Keeper is under no legal duty to name the driver — refusal cannot create liability
For PRIVATE parking charges there is no equivalent of the criminal-law duty (s.172 Road Traffic Act 1988) to identify the driver. POFA 2012 Schedule 4 merely requires the operator to INVITE the keeper to pay or to name the driver (paragraphs 8(2)(e) and 9(2)(e)) — it imposes no obligation to respond, and declining to name the driver carries no sanction and creates no adverse inference. If the operator has complied with every Schedule 4 condition, the keeper is liable AS KEEPER regardless; but if any condition has failed, the operator's only remaining route is against the driver, whom it must identify and prove on the balance of probabilities. Operator letters routinely imply the keeper 'must' name the driver — that is wrong in law. Complements UK-NUC-011 (POFA compliance failure) and is the mirror-image of UK-LEGAL-004 (voluntarily naming the driver to shift liability).
Legal basis
Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4, paragraphs 8(2)(e) and 9(2)(e): the notice to keeper must 'invite' the keeper to pay or to notify the creditor of the name and current address of the driver — an invitation, not a duty; paragraph 4 confers keeper liability only where the Schedule 4 conditions (paras 5, 6, 11, 12) are all met; paragraph 5(1)(b): the creditor must lack both the name of the driver and a current address for service. Contrast s.172 Road Traffic Act 1988, which applies to criminal road-traffic offences, not private contractual parking charges. England and Wales only.
How to identify this in your case
Applies when the customer is the registered keeper, was not (or does not admit to being) the driver, and the operator's correspondence demands or implies they must identify the driver. Strongest when paired with a concrete POFA defect (late notice, missing prescribed content, non-POFA-worded notice): then the operator has no keeper route and no identified driver. Never use this ground to assert who was or was not driving — the appeal simply declines to identify the driver, which the keeper is entitled to do.
Sample appeal wording
formal
Replace [PARKING DATE], [NtK DATE] etc. with your own dates before sending.
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