Luton airport drop off zone parking charge notice

[Ivan77]

Hello forum members
I have this issue. Picking up my parents who got lost in the airport arrivals, i had to leave my car unattended in the drop off zone for approx 10 min. I got the attached penalty charge notice from Apcoa. Fair enough, I had to pay £18 for staying over the allowed 10 min. Still, I believe the £80 is a bit excessive for this. What you can advise me for best way forward? To complicate things more, i am driving a temporarily hired company car. Shall i ask my company fleet and the vehicle hire company not to pay this charge and not to reveal my identity if approached? Thanks in advance.

[ostell]

First of all you edit your post so that the identity of the driver cannot be inferred.

This is not a penalty charge notice, it is a parking charge notice, an invoice from a private company.

You write an appeal as the keeper to the charge. You can appeal that they do not have a contract to operate there, it is not relevant land for the Protection of Freedoms Act to invoke keeper liability, the signage was insufficient, in fact anything you can think of. Look here and other forums, such as Pepipoo, for some ideas. Post up for critique before you send. You send this to APCOA so that it arrives a couple of days before the end of the period allowed to appeal.

Tell whoever you want that you are handling the matter. The lease company may make a charge anyway but that will be a separate argument afterwards. The intention of this is multifold. They will respond to you as the keeper (you are!) and either forget to issue a notice to keeper or issue a NTK without accessing the DVLA, both are are POFA fail and therefore no keeper liability. The other option is that they will access the DVLA and, of course, get the name of the lease company as the registered keeper. The lease company will then have to name you as the keeper (they cannot know who the driver was) and APCOA will write to you with a Notice to Hirer. There is a time limit for this.

What usually appears to happen with lease cars is that the Parking company forget to include the additional documents required and thus again do not comply with POFA and therefore no keeper liability, only the driver who they do not know and you do not have to name.

Here's a link to POFA, have a read. As this is a hire car then of particular interest are paragraphs 13 and 14, though paragraph 8 covers the windscreen ticket. The particular fail that I mentioned is usually 14 (2) (a).

If the lease company do not reveal the hirer then they leave themself open to action by APCOA. They name you as the hirer to remove any liability from themselves. If anybody pays a speculative invoice when there is no need then it is up to them, not your problem. If your company are the hirers and get the Notice to Hirers then you tell your company to write back to APCOA and name you as the KEEPER, they cannot know who was driving at the time.

[Ivan77]

Hi Ostell, thank you for the advice - i will write an appeal even though the 14 day period from issuing the charge notice has passed.
I will write to my company and the lease company as well.

Thanks again.

[ostell]

What relevance is the 14 days, other than to convince you that it must be paid? You have 28 days to appeal. Just make sure you get the appeal in a copule of days before that. You have not edited your first post so that the identity of the driver cannot be inferred, use "the driver......" etc. This is important as the only person the can claim against is the driver, and they don't know who that was so don't let them know.