A Disabled Charity And A PPC

anewman

Don't forget to join the facebook group, the more members on there and hopefully if Mobilise see it they'll start to have a change of heart http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=146057145420931

AlexisV

Thank you for your email. I have now had the opportunity to seek the views of both the British Parking Association and an independent disability advisor on the points you have made. Unfortunately Mobilise does not have the funds to spend on legal advice as you recommend but I am confident the advice I have been given on contract law is correct.

Here are the views of the BPA for her:

Q 15Tony Baldry [MP for Banbury]: I was concerned by Mr. Troy’s suggestion that in this part of the Bill we were simply displacing clamping to private firms’ ticketing. It would be helpful if we could remind ourselves where we are. This is a trespass. It is a civil tort. It is not a criminal offence. Professor King in his opening comments talked about the punishment not fitting the crime. There is no constitutional right for a private citizen to punish another private citizen. We are where we are because of the case of someone who parked in Exeter: the divisional court said that if you park where a sufficiently clear notice is placed, you are inviting someone to clamp you. But that case gave no authority for fines. It gave no authority to impose a ticket. Otherwise you have to go to the small claims court or prove damage. What possible authority, Mr. Troy, do your members have to impose tickets on individuals? If you are to go around imposing tickets on individuals, clearly the Bill needs to deal with that as well, does it not?

Patrick Troy [Chief Executive, British Parking Association]: Absolutely. It should deal with both issues in order to control both issues. This is an entirely unregulated sector. What the private companies do on private land is unregulated both from their perspective and from the public’s perspective. Therefore, there needs to be some form of regulation. Through the DVLA route some legitimacy has been given to ticketers because only those ticketers that are members of an accredited trade association can access keeper details. That gives the ticketing fraternity some legitimacy. But the Bill needs to address both these areas if it is to control parking properly.

Q 16 Tony Baldry: But if I park on your land and you send me a ticket in the post, which I tear up and then throw away, your only redress is to issue proceedings against me in the small claims court where you have to prove that I caused damage by parking where I parked and you have to prove the measure of that damage. That is right, is it not?

Patrick Troy: That is absolutely right and it goes deeper than that. Our concern is that, currently in an unregulated environment, the person who committed that act—the driver—is liable and the operator does not know who the driver is. So they will obtain keeper details from DVLA and will write to the keeper saying, “The driver has committed a contravention here. Who is the driver, please?” The keeper can say, “I don’t know who the driver was” and not admit that they were the driver or that they know who the driver was. The difficulty is that eventually operators will say that if they cannot recover their outstanding due, they will have to switch to some other form of enforcement, which is clamping. That is what I was saying earlier about distorting the two sectors. There needs to be regulation for the whole sector and not just one element of it.

fb1969

With thanks to Driver8 for this thread https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/35636817#Comment_35636817

trisontana

I have now forwarded the news article to Mobilise about the disabled bus being banned, asking for their comments.

lucylucky

trisontana wrote: »

I have now forwarded the news article to Mobilise about the disabled bus being banned, asking for their comments.

I am sure we all look forward to their comments.

Might be slightly uncomfortable for Ms Dolphin.

(One can but hope)

anewman

jimmo wrote: »

Just to repeat one point I raised at post #46
“My wife has been a Blue (previously Orange) Badge holder for quite a number of years and has had Motability cars since 1993 yet neither of us has ever heard of Mobilise until this thread.
Is it really a leading charity for disabled motorists? Or is it something else?”

All we know is they receive funding from UKCPS and act for the benefit of UKCPS in return (while proclaiming to act in the interests of the disabled). There are lots of small charities noone has heard of, and even some made up ones that drop clothes collections bags through your letterbox and/or cold call you to try get you to donate to something that is not a charity.

Mobilise's credibility as a charity working for the disabled is currently in severe jeopardy when they're in bed with a company which has banned a disabled minibus from a car park. I wonder if the time has come to contact the charities commission if they don't change their tone, especially with recent news of the disabled minibus.

trisontana

The charity does look to be legitimate. According to the Charity Commission website it's been in operation since 2005 and was formally known as the Disabled Drivers Motor Club. Full information here

Coblcris

May I suggest a small rephrasing.

"The charity does look to legitimately exist as a recognised charity"

Whether it is wholly legitimate has yet to be determined.

trisontana

I have now received another reply from them saying they will no longer enter into any more dialogue with me. The reason given was that I had published somebody's "private email address". In fact it wasn't private at all, it took the form of "xxxxxx@mobilise.info". Surely that's a (public) company email?

Flipper38

Coblcris wrote: »

May I suggest a small rephrasing.

"The charity does look to legitimately exist as a recognised charity"

Whether it is wholly legitimate has yet to be determined.

Having been looking at their website for the last 30 miuntes or so, they certainly look legitimate to me. Parking policy is just one of the many things they seem to be campaigning about.

Whilst I appreciate you might not agree with their allegience with UKCPS maybe they have done this to try and educate them on whats right and wrong. For all we know, UKCPS might ask Mobilise for advice on every ticket issued to blue badge holders, they might be told to rescind first offenders.... If you genuinely make a mistake then you shouldn't be penalised. However, if you keep making mistakes then why should you keep getting away with it?

I appreciate that you'll tell me that no one has been taken to court and lost, but, a quick look at just these forums have proven that not to be the case.......

Regards

Flipper38