Popla Reviews 

AWFUL and not impartial at all. I am awaiting the outcome but already know my appeal will be turned down. Spoke to 2 staff members as I missed the 7 days response deadline due to a medical emergency. They were cold, heartless and plain rude. I had clear evidence. Not sure why I bothered using them. DO NOT bother appealing. Pay the reduced fine and be done with it. Highly unlikely a decision will be made in the driver’s favour trust me!! Horrible and biased organisation. Not sure why they exist really.

I went through the full POPLA appeals process after receiving a parking charge due to a genuinely unavoidable situation; a major rail disruption caused by a fatal incident, which prevented me from returning to my vehicle on time.

I provided clear, timestamped evidence showing:
• my original travel plans
• the disruption to services
• the alternative route I had to take overnight
• and that I returned to my vehicle as soon as physically possible

None of this was disputed.

However, the appeal was still rejected on the basis that I could have extended my parking session remotely.

That, in my view, exposes the real issue with POPLA.

The process presents itself as an independent and fair assessment, but in practice it appears to operate on a very narrow interpretation of “compliance” rather than a balanced assessment of reasonableness or real-world circumstances.

The decision effectively states that even in the middle of a serious, unforeseen emergency, a motorist is still expected to actively manage a parking contract – otherwise they are liable for a £100 charge.

Mitigating circumstances were acknowledged, but ultimately treated as irrelevant.

This raises a serious question:
What is the purpose of an “appeals” service if genuine, evidenced, unavoidable situations still result in automatic enforcement?

The outcome felt less like an independent review and more like a validation of the operator’s position.

If POPLA’s role is to assess fairness as well as compliance, then this experience suggests that balance is not being achieved.

Popla is supposed to be an impartial body for appealing private car parks fines. How is it funded? By the private car parks themselves. So when you go through the laborious process of appealing a fine.. for 16 minutes in a Starbucks car park. Only to find out it wasn't successful.. what a suprise! Totally in cahoots with the people that pay their wages. What a shameful body!

POPLA are clearly financially motivated by upholding the illegal charges by car park operator. POPLA is funded by the car park operators and therefore not independent. They ignore clear evidence backed by both their policy or by case law. Don't waste you time appealing through them.

Awful company. Obviously subsidised by the parking company you're appealing against. Completely ignored the points I made, even though they did a round up of events. I know it was ignored because when detailing why they refused my appeal, they brought up those points. The fact I was told by the hotel staff my car was safe to park where I had and I proceeded to pay £10 for parking at the hotel. Why the hell would I pay to park if my car was not safe to park there!? They claimed they couldn't obtain evidence from the hotel to support my case, yet took 6 weeks to reach a decision. Claimed signage is clear in the car parks, despite Google maps proving my point.
Absolute joke and scammers just like nexus carparking company they obviously work with. They are not fair or impartial, they are bought and paid for

It would be nice if they actually bothered to read what you write. They completely ignored the strongest point in my appeal, as if it wasn’t even there. I’m not even annoyed about having to pay the fine, what frustrates me is that the parking company is essentially stealing from their customers by issuing fines that can’t realistically be challenged.

The auditor even claimed the company had “apported proof”, yet the evidence wasn’t even from that parking location. It feels like a joke when a supposedly independent body doesn’t even bother to read or check whether the evidence is relevant to the case, and yet the have the cheek to tell you not to use AI and to write stuff in your own words... waste of time.

An absolute joke of a website. I'm not particularly interested in defending my case to a fake website. Take me to court and let a truly impartial judge decide on the outcome.

I am beyond disappointed with the "independent" adjudication provided by POPLA. It has become clear that the assessors either lack basic legal training or are incentivized to overlook complex statutory defenses in favor of a quick rejection.
In my case, the assessor actually attempted to justify a private parking invoice by citing the Sentencing Act 2020. This is a criminal statute used by Judges in courts of law to sentence criminals; it has absolutely no application to a private contract or a civil charge issued by a private company. To see a "professional" adjudicator claim a private company has the power to "sentence" a citizen is legally farcical.
Furthermore, the assessor showed a complete lack of understanding regarding the difference between Railway Byelaws and the Protection of Freedoms Act (PoFA). They erroneously claimed that an operator can simply "assume" a Registered Keeper is the "Owner" of a vehicle under Byelaws. In English law, the burden of proof is on the claimant, and there is no such legal presumption.
When presented with specific legislative evidence regarding law-change timelines, the assessor took the easy way out and dismissed it as "new grounds" rather than actually performing a basic date check on the law.
POPLA is no longer a fair tribunal for motorists; it is a shield for predatory parking operators. If your case involves anything complex don't expect these assessors to have the legal competence to understand it. A complete waste of time

Poor summary of response investigation. Appears like they didn't read the information provided to them. AI would have done a better job at summarising and highlighting the main points. Does seem one-sided. Not sure why this company actually exists.

Received a £60 PCN from APCOA at Royal Berkshire Hospital multi-storey car park. Drove around for 53 minutes trying to find a space. There were none. Not one. I never parked, never left my car, never used a space. Yet somehow I owe £60 for a service I never received.
POPLA's response? Because I stayed on site longer than 5 minutes, I "accepted the parking contract." Five minutes! Has the assessor ever tried to navigate a packed hospital multi-storey, check every level, and get back out in five minutes? It's physically impossible. The consideration period is a joke when applied to a site like this.
The ANPR cameras only record when you enter and leave. They don't show whether you parked. They don't show whether you left your vehicle. They show nothing except time on site. Yet apparently that's enough to charge me, and it's on ME to prove I didn't park. How is that fair? The operator provides zero evidence of an actual parking event but I'm expected to prove a negative.
And when I raised that the car park was full and had no available spaces — so no service could actually be provided — I was told that car park capacity is the landowner's responsibility, not the operator's. How convenient. They take your money for parking but the fact there's nowhere to park is someone else's problem.
POPLA is funded entirely by the parking industry. Draw your own conclusions.

Quite literally ignored the most relevant point in my appeal - that there were no signs on my route, which was actually demonstrated by the sign map provided by UKPC. Instead the other points were addressed and this was glossed over.

as a private hire driver they sent me a fine , i apealed, it got rejected, me upon providing all the evidances , they only come in favours with these dodgys fake ass private carparks , tough they wont get a penny

I received a £100 parking charge from MET Parking Services after staying 107 minutes in a 90-minute car park while visiting McDonald’s with my family.

The overstay was only 17 minutes and occurred because service inside the restaurant was slow. At no point did I knowingly ignore parking restrictions and the car park was almost completely empty at the time.

The photographs provided by the company show my vehicle in near-total darkness, where it is only really visible because of headlights and the reflective number plate. However, the images they supplied of the parking signs appear to have been taken in much brighter lighting conditions. These images do not reflect the actual darkness at the time my vehicle was there.

I raised this inconsistency during the appeals process and provided detailed comments explaining why the evidence did not represent the real conditions. Despite this, the appeal was still rejected.

What is particularly frustrating is that I presented substantial reasoning and evidence to support my appeal, while the parking company relied largely on generic photographs and claims about signage visibility. In my view, the decision sided with the operator despite the lack of clear evidence that the signage was actually visible in the conditions that night.

Issuing a £100 charge to genuine customers who slightly exceed a time limit without being clearly aware of it feels excessive and unfair, especially when the car park was almost empty and the visit was simply to use the restaurant as intended.

Overall, this experience has been extremely disappointing.

This process is not fit for purpose.
Just another pathetic arm of the disgusting gangster private parking company farce.

In cahoots with the parking companies I'm sure. I felt I had a really strong case. Had the physical ticket I paid for, but the last 3 letters of my reg were missing as the machine wasn't working properly. I was the only car in the car park and paid for a full day depsite only being there an hour.

Parkingeye offered a reduced fine to £20 but I felt strongly that I shouldn't have to pay anything and that I would win. Their evidence against was a generic template full of irrelevant info and with some pictures taken over 6 months prior.

POPLA took 9 weeks to review the case and Gayle Stanton sided with Parkingeye meaning I now have to pay £100. Fool for thinking the little guy would win against the big robbing fat cats. Using an "independent" body in POPLA cost me an extra £80.. no point in them existing.

**in response to POPLA, the evidence was submitted and it took 9 weeks from that point actually. After being unsuccessful, I wrote to the landowner and explained what happened. They felt it was very unfair and have appealed to have the fine revoked. So how can I have a physical ticket as proof and the backing of the landowner. But this independent body has sided with Parkingeye. You dont have any real authority clearly or youre taking handouts from parking companies.

If anyone reading this is considering appealing. I would recommend writing to the landowner first as you'll have a better chance with them than using POPLA.

Common sense counts for nothing with these people. Fined £100 for parking when I had proof the fee had been paid. Appealed to POPLA expecting them to side with me considering I had evidence the parking fee had been paid, but they sided with the parking operator - the issue was due to the driver of my car inputting the registration incorrectly. A simple mistake to make, and you’d think common sense would prevail, but nope!

My main issue is, had the ticket machine been an old paper ticket machine, no fine would’ve been issued. Had it been a modern ANPR machine that dynamically matches the registration you type with cars that have entered the car park, then the error would’ve been noticed at that point and corrected. However, the machines are out dated. They allow a user to put any registration in regardless of whether it’s been tagged entering the car park, then they give you no visual confirmation of the reg that’s been entered. In my opinion, they are preying on the forgetful, people in a rush, people with dyslexia etc as they know there will clearly be honest mistakes, but they’ll fine people anyway.

I imagine POPLA have been put in place to give the illusion of some regulation of private parking operators, because they certainly don’t approach appeals in a fair and reasonable manner like you would expect a proper regulator to do.

Absolutely shocking and unfair experience with POPLA.
I appealed a parking charge even though I was a genuine customer at ASDA. I even submitted my bank statement as proof that I had shopped there, so there was clear evidence that I was not abusing the parking. Despite this, POPLA still ruled in favour of the parking operator.
The whole process felt completely one-sided. It honestly makes you question how “independent” this appeals service really is when genuine evidence from customers seems to be ignored while the operator’s claims are accepted without proper consideration.
If this is supposed to be an independent appeals service, it certainly didn’t feel like one. Based on my experience, I would not recommend relying on POPLA to fairly review a case. Even with clear proof that I was a legitimate customer, the appeal was still rejected.
Very disappointing system that does not appear to properly protect genuine customers.

The best way to deal with parking companies who fraudulently issue tickets is to take them to a small claims court. Pay the reduced fee under protest then sue them for wrongful issue of a parking violation. mine was parking in a parent and child bay with children, they photographed my car and said no children present and shouldn't have been parked there. You’re now expected to photograph your children in the car when you park just to prove you haven’t contravened the rules, who even does this??. This is a big part of why small business and town centres are on their knees. Order from Amazon it’s delivered to your door and you’ll never get a parking ticket again while out shopping. Well done to those rogue companies including popla. You’re a disgusting waste of resources and damaging the economy. Local MP contacted and will press this issue further.

Popla are entirely on the side of the over zealous parking companies. I recently parked at the Bull in Kings Norton but through some confusion only entered a partial registration. Despite having evidence of payment they sided with the parking company saying that it was mt responsibility to enter a full and valid registration. I had clearly paid and had o intention to defraud but POPLA denied the appeal.

Obviously I was scammed by Euro Car Parks of course popla knows that , but still my appeal was unsuccessful and i have to pay even larger fine now, hope you can't sleep at night!