POPLA board raises issues

The POPLA board has published an open letter to the BPA in which it raises various issues.

The full letter can be read here.

The main points are:

• The board does not have enough funding to do a proper job.
• The board is concerned that parking operators can forum shop and use a different appeals service with fewer safeguards which has a more favourable outcome at a lower cost.
• Proposing a levy on DVLA release of information to establish one board to oversee all the different appeals bodies

The Prankster considers this to be of extreme concern.The ability of operators to effectively use a 'kangaroo court' undermines the whole appeals service.

Here is POPLA's verdict on a case where the Notice to Keeper was not compliant.


As you see, the onus is on the operator to prove who the driver was. This is a complete opposite to the IAS view of the burden of proof.


And here is an IAS decision where the NtK was not compliant.


As it happened, in this particular case the keeper was not the driver, so the assessor made a completely incorrect inference.

The appeal result completely depends on which appeals service is used. Furthermore, the IAS appeals service is clearly a travesty of justice. One of the points of the appeals service is to reduce the burden on the court. There is no point, therefore in running an appeals service in which the burden of proof is on the motorist. No motorist in their right mind would pay up after receiving such a judgment. Instead, they would be far better off by using the court process to force the operator to prove their case - since the operator was not able to prove their case to the IAS, they are not likely to be able to prove it in court either.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster