it is out of time but as it should have included a  a Notice to Hirer and  that Notice could have complied with the Act id done correctly.

They haven't done it properly and it is wrong in Law since the onus to pay the charge lies with the Hirer, not the driver. There is no facility in the Act for the hirer to notify the rogues who was driving .Here only the hirer is liable for the debt and in your case, you are not liable for any of it.

You would have thought that as the Act has been in force since 2012 that First Parking could have done a btter job . I cannot believe that some hirers have not pointed out already how bad that PCN really is so virtually by sending ths to you in the form they have should mean they have breached your GDPR.

[lookinforinfo]

In that case you are not liable for the charge.

They failed to comply with the Protection of freedoms Act 2012. They now have more chance of becoming the royal family  of Norway than winning this case in Court.

What they should have done is send you a new PCN - Notice to Hirer with the date it was sent giving you 21 days to pay the charge and offering a discount if paid within 14 days. They didn't do that.

They just sent a copy of the original PCN that they sent to the registered keeper which they should have done anyway so that you can see  how you breached the terms. But they should also have sent a new PCN with current dates plus copies of your agreement with the hiring company to prove that you were hiring the car when the alleged offence took place. 

They did none of that. You owe nothing. Just relax and get on with your life.