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Birmingham Airport - I made APCOA wind their necks in
LLB_Student
post Thu, 9 Aug 2018 - 20:34
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Last year I made APCOA Parking wind their necks in over a parking charge notice that they issued for stopping on a road at Birmingham International Airport. The way I did it might interest you.

In December 2016 my step-daughter gave a friend a lift to Birmingham airport in the early hours of the morning, and instead of going into the drop off/pick up area where she would have to pay, she dropped her friend off at a roundabout nearby. Then in January 2017 she got a purported “parking charge notice” from APCOA. She was going to pay it and split the cost with her friend, but I persuaded her to fight it.

I’m studying for a law degree with the Open University, so I decided to put my legal education to good use and shoot APCOA down in flames. I persuaded my step-daughter not to go down the POPLA appeal route, but to tell APCOA outright that she was not going to pay them a penny. I wrote a letter for her to sign, citing contract law to show that no contract existed between her and APCOA. They had also failed to comply with schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, so I quoted the relevant parts of the legislation and told them that they had no lawful authority to issue a Notice to Keeper.

Something that I’ve learned from studying law is to anticipate the other side’s arguments and to have counter arguments already prepared. I expected them to come up with some BS about the Birmingham Airport byelaws, so I did my research and got the counter arguments ready. Something that I learned in the army is that the best kind of ambush is the one that the enemy willingly walks into, thinking he will win. So I deliberately didn’t mention the airport byelaws in the first letter, baiting them to try that argument, and kept my counter arguments in reserve.

APCOA’s reply didn’t challenge my arguments about contract law. They said that as they had not mentioned PoFA 2012 in their original letter, it was their “understanding” that they didn’t have to comply with it, and said that they were acting in accordance with the British Parking Association code of practice, but they referred to an out of date version. They spouted some rubbish about the road being a “red route” and – as I predicted – they tried to say that the road in question was covered by the Birmingham Airport byelaws. They walked right into my trap, so I hit them with a second letter.

By not challenging my contract law arguments, they conceded them by default. By saying that they did not rely on POoA 12 to issue the Notice to Keeper, they had admitted that they had no lawful authority to issue it. I pointed out that they had referred to an out of date BPA code of practice and I cited the relevant regulations to show that their argument about the supposed “red route” was invalid.

Then I really nailed them about the airport byelaws –
I cited the Birmingham Airport byelaws themselves (I’d downloaded them from the airport’s web site), the Airports Act 1986 and the Road Traffic Act 1988, to prove that the airport byelaws didn’t apply to the road, so there was no statutory authority for imposing any restrictions on parking or stopping on the road.
Of course, if the airport byelaws had applied to the road, they would have shot themselves in the foot if they had claimed to have issued the notice under PoFA 2012, because then the road would have been under statutory control, so it could not have been relevant land for that purpose. The “not relevant land” argument is often used to challenge these kind of charges, but my research led me to argue that was not relevant land because the road traffic enactments apply, not because byelaws apply.

They’d also dropped themselves in it when they were talking about providing the details of the driver, when they said ”It is a criminal offence to provide inaccurate information, or to withhold information where required”. I really let them have it for that.

Then APCOA sent a third letter that didn’t challenge anything that I wrote in my second letter and just waffled about how they had rejected my step-daughter’s appeal. So I wrote a third response for her to send, which didn’t add anything to my previous arguments, it was just for fun to wind them up and annoy them.

Apparently it succeeded in that objective because the next thing my step-daughter got was a letter from a debt collection agency, saying that with their fees the charge had gone up to £150. The response to that was a short letter telling them that she had already made it clear to APCOA that she would not pay them a penny and was ready and willing to fight them in court, so the debt collectors should refer back to them. She got a second letter from the debt collectors, which I advised her to ignore.

A month or so later a letter arrived from a different debt collection agency. Once APCOA started working down the food chain of low life debt collectors, it was obvious that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. I told her that she should also ignore that one, which she did. Then she got a second letter from them offering to settle for £75. At that point it was clear that APCOA would not take it to court because they knew that they were on a hiding to nothing. That letter was also ignored and we have heard nothing more from APCOA or debt collectors for over a year.

I’ve uploaded PDF files of the APCOA letters and my responses (with personal details redacted) for anyone who is interested in reading the arguments that I used and the law that I cited:
First APCOA letter
First response
Second APCOA letter
Second response
Third APCOA letter
Third response

Now I must add a disclaimer –
I’m studying law, but I am not a qualified legal professional yet. I can’t give anyone legal advice and I am not purporting to do so. The letters that I have attached are for interest and entertainment only, and I can’t and don’t claim that the arguments that I used will work for anyone else, either in a POPLA appeal or in court.

What I can say is that those arguments worked for my step-daughter, and on a personal note it was a lot of fun making APCOA crawl back into their box.
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post Thu, 9 Aug 2018 - 20:34
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Figaro
post Sun, 26 Aug 2018 - 00:06
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Great job. I made APCOA at BHX fold earlier in the year too.
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