Parking fine for taking up two spaces?

lynseymak

I parked in my local Tesco last week. I had just had some bodywork done to my Mini as someone had bumped my door the previous week. I parked at the back end of the car park and took up two spaces (not something I normally do). I came back to the car to find a ticket on my window and an £80 fine for 'not parking in the designated bays'

Is this allowed? It's a free car park with no meters.

Can anyone out there help???

trisontana

If you read all the many other threads on here that deal with private parking tickets then you will see that this is not a "fine", it's an unenforceable invoice which you can ignore. They can only claim for the actual loss suffered. In your case it's nothing.

AlexisV

If it's a private company, simply ignore. You'll get 3 or 4 threatening letters, but just relax and they'll go away.

Trebor16

Rule 1.

They have no power to fine you.

Rule 2.

As it is a free car park they have suffered no losses by your actions, especially if there were other available bays at the time.


Rule 3.

Ignore them and don't contact them under any circumstances.


Rule 4.

Read the stickies above and then relax.:)

oldone_2

You need to spend an hour or so reading the stickies on this forum. You will find that you can safely ignore all corespondence you receive about this invoice (it is not a 'fine').

Some of the correspondence can be quite frightening to a law abiding motorist, but this is a civil not criminal matter, and the Parking Company are unlikely to take any action other than to send you begging mailshots, which of couse you ignore.

AlexisV

Incidentally, I've never ever seen a county court claim made where the landowner was a supermarket. The last thing these parasitic companies want is someone to counter claim and drag their lucrative client into any legal proceedings.

whitewing

In our local non-supermarket car park you are allowed to take up two bays as long as you display 2 tickets on your dashboard.

lynseymak

Am still worried.....I am not the registered owner but a named driver and I dont want the registered owner to be contacted :-(

flossy_splodge

lynseymak wrote: »

I parked in my local Tesco last week. I had just had some bodywork done to my Mini as someone had bumped my door the previous week. I parked at the back end of the car park and took up two spaces (not something I normally do). I came back to the car to find a ticket on my window and an £80 fine for 'not parking in the designated bays'

Is this allowed? It's a free car park with no meters.

Can anyone out there help???

I have some sympathy with your situation.
Whilst it would be selfish to occupy two spaces to protect your car and its bodywork from other careless drivers, if there were plenty of alternative parking places can't see a problem.
However the real issue in my opinion is how small and minimal spaces are these days.
I quite often struggle to open my rear passenger door to get at my reusable bags as there is so little clearance.
So perhaps we need to be targetting the real problem here and putting pressure to bear to get wider spaces?

trisontana

lynseymak wrote: »

Am still worried.....I am not the registered owner but a named driver and I dont want the registered owner to be contacted :-(

But all they will get is a load of junk mail from the company which can be ignored. Could you tell us the name of the parking company?

McKneff

lynseymak wrote: »

Am still worried.....I am not the registered owner but a named driver and I dont want the registered owner to be contacted :-(

You dont have any say in the matter, the registered owner is the only contact they have.

Direct the registered owner on to here if they need reassurance.