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The Other Side Of The Coin.

I think that any one who has read my posts will be aware that I am no lover of the CPCs who infest our carparks but there is another side to the coin:

Some time ago, I was planning a weekend trip to visit my Daughter and she duly went down to the HA office to get a small handfull of temporary parking permits (£2.50 each, what a rip-off!) so that I could park in the Residants and Visiters (sic) carpark.However, when I arrived there were so many cars in the carpark (many parked on pavements and on double yellows) that there was no way I would be able to park there so I had to pay £2.00 per hour (or part thereof) to use the roadside parking. This meant I had to pay a total of about £40 over the course of three days just because ignorant people without permits wanted to park for free and continue their journey into town by bus.

Quite recently my daughter told me that there are loads of spaces in the carpark now because she sees "traffic wardens" (she doesn't drive- bless!) out there just about every day handing out tickets.

Now, they're not allowed to clamp any more (hooray!) and people here are succesfully getting tickets cancelled (also hooray) but what other sanctions are there? If private parking enforcement was banned what hope would I have of being able to park my modest car outside her house?

I see people on here bragging about how many tickets they've got from certain companies and how many tickets that have been cancelled but what would these guys do if someone decided to park in their drive?

It would be OK for someone living out in the country to come to my suburban street, park outside my house so that they could go into town by bus and avoid the expensive city centre parking. What if I came home and couldn't even park in my own neighbourhood let alone outside my own house? I think I'd be a little less easy going about it!
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Comments

  • Herzlos
    Herzlos Posts: 14,649
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    Sounds like the solution is a council enforced residents parking area?

    Private PPC's don't really solve the problem, because their goal is issuing tickets and not managing car parks. Once you drive off the people that shouldn't park there they have no option but to turn on the residents to keep their quotas up.
  • bazster
    bazster Posts: 7,436
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    No-one is against the control and management of parking. There is nothing to stop someone responsible for a car park (in this case a management company it would seem) operating a ticketing regime where they are transparent about the parking terms and they claim as a loss the reasonable cost of enforcement. When they tot up the average cost of enforcing a ticket they might be able to come up with a GPEOL of somewhere between £10 and £25.

    What we are against is the indiscriminate conning and fleecing of motorists to the tune of £100 a time.

    And not that old "what if someone parked on your drive" chestnut. What does that have to do with private parking companies? I haven't engaged a PPC to guard my drive, have you?

    If someone parked on my drive without permission they would be a trespasser and I would have certain remedies available to me, especially if they did it persistently. One of those remedies would be to park behind them, which I would have no hesitation in doing (POFA 2012 makes it unlawful to immobilise a vehicle with the intention of preventing its removal; such would not be my intention, I would simply be parking on my own property, that they get blocked in is merely collateral damage).

    I'm not sure why, in your last paragraph, you drag parking on the public highway into it. Living in a street gives you no more right to park on that street or in the neighbourhood than anyone else. It's the public highway. If you want special privileges then lobby your council for a residents' parking scheme (but in my experience those are often pretty unpopular with residents).
    Je suis Charlie.
  • ampersand
    ampersand Posts: 9,553
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    Cross as you are about £40 for 3 days' parking, this: ' if someone decided to park in their drive?' is an old non-sense, nothing to do with ppcs and unenforceable invoices.

    Remedy exists for that trespass. Do not conflate the two.

    You could always issue an unenforceable invoice yourself:-), with the same 'legality'.
    #
    Crossposted with herzlos and bazster - apologies.
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  • esmerobbo
    esmerobbo Posts: 4,979
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    The problems will start once they frighten the abusers away, then ticketing the residents will begin.
  • neil.net
    neil.net Posts: 175 Forumite
    edited 16 April 2015 at 11:14AM
    I think when it comes to on-street parking, it's sometime a case of "lumping" it. When I lived at home, we had no drive or parking space etc., we just had to cope the fact that sometime parking was a pain. If it's commercial vehicles on a residential street, I feel there might be some argument there, but if someone parked outside the house to use the shops down the road it was a case of tut and sigh and move on.

    Where I now live, all residents have one allocated space and whilst I can't vouch for everyone, in the past five years being a resident there have only been two instances where someone has parked in my space. Parking on access driveways, verges, in front of refuse stores has been a different matter! So what to the Management Company do? Well after fives years of doing nothing (despite warning people they will be charged £15 for removal of doormats outside their apartments) they decide to bring in a PPC who will gladly issue a charge to a resident who parks in a designated space without a PPC permit! Since residents in allocated spaces are in the majority, they are also like to be the ones who genuinely neglect to display a permit and get a charge! Since the warden is sporadic, people can still chance popping to the shops, whereas a resident at home all weekend is likely to get caught!

    Yes the parking needed control (driveways etc.), but it was the "chancers" parking on verges causing problems and could have quite sensibly been the focus of control and there could also have been a facility to cancel charges issued to residents properly parked. But since the Management Company claim abdication from responsibility for the PPC, they probably don't care! Of course, the PPC may not make so much money if it was just those parking on verges, driveways etc. But then since charges should only be damages anyway, how can they make any money, or am I being cynical...?

    I think the long and the short of it is that parking needs control, but the PPCs and there charges are over the top.
  • bazster
    bazster Posts: 7,436
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    In a nutshell, Neil, in a nutshell.
    Je suis Charlie.
  • Dr._Shoe
    Dr._Shoe Posts: 563 Forumite
    ampersand wrote: »
    Cross as you are about £40 for 3 days' parking, this: ' if someone decided to park in their drive?' is an old non-sense, nothing to do with ppcs and unenforceable invoices.

    Remedy exists for that trespass. Do not conflate the two.

    You could always issue an unenforceable invoice yourself:-), with the same 'legality'.
    #
    Crossposted with herzlos and bazster - apologies.

    The point I'm making is that there has to be some way of keeping the parking clear for people who have a legitimate reason or even a right to be parking there.

    To me the carpark outside my Daughter's flat and a driveway are exactly the same thing. It is somewhere my Daughter would park her car if she had one. If she couldn't park her hypothetical car there because someone had stolen a parking space (yes, I'm sorry but in many respects it does amount to theft) then what could she do? She doesn't even have the trespass laws to fall back on.

    Besides which, anti-trespass law is very, very hard to apply unless you can catch the person in the act.
  • Herzlos
    Herzlos Posts: 14,649
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    I don't think you'll find many people agreeing with you that a driveway and communal car park are the same thing, or that it counts as theft.

    There are more reasonable solutions to the problem that don't involve calling in PPCs (who will inevitably make things worse).

    Chains or removable bollards over spaces seems to be quite common up here. Or a gate with passcode/key fobs.

    If people are parking on double yellow lines then that's a council issue and should be reported.
  • Dr._Shoe
    Dr._Shoe Posts: 563 Forumite
    Not on an unadopted road.
  • nigelbb
    nigelbb Posts: 3,787
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    Dr._Shoe wrote: »
    It would be OK for someone living out in the country to come to my suburban street, park outside my house so that they could go into town by bus and avoid the expensive city centre parking. What if I came home and couldn't even park in my own neighbourhood let alone outside my own house? I think I'd be a little less easy going about it!
    You don't own the road outside your house. If you want a private parking space then buy a property with a driveway or garage.

    Of course the fundamental problem is that there is insufficient parking with older housing e.g. Victorian as the original builders never imagined cars would exist. With newer properties even those built in the 1950s or 1960s no planner ever imagined that each dwelling would have two or three vehicles.
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