Legal17 February 2025

The 14-Day Rule: Your Secret Weapon Against Parking Charges

The 14-day rule is one of the most powerful tools available to motorists fighting private parking charges. It comes from Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA), and failure by the parking company to comply with it can be fatal to their claim.

What Is the 14-Day Rule?

Under POFA 2012, for a parking company to hold the registered keeper of a vehicle liable for a parking charge (as opposed to the driver), they must serve a Notice to Keeper within 14 days of the alleged contravention.

This is not a guideline or a recommendation -- it is a strict legal requirement. If the Notice to Keeper was not served within 14 days, keeper liability does not arise, and the parking company can only pursue the driver. In most cases, they do not know who the driver was.

Why It Matters

Most private parking charges are pursued against the registered keeper of the vehicle, not the driver. The parking company obtains your name and address from the DVLA and sends the charge to you as the registered keeper.

But this keeper liability only exists because POFA created it -- and POFA requires strict compliance with its rules. The parking company must:

1.Serve a Notice to Keeper within 14 days of the alleged contravention

2.Include all mandatory prescribed information in the notice

3.Serve the notice to the correct address

If any of these requirements are not met, the parking company cannot hold you liable as the registered keeper.

How to Use the 14-Day Rule in Your Defence

The key strategic point is this: do not admit receiving the original PCN unless you are certain you received it within 14 days of the alleged contravention.

If the first correspondence you received was from a debt collector rather than the parking company itself, this raises serious questions about whether the Notice to Keeper was served in time. Even if you did receive something, if it arrived more than 14 days after the alleged contravention, POFA compliance fails.

In your defence, you should:

State that you do not admit receiving a compliant Notice to Keeper

Put the claimant to strict proof that the notice was served within 14 days

Require the claimant to provide evidence of posting and service

Challenge whether the notice contained all mandatory information

What the Parking Company Must Prove

When you challenge POFA compliance, the burden shifts to the parking company. They must prove:

The exact date of the alleged contravention

That a Notice to Keeper was sent within 14 days

That it was sent to the correct address

That it contained all prescribed information

That it was properly served

Many parking companies struggle to provide this evidence, particularly contemporaneous proof of posting. This is why the POFA challenge is one of the most effective defence arguments available.

Common POFA Failures

Parking companies commonly fail on POFA compliance in several ways:

Sending the notice late (after 14 days)

Sending it to the wrong address

Omitting required information from the notice

Unable to prove postage or service

Using incorrect dates for the contravention

If any of these apply to your case, it significantly strengthens your defence. Our AI defence generator automatically checks for POFA compliance issues based on your questionnaire responses and includes the appropriate challenges in your defence document.

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