Smart Parking / Breastfeeding

The landowner has just replied stating that they 'don't have the power to cancel any PCN'.

Here is my reply:

Thank you for getting back to me so promptly.

As I understand it, **** is in fact the landowner of *** and therefore you have employed Smart Parking to operate the car park on your behalf, which means!you do have the power to cancel the Parking Charge Notice.

I would like to bring to your attention that discriminating against a breastfeeding mother is in breach of the Equality Act 2010. Section 17 states:

(3) A person (A) discriminates against a woman if, in the period of 26 weeks beginning with the day on which she gives birth, A treats her unfavourably because she has given birth.

(4) The reference in subsection (3) to treating a woman unfavourably because she has given birth includes, in particular, a reference to treating her unfavourably because she is breast-feeding.

As they are employed by The **** this means that you are jointly liable for this breach.

I would implore that you make it a priority to have the PCN cancelled or!I will be in contact with a solicitor to bring a case against you under the above described Equality Act. I will also make it priority to get in touch with my MP and the local press, as well as taking my fight to social media.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Beef'd up the grace period section and moved sections around.

APPEAL POINT 1 – GRACE PERIOD

This matter appears to flow from an allegation of 'overstay' of a mere ELEVEN minutes, despite the fact this is not an overstay at all and is unsupported by the BPA. The free parking session on the PCN is not established by the photographs provided. Photographs taken show merely the time of entry into and exit from the car park but do not establish the time at which I entered into the ‘contract’ with Smart Parking once I had found a parking space and taken the time to find a sign and read it.

As stated in the British Parking Association Code of Practice:

13 Grace periods
13.1 Your approach to parking management must allow a driver who enters your car park but decides not to park, to leave the car park within a reasonable period without having their vehicle issued with a parking charge notice.
13.2 You should allow the driver a reasonable ‘grace period’ in which to decide if they are going to stay or go. If the driver is on your land without permission you should still allow them a grace period to read your signs and leave before you take enforcement action.
13.3 You should be prepared to tell us the specific grace period at a site if our compliance team or our agents ask what it is.
13.4 You should allow the driver a reasonable period to leave the private car park after the parking contract has ended, before you take enforcement action. If the location is one where parking is normally permitted, the Grace Period at the end of the parking period should be a MINIMUM of 10 minutes.

Kevin Reynolds, Head of Public Affairs and Policy at BPA states that:

‘There is a difference between ‘grace’ periods and ‘observation’ periods in parking and that good practice allows for this.

“An observation period is the time when an enforcement officer should be able to determine what the motorist intends to do once in the car park. The BPA’s guidance specifically says that there must be sufficient time for the motorist to park their car, observe the signs, decide whether they want to comply with the operator’s conditions and either drive away or pay for a ticket,” he explains.

“No time limit is specified. This is because it might take one person five minutes, but another person 10 minutes depending on various factors, not limited to disability.”

The BPA’s guidance defines the ‘grace period’ as the time allowed after permitted or paid-for parking has expired but before any kind of enforcement takes place.

Kelvin continues: “In the instance of a PCN being issued while a ticket is being purchased, the operator has clearly not given the motorist sufficient time to read the signs and comply as per the operator’s own rules. If a motorist decides they do not want to comply and leaves the car park, then a reasonable period of time should be provided also.”’

Taking this into account I would argue that I left the car park BEFORE the 3 hour time limit.

APPEAL POINT 2 – DISCRIMINATION

Upon returning to my car my 8 week old daughter became hysterical, I quickly realised this was due to her needing a feed and as I am breastfeeding her I decided that it was best to feed her there in the car, rather than subject her to a 15 minute drive home causing further distress. The Equality Act 2010 Section 17 states:

(3) A person (A) discriminates against a woman if, in the period of 26 weeks beginning with the day on which she gives birth, A treats her unfavourably because she has given birth.
(4) The reference in subsection (3) to treating a woman unfavourably because she has given birth includes, in particular, a reference to treating her unfavourably because she is breast-feeding.

APPEAL POINT 3 – NO EVIDENCE OF LANDOWNER AUTHORITY

As this operator does not have proprietary interest in the land then I require that they produce an unredacted copy of the contract with the landowner. The contract and any 'site agreement' or 'User Manual' setting out details including exemptions - such as any 'genuine customer' or 'genuine resident' exemptions or any site occupier's 'right of veto' charge cancellation rights - is key evidence to define what this operator is authorised to do and any circumstances where the landowner/firms on site in fact have a right to cancellation of a charge. It cannot be assumed, just because an agent is contracted to merely put some signs up and issue Parking Charge Notices, that the agent is also authorised to make contracts with all or any category of visiting drivers and/or to enforce the charge in court in their own name (legal action regarding land use disputes generally being a matter for a landowner only).

Witness statements are not sound evidence of the above, often being pre-signed, generic documents not even identifying the case in hand or even the site rules. A witness statement might in some cases be accepted by POPLA but in this case I suggest it is unlikely to sufficiently evidence the definition of the services provided by each party to the agreement.

Nor would it define vital information such as charging days/times, any exemption clauses, grace periods (which I believe may be longer than the bare minimum times set out in the BPA CoP) and basic information such as the land boundary and bays where enforcement applies/does not apply. Not forgetting evidence of the various restrictions which the landowner has authorised can give rise to a charge and of course, how much the landowner authorises this agent to charge (which cannot be assumed to be the sum in small print on a sign because template private parking terms and sums have been known not to match the actual landowner agreement).

Paragraph 7 of the BPA CoP defines the mandatory requirements and I put this operator to strict proof of full compliance:

7.2 If the operator wishes to take legal action on any outstanding parking charges, they must ensure that they have the written authority of the landowner (or their appointed agent) prior to legal action being taken.

7.3 The written authorisation must also set out:

a the definition of the land on which you may operate, so that the boundaries of the land can be clearly defined

b any conditions or restrictions on parking control and enforcement operations, including any restrictions on hours of operation

c any conditions or restrictions on the types of vehicles that may, or may not, be subject to parking control and enforcement

d who has the responsibility for putting up and maintaining signs

e the definition of the services provided by each party to the agreement


APPEAL POINT 4 – SIGNAGE

The signs in this car park are not prominent, clear or legible from all parking spaces and there is insufficient notice of the sum of the parking charge itself.

There was no contract nor agreement on the 'parking charge' at all. It is submitted that the driver did not have a fair opportunity to read about any terms involving this huge charge, which is out of all proportion and not saved by the dissimilar 'ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis' case.

In the Beavis case, which turned on specific facts relating only to the signs at that site and the unique interests and intentions of the landowners, the signs were unusually clear and not a typical example for this notorious industry. The Supreme Court were keen to point out the decision related to that car park and those facts only.

In the Beavis case, the £85 charge itself was in the largest font size with a contrasting colour background and the terms were legible, fairly concise and unambiguous. There were 'large lettering' signs at the entrance and all around the car park, according to the Judges.

I believe the signs at this car park do not demonstrate an example of the 'large lettering' and 'prominent signage' that impressed the Supreme Court Judges and swayed them into deciding that in the specific car park in the Beavis case alone, a contract and 'agreement on the charge' existed.

The signs are sporadically placed, indeed obscured and hidden in some areas. They are unremarkable, not immediately obvious as parking terms and the wording is mostly illegible, being crowded and cluttered with a lack of white space as a background. It is indisputable that placing letters too close together in order to fit more information into a smaller space can drastically reduce the legibility of a sign, especially one which must be read BEFORE the action of parking and leaving the car.

Since 'adequate notice of the parking charge' is mandatory under the POFA Schedule 4 and the BPA Code of Practice, I believe these signs do not clearly mention the parking charge which is hidden in small print (and does not feature at all on some of the signs). Areas of this site are unsigned and there are no full terms displayed - i.e. with the sum of the parking charge itself in large lettering - at the entrance either, so it cannot be assumed that a driver drove past and could read a legible sign, nor parked near one.

This case is more similar to the signage in POPLA decision 5960956830 on 2.6.16, where the Assessor Rochelle Merritt found as fact that signs in a similar size font in a busy car park where other unrelated signs were far larger, was inadequate:

''the signage is not of a good enough size to afford motorists the chance to read and understand the terms and conditions before deciding to remain in the car park. [...] In addition the operators signs would not be clearly visible from a parking space [...] The appellant has raised other grounds for appeal but I have not dealt with these as I have allowed the appeal.''

Under Lord Denning's Red Hand Rule, the charge (being 'out of all proportion' with expectations of drivers in this car park and which is the most onerous of terms) should have been effectively: 'in red letters with a red hand pointing to it' - i.e. VERY clear and prominent with the terms in large lettering, as was found to be the case in the car park in 'Beavis'. A reasonable interpretation of the 'red hand rule' and the 'signage visibility distance' tables above and the BPA Code of Practice, taking all information into account, would require a parking charge and the terms to be displayed far more transparently, on a lower sign and in far larger lettering, with fewer words and more 'white space' as background contrast. Indeed in the Consumer Rights Act 2015 there is a 'Requirement for transparency':

(1) A trader must ensure that a written term of a consumer contract, or a consumer notice in writing, is transparent.
(2) A consumer notice is transparent for the purposes of subsection (1) if it is expressed in plain and intelligible language and it is legible.

The Beavis case signs not being similar to the signs in this appeal at all, I submit that the persuasive case law is in fact 'Vine v London Borough of Waltham Forest [2000] EWCA Civ 106' about a driver not seeing the terms and consequently, she was NOT deemed bound by them.

This judgment is binding case law from the Court of Appeal and supports my argument, not the operator's case:

This was a victory for the motorist and found that, where terms on a sign are not seen and the area is not clearly marked/signed with prominent terms, the driver has not consented to - and cannot have 'breached' - an unknown contract because there is no contract capable of being established. The driver in that case (who had not seen any signs/lines) had NOT entered into a contract. The recorder made a clear finding of fact that the plaintiff, Miss Vine, did not see a sign because the area was not clearly marked as 'private land' and the signs were obscured/not adjacent to the car and could not have been seen and read from a driver's seat before parking.

So, for this appeal, I put Smart Parking to strict proof of where the car was parked and (from photos taken in the same lighting conditions) how their signs appeared on that date, at that time, from the angle of the driver's perspective. Equally, I require Smart Parking to show how the entrance signs appear from a driver's seat, not stock examples of 'the sign' in isolation/close-up. I submit that full terms simply cannot be read from a car before parking and mere 'stock examples' of close-ups of the (alleged) signage terms will not be sufficient to disprove this.

Coupon-mad wrote: »

Good for you! :T

If you have time to wait before using the POPLA code* I would wait a week or two in case the landowner cancels it, which is much easier pre-POPLA because the PPC can't bleat that they've expended money on POPLA stage.



* they last just over 30 days.

The 'discounted period' is until 19th July and POPLA code is valid until 1st August.

I'm happy to wait, I would be surprised if the landowner hasn't cancelled by Friday

Hello all,

Nice little update for you. The landowner has replied to confirm that the PCN has now been cancelled.

Thank you all for your help.

Should I look to take this further?