Parking Appeals Commercial can provide a full PCN handling service for your company which can include either some or all of the options below:

• Full analysis of your current operation with a structured plan for PCN reduction and operational savings.
• Driver and logistics manager training with regard to PCN minimisation.
• Creation of bespoke software to integrate PCN data into current systems or develop a stand alone system.
• Creation of company specific defences and appeal matrix for informal and formal appeals.
• Administration team training.
• Full trend reporting and analysis.
• ‘Hot Spot’ identification.
• Representation at adjudications.

We can develop a package to suit your company’s needs and it will be funded by your operational savings from reduced PCN costs, driver and delivery efficiency savings and a reduced admin burden.

Can you afford not to make that call?

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At Parking Appeals Commercial we are acutely aware of the headache parking tickets create for any business, large or small.

Our dedicated appeals team can offer your company a complete PCN handling service or simply assist with your appeals whether at informal, formal or adjudication stage.

For small companies PCNs often sit on the desk or in a drawer … ‘I’ll deal with that later’ and as a result deadlines are missed and the scale of charges increases, as does the administrative burden.

Local authority maladministration or incompetence often results in matters going to bailiffs without the company being aware of the original PCN.

For larger companies appeal success often depends on which member of the company is dealing with matters and breaks in continuity often lead to appeals being lost due to an inconsistent approach.

We can take away the ‘headache’ and structure your systems to be able to fully handle your company’s operation or provide guidance and training for your sstaff and admin personnel as well as your drivers with PCN report sheets.

Our case handlers will also represent your company at the adjudication hearings at either PATAS (the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service) or TPT (the Traffic Penalty Tribunal) for appeals outside of London.

Remember, we are only paid if we are successful at reducing your PCN cost and the savings for your company are substantial.

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Inappropriate and indefensible parking

We don’t propose to attempt to defend indefensibly bad obstructive or dangerous parking. We will put in place company protocols to ensure such practices are removed, reduced and flagged for disciplinary action.
We  incorporate ‘bad examples’ as part of the ongoing driver awareness / training programme.

Where to load and unload

As part of driver training we will develop an ongoing training protocol and information programme as to where you can and cannot load and unload. This can be in the form of training seminars, DVDs and in-cab guides as well as site specific plans for ‘hot-spot’ locations.

It is clear from company’s PCN evidence that simple observation and understanding of restrictions and time plates can mean the difference of a few feet, or the other side of the road … and no PCN.

No alternative but to park in contravention

Driver training on parking in contravention will reduce the ‘avoidable’ PCNs but – there are probably some occasions where a PCN must be seen as an overhead and unavoidable – eg. large pallet deliveries. PCN reduction in this regard will be addressed by applying sector specific exemptions and defences and entering into dialogue with local authorities with regard to best practice in such circumstances.

Driver Notes

In some instances it is  useful to have a wipeable delivery note / board to display in the windscreen when making deliveries – it could be preprinted with ‘Driver delivering to ………..  please allow a loading exemption.’   This way evidence of loading is provided in all council photo evidence.

Driver PCN Report Sheets

Our Driver PCN report sheets  increase awareness of PCNs and the governing rules to incentivise a reduction in overall receipt. Each driver has to file a report sheet for every PCN they receive. This encourages them to minimise the PCNs in the first place due to increased PCN awareness.

Driver Incentivisation

Some of our team come  from the ‘driver’s side’ of the industry we recognise that often drivers are obstinate breed who appear to have a culture of parking anywhere.
Changing cultural behaviour requires either a stick or carrot approach. Penalisation can create negativity in the work force, so the adoption of a some form of driver incentivisation creates a greater awareness of the costs to the company. This helps to establish self-regulation and colleague to colleague training and good practice.

Prescribed hours – delivery windows 

Identifying patterns of opportunity to negate PCNs by creating delivery windows wherever possible to enable loading within the rules.
This is something which can be flagged on job sheets or route planning with logistics managers.
Our team will provide  reports on time windows for delivery.

Site Visits

This will be ongoing and prioritised once areas of high PCN issue are identified. The site visits will be necessary to identify possible signage issues and the nearest legal loading sites to the place of delivery.

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The Parking Appeals team will assess ‘Hot Spot’ locations from PCN statistics and work with the drivers and logistics team to either:

• Provide an alternative delivery site for each customer.
• Provide different timing options for logistics managers based on the restriction and available delivery windows.
• Liaise with the local authority to develop a workable delivery solution.
• Produce reports and statistical trends to identify current and future solutions to build into delivery planning.
• Produce driver and manager parking guides for each problem location to minimise PCN issue.

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Parking Appeals Ticket Tracker System

Introduction

It is a sad fact of business life that any company operating a fleet of vehicles in the UK will, from time to time, receive parking and moving traffic tickets.

If at all possible, steps should be taken to avoid incurring tickets in the first place. Unfortunately, however hard you try, overzealous Councils will find some excuse to slap tickets on your vehicles.

The decision then is whether to pay or to contest. The legislation governing parking and traffic enforcement is pretty complex and you may think it is simpler just to “pay up and shut up”. However, experience shows that the majority of tickets are wrongly issued and overall, money can be saved by ensuring that they are cancelled.

To help you successfully challenge your parking tickets we have devised a very clever software package: the Parking Appeals Ticket Tracker System.

The Techie Bit

The Ticket Tracker System is Web based so all the data entry and reporting is done using your favourite browser: Internet Explorer, Firefox suchlike. You don’t need to install special software on your PC. It also means that you can potentially access the information from any anywhere.

The application and associated data storage is hosted on a central server which can be accessible via the public internet or a company intranet. The choice is likely to be made by balancing the need for accessibility against the concerns for security and privacy.

Now the Really Techie Bit

The Ticket Tracker uses the latest Web 2.0 technology. It’s nothing to be frightened of, you use it all the time without realising it. Here’s a selection websites that you’re probably familiar with that use Web 2.0 technology:

The key feature of Web 2.0 sites is that they are designed for cooperation between the users. Users enter and upload data which can then be combined, analysed and fed back to make the whole experience more efficient. In some respects it is the real world application of Artificial Intelligence.

Just think about when you buy something from Amazon. Your purchases are stored on the system and combined with those of other customers. Then, when you are looking at DVDs for instance,  and you click on a title, the system looks up similar types of film bought by others and recommends that you explore them also. Sometimes it can be a bit predictable; other times you might get a nice surprise.

What will Web 2.0 do for us?

As each parking ticket is added to the database we will be able to build up a picture of where the hot-spots are, which traffic wardens are over-zealous, which Councils cave in easily and so on and so forth. In the end we will know more about the parking “game” than the Councils themselves. Remember the old saying “Knowledge is Power”.

System users share data, and this will be done in an anonymised form. The summary statistics that will tell us how the various Councils are behaving. The object of the software is to minimise the amount of money paid by the company to local authorities for parking and moving traffic contraventions and the software helps deliver bottom line savings.

How does it work?

As each document is received it is entered into the system. Based on strategies programmed into the database specific to your company the user will be advised of the next step. Strategies that result in the PCN being cancelled will be reinforced. Those that don’t will be reassessed. Shared intelligence from other successful appeals and strategies add to the system’s intelligence.

Form letters will be used to challenge the tickets where appropriate and tailored by company, by sector and by location based on intelligence from other appeals and operations.

One key feature of the system is that it will check that the Council is adhering to the correct procedure. Often they don’t, and it is possible to get the ticket cancelled on the grounds of “procedural impropriety”.

It will not be possible to make an automatic decision about every ticket. It will sometimes require an experienced person to assess the next move. The less experienced data entry operators will be able to assign tickets to a supervisor for scrutiny. Supervisors may be personnel on your company’s payroll, or may be Parking Appeals staff. It doesn’t matter if they are in different building or even different towns; the fact that the Ticket Tracking System is web based means that the information can be accessed by both parties.

A successful challenge to one ticket often means that many others can be cancelled and on odd occasions can lead to refunds for paid tickets. This type of occurrence will require a change of strategy to be manually programmed into the system which will then be rolled out to all users improving success rates.

The machines are just there to collect, communicate and correlate the information. It the people that make the difference by what they do with that information.

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We have lawyers currently working on a number of legal actions involving restitutionary claims which are likely to result in refunds for many companies. However, local authorities are unlikely to volunteer refunds or admit ‘blanket’ liability.

We will be able to identify your company’s potential for refunds in a number of areas where we have been successful across the country ie. identifying non-compliant PCNs and other paperwork or invalid Traffic Orders and procedures. There will be no cost to the company for identifying the potential and we will simply be paid on results determined by a percentage of monies recovered.

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