Before looking at the different types of parking notices, it is important to understand two foundational points about private parking enforcement.
First, the law treats the Driver, the Registered Keeper, and the Hirer as separate and distinct legal persons, even though they may sometimes be the same individual in everyday life.
• The Driver is the person who was driving the vehicle at the time.
• The Registered Keeper (usually shortened to Keeper) is the person or organisation recorded by the DVLA as responsible for taxing the vehicle.
• The Hirer is the person who had possession of the vehicle under a hire or lease agreement.
Second, at the point any private parking notice is issued—whether a Notice to Driver (NtD), Notice to Keeper, (NtK) or Notice to Hirer (NtH)—the parking operator does not know the identity of the person who was driving.
Private parking firms do not witness who parks a vehicle. They rely on vehicle registration data, photographs, or automated systems. When a notice is issued, it is done on the basis of the vehicle’s presence, not on personal knowledge of who was driving it.
This distinction is critical. Liability in private parking does not arise because a vehicle is registered to someone. It arises, if at all, only through specific legal mechanisms. Those mechanisms depend heavily on whether the identity of the Driver is known or remains unknown.
For this reason, the information provided by the recipient of a parking notice can materially affect who, if anyone, a parking operator may lawfully pursue. How liability can shift between Driver, Keeper, and Hirer is governed by statute and contract law, and is addressed in later articles.
With that context in mind, private parking enforcement usually involves one of three types of notice. Although they are often loosely referred to as “parking tickets”, each serves a different function and engages different legal considerations.
Private parking enforcement commonly involves three distinct forms of notice. Although they are often conflated in correspondence and by recipients, each serves a different legal purpose and engages different potential routes to liability.
A Notice to Driver (NtD) is the notice placed on a vehicle at the time of the alleged parking event. Its purpose is straightforward: it tells the Driver that the operator claims the parking terms were breached. An NtD is directed at the Driver only. At this stage, the parking company is not alleging that the Keeper or Hirer owes anything. An NtD does not, by itself, create liability for anyone other than the Driver.
A Notice to Keeper (NtK) is sent to the Keeper of the vehicle. This may happen because no NtD was placed on the vehicle, or because the operator is attempting to pursue payment from the Keeper instead of the Driver. Although an NtK may claim that the Keeper is liable, this is only possible in limited circumstances set out in statute. If those conditions are not met, the NtK does not transfer liability. In practical terms, it is no more than a demand for payment combined with a request to identify the Driver.
A Notice to Hirer (NtH) applies where the vehicle was hired or leased. In these cases, the Registered Keeper is usually a hire or leasing company. The NtH is the mechanism a parking operator uses to try to pursue the Hirer instead. As with a Notice to Keeper, liability does not arise automatically. The operator must meet strict legal requirements and provide specific supporting documents before any liability can lawfully be transferred to the Hirer.
These notices are not interchangeable. Each is aimed at a different legal role and only operates within defined limits. What matters is not the label used by the parking company, but whether the notice has been issued to the correct person, in the correct capacity, and in circumstances where the law allows liability to be asserted.
It is also important not to confuse these private parking notices with statutory penalty notices issued by councils or other public authorities. Similar wording and acronyms are often used deliberately, but a private parking notice is not a fine and does not carry automatic enforcement powers.
The purpose of this article is to help the reader identify what type of notice they have received and to understand what that notice can, and cannot, do as a matter of law. Whether a particular notice is valid, compliant, or enforceable is dealt with elsewhere.