What Is POFA 2012?
Schedule 4 Explained
POFA is the law that decides whether a private parking company can make you, the registered keeper, pay a charge you may not have incurred. Get the conditions wrong and they cannot. This guide explains the rules in plain English, including the deadline most people get wrong.
The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA) is the law that lets a private parking company pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle for an unpaid charge, instead of the driver, under Schedule 4. It only works if the operator meets every condition. With no ticket left on the car, the Notice to Keeper must be given within 14 days, counted from the day after the parking. After a windscreen ticket, it must be given 28 to 56 days later. A posted notice counts as given on the second working day after posting. Miss any condition and the keeper cannot be held liable at all.
A private parking charge is an invoice from a company, not a fine from the state. The company usually knows only your registration number, which tells it who keeps the car rather than who drove it. That is why almost every successful appeal turns on the Schedule 4 conditions, and why our free deadline calculator starts with the dates.
What are the two POFA deadlines?
Which deadline applies depends entirely on whether a ticket was physically put on your windscreen at the time. Citing the wrong one is the single most common mistake in DIY appeal templates, and operators reject those appeals.
ANPR camera car parks, airport drop-off zones, and any site where you first heard about the charge by post. The Notice to Keeper must be given within 14 days beginning with the day after the parking event.
If a Notice to Driver was placed on the vehicle, the Notice to Keeper must arrive no earlier than 28 days and no later than 56 days after that ticket. Too early is just as defective as too late.
Posted on day 13, a notice is not given until the second working day after posting - day 15, and outside the window. This is where most operators fail.
A window, not a deadline. A notice given on day 20 is as defective as one given on day 60 - too early fails for the same reason too late does.
Which deadline applies to your operator
In practice the operator's business model tells you which column you are in before you read a word of the notice. Camera-only operators fall under paragraph 8: ParkingEye run ANPR sites at scale and almost never leave a ticket, so their notices live or die on the 14-day count. Operators who patrol on foot fall under paragraph 9: UK Parking Control work residential and permit sites where a warden puts a ticket under the wiper, which starts the 28 to 56 day window instead.
“Given” does not mean “posted”
Schedule 4 says a notice sent by post is treated as having been given on the second working day after posting. So an operator who posts on day 13 has not met a 14-day deadline - deemed service lands on day 15 or later. Operators routinely rely on the posting date and hope nobody checks. Weekends and bank holidays are not working days, which frequently pushes a borderline notice over the line.
Our POFA deadline calculator applies the deemed-service rule and the working-day count for you.
What a Notice to Keeper must contain
Meeting the deadline is only half of it. Schedule 4 also prescribes what the notice must say. A notice missing any required element is defective, however promptly it arrived.
The notice must specify the vehicle and the period of parking to which the charge relates. A single timestamp, or an entry time with no exit time, does not describe a period.
It must state the charge that remains unpaid and the grounds for it - the alleged contravention - clearly enough that the keeper can understand the case against them.
It must invite the keeper either to pay, or to name the driver and pass the notice on. A notice that simply demands payment, with no naming route offered, is defective.
It must warn that if the driver is not named and the charge stays unpaid, the operator may recover it from the keeper. This warning has to actually be present.
It must name the creditor and give an address for service. Where the named company is not the operator or landowner at the relevant time, that is a genuine defect.
The notice must specify the date on which it is sent or given. Without it, the operator cannot later prove compliance with either deadline.
You can work through this list against your own paperwork using our Notice to Keeper checker.
“Relevant land”: where POFA does not apply at all
Schedule 4 only bites on relevant land. Land where parking is controlled by a statutory provision - its own byelaws or Act of Parliament - is excluded. On excluded land there is no POFA keeper liability mechanism whatsoever, so the operator has no lawful route to the keeper at all.
- Railway station car parks used to be the clearest example, and are no longer. An order in force from 26 December 2025 took the railway byelaws out of the exclusion, so station car parks in England and Wales are now relevant land and Schedule 4 applies to them in full. See what changed and where the old rule still holds.
- Some airport land is governed by airport byelaws made under the Airports Act 1986, and the 2025 order pointedly did not extend to them. Whether a given drop-off zone is relevant land is fact-specific, but it is always worth putting the operator to proof - see our airport drop-off charge guide.
- Public highway and council-controlled parking is outside Schedule 4 entirely. Those tickets are Penalty Charge Notices under traffic law, with a completely separate statutory appeals process.
Free POFA tools
Both run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and neither one asks for an email address.
Enter the contravention date and the date your notice arrived. Handles deemed service, working days, and both the paragraph 8 and paragraph 9 deadlines.
Tick off the Schedule 4 prescribed-information requirements against your own notice and get a plain-English verdict on each one.
POFA 2012 FAQ
POFA stands for the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. In parking, people almost always mean Schedule 4 of that Act, which is the part that lets a private parking company pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle for an unpaid parking charge instead of the driver.
Where no ticket was placed on the windscreen at the time - typically an ANPR camera car park - paragraph 8 of Schedule 4 requires the Notice to Keeper to be given within 14 days of the day after the parking event. If it is given later than that, the operator cannot hold the registered keeper liable and may only pursue the driver, whose identity they usually do not know.
No. If a Notice to Driver was placed on the vehicle at the time, paragraph 9 applies instead, and the Notice to Keeper must be given not less than 28 days and not more than 56 days after the windscreen ticket. Many appeal templates online get this wrong and cite 14 days for windscreen tickets, which weakens the appeal.
A charge is described as non-POFA when the operator has not met the Schedule 4 requirements - the notice was late, missing prescribed wording, or the land is not 'relevant land'. A non-POFA charge is not automatically void, but the operator cannot make the registered keeper pay it. They would have to identify and pursue the actual driver.
No. There is no legal obligation on a registered keeper to identify the driver of their vehicle to a private parking company. POFA is the mechanism that exists precisely because operators cannot compel that disclosure. Naming the driver removes the keeper-liability argument entirely, which is why we never do it.
No. POFA Schedule 4 applies to private parking charges on private land. Council-issued Penalty Charge Notices are issued under separate traffic legislation, have their own statutory appeals process, and are not affected by the POFA rules described here.
This page explains how Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 is generally applied to private parking charges. AppealPilot is not a law firm and this is not legal advice. The outcome of any individual appeal depends on its own facts and on the operator's decision.
Related parking appeal guides
Where the Schedule 4 arguments on this page get a second, independent hearing - and what that stage costs.
Enter your dates and find out in seconds whether your Notice to Keeper was served inside the POFA time limit.
Work through the Schedule 4 prescribed-information checklist to see whether your notice contains everything the law requires.
If your notice missed the deadline, keeper liability is broken. This is how we turn that into a submitted appeal for £10.
Upload your PCN and Notice to Keeper. We check every Schedule 4 requirement and appeal for £10.