Appeal Your Railway Station
Parking Charge Notice
Station car parks spent years outside the keeper liability rules. In England and Wales they came inside them on 26 December 2025, and operators like Indigo Parking and SABA Parking now have to meet requirements their notices were never written for.
The law that lets a parking company chase the vehicle's registered keeper - the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA) - never used to reach station car parks, because they sat under railway byelaws. An order made in November 2025 changed that for England and Wales from 26 December. The operator can now come after you as keeper, but only if the notice they sent satisfies every condition in Schedule 4 - deadlines, wording, the lot. Most station notices have never had to clear that bar before, and plenty of them do not.
Operators and Locations We Cover
We regularly handle railway station parking appeals from these operators and locations:
Indigo, SABA and APCOA run most UK station car parks and all three are on our covered list, so a charge from any of them carries the refund guarantee. NCP and the smaller operators are the best-effort route, where the fee is not refundable. You are told which one you are on before you pay.
One of the UK's largest railway station car park operators, managing sites at hundreds of Network Rail and train company stations across England, Scotland, and Wales.
APCOA also manages some railway station car parks. The station rules now sit on top of our standard APCOA appeal approach rather than replacing it, and we run both.
Network Rail owns the land at most major UK stations. Since December 2025 its car parks in England and Wales are treated like any other private car park for keeper liability.
Smaller stations managed by individual train operators (Northern, Avanti, GWR and others) are the ones most likely to still be issuing notices drafted for the old byelaw regime.
Why Station Parking Charges Can Be Challenged
The grounds moved when the law did. Our guide to railway byelaws and the December 2025 change sets out the detail, including where the old position still holds.
With no ticket on the windscreen the Notice to Keeper must arrive within 14 days of the day after the parking event, and it must carry the wording Schedule 4 prescribes. Either failure ends keeper liability.
Criminal liability for contractual parking contraventions was removed in England and Wales at the same time. A notice still threatening byelaw prosecution over an unpaid tariff is describing rules that no longer apply to it.
You are under no legal obligation to name the driver. That matters more now, not less: keeper liability turns on the operator's paperwork, and naming the driver makes the paperwork irrelevant.
If contractual terms were not clearly displayed at the entrance to the car park, the operator cannot rely on an implied contract with the driver.
Railway Parking Appeal FAQ
Because the rules changed recently and the operators are still catching up. Until 26 December 2025 station car parks were byelaw land, outside the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 altogether, so operators never had to meet its notice requirements. In England and Wales they now do, and notices written for the old regime routinely fail the new one.
Indigo Parking (now rebranded as SABA Parking in parts of the UK) is a major operator of railway station car parks across Britain. They issue parking charge notices at train stations on behalf of Network Rail and train operating companies.
Not for parking on or after 26 December 2025 at a station in England and Wales. An order made in November 2025 brought station car parks inside POFA as relevant land from that date, and an appeal still arguing that byelaws exclude keeper liability will be rejected. The argument does still hold in Scotland, where POFA has never applied, and for older parking events.
Whether the Notice to Keeper arrived inside the statutory window, whether it contains the wording Schedule 4 prescribes, whether it still threatens byelaw prosecution for something that is no longer a criminal matter, and whether the signage at the car park was adequate to form a contract in the first place.
No. A registered keeper is under no legal obligation to identify the driver to a private parking company. Keeper liability now depends on the operator getting its own paperwork right, so naming the driver gives away the point the appeal turns on.
Related parking appeal guides
APCOA manages some station car parks. Our APCOA guide covers the keeper liability checks we run on every APCOA notice.
Now that Schedule 4 governs station car parks, a late Notice to Keeper is the single strongest ground available on a station charge.
Flying rather than taking the train? We handle airport drop-off and pick-up charges at every major UK airport too.
£10 flat fee. Money back if a covered appeal is unsuccessful or out of scope. Takes 2 minutes.