If my sister sells her car will new owner have to pay her outstanding parking tickets?

Our consumer lawyer answers your questions

MY SISTER is selling her car — but she has outstanding parking tickets. She says the tickets will be traced to her, not the vehicle and it won’t affect the sale. Is this correct?

N.C., Southampton. THE legal position differs depending on whether the ticket was issued on a public road/property or on private land; and whether it was within England/Wales; or Northern Ireland/Scotland.

When you get a parking ticket, also known as a Penalty Charge Notice or PCN for parking violations on public roads, it is linked to the vehicle not the driver.

This means the vehicle’s registered keeper — usually the owner — is initially liable for the ticket. Many people think this means the owner at the time the ticket is enforced. This is not the case.

The Civil Enforcement of Road Traffic Contraventions (Approved Devices, Charging Guidelines and General Provisions) (England) Regulations 2022 (section 20) states any tickets must be enforced against the owner of the vehicle ‘at the time of the contravention’, so this means your sister.

The position with parking tickets given out on private land differs depending where the ticket is issued. In England and Wales, under the Protection of Freedoms Act, the registered keeper is liable for private parking charges the vehicle may incur, unless they give details of the person driving the vehicle at the time the parking ticket was obtained.

However, the law is different in Northern Ireland and Scotland. It is the driver — not the registered keeper — who is liable.

If you receive a parking ticket that should have been sent to the previous owner of your vehicle, write a short statement explaining that you weren’t the owner at the time of the offence. Send it to whoever contacted you about the ticket and provide as much information and evidence as possible, including the date you bought the car, the full name and address of the previous owner — or firm that sold you the car, a copy of the DVLA registration certificate (V5C) and a copy of the receipt or invoice from when you bought the car.

As long as you’ve sent this evidence, the notice against you must be cancelled. It will then be issued to the person who was driving — known as ‘transfer of liability’.

I FLEW to Argentina for a two-week holiday but, on the day of our return, the flight was cancelled. The airline gave us an alternative flight home and paid our expenses but has refused to pay compensation. It says our flight was cancelled due to strikes at Frankfurt airport — but we did not fly to Frankfurt!

M.M., Durham. HERE the relevant law, known as UK261, says that if a flight is cancelled with less than 14 days’ notice prior to the date of departure, the airline must pay passengers compensation, unless the cause of the cancellation falls within the definition of ‘extraordinary circumstances’.

To fall within this definition, the event causing the cancellation must have been beyond the airline’s control and it must show that it took all reasonable measures to avoid the cancellation, or that there were no steps that could have been taken.

I’ve had many court cases on this so have a fairly definitive list of events that fall within this definition. One is airport strikes, where the staff striking are not employed or controlled by the airline, so on the face of it your airline could be correct.

But airlines do not always cite the real reason for a delay or cancellation so you should always investigate further. Here, it is hard to see why a strike at an airport not part of your journey could be the legitimate reason for the cancellation.

If you are not satisfied with the answer, ask for a deadlock letter — a letter setting out the airline’s final position in relation to your complaint. Armed with this make a complaint to the Alternative Dispute Resolution Scheme (ADR) it is subscribed to (CEDR or Aviation ADR).

If the airline is not subscribed to either of these schemes, take your complaint to the Civil Aviation Authority’s PACT scheme — but only if the airline is not subscribed to one of the two ADR schemes, above.

÷ WRITE to Dean Dunham, Money Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY or email

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