Private Parking Charges: Why Bailiffs Cannot Collect Them

That single fact reorders everything else. It means the threatening letters that arrive before any court has been involved describe a future possibility, not a present power. It also means the charge is not safe to ignore, because the court route is real and it ends in a judgment that follows you for years.

Two documents, two different worlds

The confusion is built into the paperwork. A council issues a penalty charge notice. A private operator issues a parking charge notice. Both get abbreviated to PCN, and the private version is often laid out to resemble the statutory one.

Tell them apart by three things. Look at who issued it: a council, a London borough or Transport for London on one side, a limited company on the other. Look at the appeal route named on the notice: an independent adjudicator such as London Tribunals or the Traffic Penalty Tribunal belongs to the statutory side, while POPLA or the Independent Appeals Service belongs to the private side. Look at the wording, because a genuine penalty charge notice cites the regulations it was issued under.

The statutory route is the one that reaches enforcement agents without a trial. An unpaid council penalty can be registered at the Traffic Enforcement Centre and turned into an order for recovery and then a warrant of control. That machinery is closed to private operators: rule 75.1 of the Civil Procedure Rules confines the Centre to "specified debts", meaning the debts listed in the Enforcement of Road Traffic Debts Order 1993, and a contractual parking charge is not among them. If your notice came from a council, bailiff parking fines and the Traffic Enforcement Centre cover that route instead, as part of the wider traffic and parking enforcement picture.

Why the letter is addressed to the registered keeper

The person who agreed to the operator's terms is the driver. Very often the operator has no idea who that was, so it asks the DVLA for the registered keeper and writes to them.

Getting from the driver's liability to the keeper's is what Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 governs in England and Wales. It applies only to "relevant land", which excludes a highway maintained at public expense and land where statutory parking control already operates. Where it applies, the operator has to serve a notice to keeper that follows the schedule.

The timing depends on how the charge was raised. Where a camera recorded the visit and nothing was left on the windscreen, paragraph 9 gives the operator 14 days beginning with the day after the parking ended to get the notice to the keeper. Where a notice was left on the vehicle at the time, paragraph 8 sets a later window running from that notice instead.

The content matters as much as the timing. The notice has to invite the keeper either to pay or, if they were not driving, to give the operator the driver's name and a current address for service. And paragraph 4(5) caps what can be recovered from a keeper at the amount specified in that notice to keeper, which is a useful yardstick when later letters have grown the figure.

If the schedule was not followed, keeper liability does not arise. The operator can still pursue whoever was actually driving, if it can identify and prove who that was.

What the charge can lawfully grow into

Private parking has no statutory fee scale. What exists is an industry code.

The British Parking Association and the International Parking Community publish a joint Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice, launched in June 2024 and applied by operators from that October. It caps a parking charge at £100, reduced to £60 if paid within 14 days, and allows a further debt recovery fee of up to £70 once the charge is overdue. The government's own statutory code was withdrawn in June 2022 and has not been re-laid; a fresh consultation closed in September 2025, and its outcome had not been published by August 2026.

So the industry cap is a trade body rule, not a statute. It binds operators through their membership, which is why the trade body's appeal service is the practical place to raise a breach of it.

Appealing, and who hears it

Start with the operator, within the deadline printed on the notice. Say plainly what you say is wrong: the signs, the grace period, a machine that would not take payment, a valid permit, a mistyped registration, or the fact that you were not the driver and the notice to keeper did not comply.

If the operator rejects it, the notice or the rejection letter should give you a reference for an independent appeal. Which service you get depends on the operator's trade body. Operators in the British Parking Association's approved operator scheme go to POPLA. Operators in the International Parking Community go to the Independent Appeals Service. Both are free to the motorist, and a decision in your favour binds the operator, while a decision against you does not stop you defending a court claim later.

Debt collectors are not enforcement agents

Once the operator has run out of letters, the file usually goes to a debt collection company. Those letters can be alarming, and some carry the branding of firms better known for televised High Court work.

At this stage the sender has no enforcement powers over you at all. No warrant exists, no writ exists, and nothing has been decided by a court. See DCBL and Trace Enforcement for how those firms operate across both sides of the line, and how to work out which hat the letter in front of you is wearing.

If the operator actually sues

A minority of charges end in litigation, and operators such as ParkingEye and Euro Car Parks do issue claims. The sequence is a normal debt claim.

First comes a letter of claim under the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims, with a reply form and 30 days from the date at the top of the letter. If you say on that reply form that you are getting debt advice, the creditor must allow a reasonable period for it.

Then a claim form. Respond to it. Filing a defence, or acknowledging service and defending within the extended period, puts the operator to proof of its signage, its contract and its compliance with Schedule 4. Whether a charge is enforceable at all is not automatic: in ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis the Supreme Court upheld an £85 charge because it protected a legitimate interest and was not out of all proportion to it, which is a test, not a blanket approval of every charge.

Ignoring the claim form is what turns a disputed invoice into a County Court judgment, and records of judgments stay on the register for six years unless the full amount is paid within a month. A judgment can then be enforced, and that is the point at which enforcement agents genuinely enter the picture.

If a judgment has already been entered because the papers went to an address you had left, rule 13.2 makes a set-aside mandatory where the judgment was wrongly entered, and rule 13.3 gives the court a discretion where you have a real prospect of defending and act promptly. See setting aside a CCJ for how that application works and what it does to enforcement already under way.

Where you are, and what to do next

A charge has just arrived. Check whether it is a council penalty or a private charge, then appeal to the operator inside the deadline rather than paying to make it go away.

The operator has rejected your appeal. Use POPLA or the Independent Appeals Service, free, before the reference expires.

A debt collection letter has arrived. Reply in writing, ask for the creditor's name and a breakdown of the sum, and do not treat it as a bailiff matter, because it is not one yet.

A letter of claim has arrived. Use the reply form. This is the last cheap exit.

A claim form has arrived. Diarise the response dates immediately. Advice at this stage is worth more than at any other, and our help page sets out how to get it. Initial advice is free.