Windscreen ticket route — Notice to Keeper sent outside the day-29-to-56 window
When a private parking ticket was first left on the windscreen (or handed to the driver), the operator can only make the registered keeper liable if the follow-up Notice to Keeper is DELIVERED in a precise statutory window: no earlier than day 29 and no later than day 56, counting from the day after the windscreen ticket was given. A Notice to Keeper delivered too early OR too late is outside the 'relevant period' in POFA 2012 Schedule 4 paragraph 8(4)-(5), and keeper liability fails completely — the operator can then only pursue whoever was actually driving, and must prove who that was. A posted notice is presumed delivered on the second working day after posting (para 8(6)), so the posting date on the letter usually settles the arithmetic. This is distinct from the camera/ANPR route (no windscreen ticket), where the deadline is 14 days — that scenario is covered by UK-PROC-001.
Legal basis
Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4, paragraph 8(4): the notice to keeper must be given so that it is delivered within the 'relevant period'; paragraph 8(5): the relevant period is 'the period of 28 days following the period of 28 days beginning with the day after that on which the notice to driver was given' (i.e. days 29-56); paragraph 8(6): a notice sent by post 'is to be presumed, unless the contrary is proved, to have been delivered ... on the second working day after the day on which it is posted'; paragraph 6(1)(a): compliance with paragraph 8 is a condition of keeper liability on the windscreen-ticket route. Schedule 4 extends to England and Wales only.
How to identify this in your case
Only applies where a ticket was physically left on the windscreen or handed over at the scene, and the customer is being pursued as the registered keeper (not as the admitted driver). Take the date the windscreen ticket was given (day 0), count from the day after: the Notice to Keeper must be DELIVERED between day 29 and day 56. Check the date on the Notice to Keeper and any postmark; add 2 working days to the posting date for deemed delivery. If deemed delivery lands on day 28 or earlier, or day 57 or later, the window is missed.
Sample appeal wording
formal
Replace [PARKING DATE], [NtK DATE] etc. with your own dates before sending.
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Related appeal grounds
- Aberdeen Clean Air Zone ticket issued too early
- Appealing a Scottish tribunal's legal error to a higher tribunal
- Attorney acting for keeper under Scottish power of attorney
- Bailiff acted without proper advance warning notice
- Bath CAZ — Sunset Period for Pre-Registered Commercial Vehicles
- Bay Obstructed or Too Small — Could Not Park Within the Bay Markings