Parking ticket in Asda car park - Is this legal, can they take me to court?

cosyc

On Friday my husband popped to Asda to get some cash out of the mini bank. As it was raining he parked nearest the machine in a disabled bay (I know he shouldn't have done this, but it was raining and car park was not mega busy). When he returned to his car it had a parking ticket on.

At first he thought it was a joke, so when he got back to work rang Asda who said it nothing to do with them, the car park is run by a private company and they have notices up with there terms on.

So they (Town and City Parking Ltd based in Scotland) issued a civil penalty notice demanding £20 payable within 10 days or becomes £40 after. It states - failure to respond will lead to civil action being taken for penalty and judicial expenses occurered. All verythreatening.

So is this legal or just a con to try to obtain money from us and other like us?

How will they find out who we are from the registration number would DVLA disclose this to a private company.

Any one come across this before?

System

Not sure if your registration number can be obtained from the DVLA perhaps the company pays them a fee for the right. However £20 is a lot cheaper than the amount a lot of companies charge to unclamp a car parked illegally in a disabled spot.

Anya

I think, but correct me if I'm wrong, that if it is a private car park, and the "rules" of parking there are available for all to see, then they can pretty much do what they want on there. My Grandad parked in a normal bay once on a car park in a town centre as all the disabled bays had been filled. He clearly displayed his disabled badge but didn't get a ticket as if you had your badge showing you didn't have to pay (this was only acceptable if you parked in a disabled bay though apparently). Lo and behold when we got back to the car he had been clamped and had to pay £60 to get it taken off.
I work at a supermarket and we have a little car park behind the store that is run privately by a company and not by us. We all have to have passes diplayed on our cars so that we don't get clamped.

grumpyoldgit_2

I KNOW exactly how you feel - been there and won - if you want to do the same you are entering into a very GREY area of the law and you will need nerve, determination and patience to succeed but you can - read on:

They WILL get your details as most have arrangements with DVLA to access such information - I fell foul of one in Sheffield ( :mad: Excel Parking :mad: ) who tried to stiff me for a £90 fee under threat of prosecution.

Basically I told them to p**s off when they were unable to provide me with answers to the two following questions:
1. What was their interest in the land? Only certain people NOT AGENTS can pursue charges for trespass etc. Without which they had no right to harrass me.
2. What evidence did they have that I parked my vehicle where they said I had? I was not even issued with a ticket - I told their so called attendant to "stick it where the sun don't shine" - they could only have got my details from DVLA which they later admitted doing as they had a direct link for other local authority parking contracts (a gross abuse in my view but DVLA did'nt give a s**t).

There was much more to it than that I will need to dig out the correspondence but they eventually backed off as they could not (would not) answer my questions and I would not co-operate by paying up.

I involved the local press, trading standards, office of fair trading and DVLA and let the "Robbers" know I had done so. I suggest you do the same.

As a result of the press coverage I was contacted by a number of fellow sufferers who wanted to know what to do and how I had beaten them

NEXT STEPS:
Wait until you get a letter from them
DO NOT ring them - they use premium rate phone numbers - you will not find a local number
KEEP copies of all correspondence
Find out who their compnay officers are - address all letters to named individuals - I traced mine by web browsing and found they had been bragging about their systems to the "Association of Parking Enforcement Companies (or some similar bulls**t title)
Raise a hew and cry with Asda (named individuals again) - despite their denials they are involved and will have an interest in the land - at the end of the day you were a customer of theirs, they will likely have sub-contracted parking control to this company.
Disabled parking spaces on private land do not have any legal force they are advisory and you will find they will try and hoodwink you with semi legal bulls**t to frighten you into compliance.
They are trying to enforce an implied agreement by you because they have displayed and you have accepted their terms on posters and signs around the car park - which they will say means you have entered into a contract - take photos of the signs location and content.
Stay COOL - do not pay anything - you WILL NOT GET IT BACK.

It took me weeks of determined effort to succeed which I eventually did - you may think £20 is worth paying to avoid the pain. I was fighting on principle and would do so again.

Good Luck
GoG

damo101

regardless of the rules and fines, unless someone is disabled they shouldn't be using them bays - IMO, the fine was probably for ignorance as much as anything else.

Spendless

cosyc wrote:

On Friday my husband popped to Asda to get some cash out of the mini bank. As it was raining he parked nearest the machine in a disabled bay (I know he shouldn't have done this, but it was raining and car park was not mega busy). When he returned to his car it had a parking ticket on.

At first he thought it was a joke, so when he got back to work rang Asda who said it nothing to do with them, the car park is run by a private company and they have notices up with there terms on.

So they (Town and City Parking Ltd based in Scotland) issued a civil penalty notice demanding £20 payable within 10 days or becomes £40 after. It states - failure to respond will lead to civil action being taken for penalty and judicial expenses occurered. All verythreatening.

So is this legal or just a con to try to obtain money from us and other like us?

How will they find out who we are from the registration number would DVLA disclose this to a private company.

Any one come across this before?

Is the fine for using the Asda car park but not shopping there? (Our Asda is close to football grounds so on match days there are restrictions on how long you can park there for) or for using a disabled bay.
If its first I suppose you can argue that you were using their machine. If its 2nd I think you'll have to pay up.

bluep

Pay the fine and learn the lesson of not to park in disabled bays. No matter how "not mega-busy" the car park, they could all fill up very quickly and I'm left getting my disabled granddad out of the car, getting his wheelchair out of the boot, putting the thing together, getting him into it - all with about 50cm between us and the car next door and wheeling him across the car park in the rain. Fun. Or even worse, repeat the above with newborn baby and pushchair and there's NO fines for people parking in mums spaces.

Sorry to sound harsh but both disabled bays and mums and babies parking are there for a very good reason and I think there should be harsh penalties for people parking there that shouldn't be. Like the above poster said, be thankful it wasn't for a £90 clamp!

grumpyoldgit_2

By the Way I should add to my previous post:

In my case I was parked on unmarked private land well away from shops.

I DO NOT condone parking in disabled bays even if they are advisory - they are there for a purpose and we should respect them

GoG

hjb123

I agree with most, a disabled bay is a disabled bay no matter how long you parked there for. In that time that you were parked getting cash out someone who was disabled and had a badge might have wanted to park and not been able to.

How would you feel if you were disabled and an able bodied person had parked in a disabled bay and you werent able to park?

H

geo555

You could challenge the fine under the 1689 Bill of Rights

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/4450196.stm

In part, it reads: "All grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void."

soolin

Co Incidentally there is a very interesting article in the Mail on Sunday today about this very question.

It is basically concerning the fact the the DVLA seem happy to supply private companies with full details of drivers just referenced by vehicle registration, for a fee of £2.50. It means that private parking companies can raise fines on people they consider parked on private land, and they don't even need to ticket the cars, just send a fine by post.

Soo