Crawley Leisure Park - New Parking Regime run by UK Parking Control Ltd

Richard_Nixon

I got a ticket on my car on Christmas Eve for allegedly leaving the Crawley Leisure Park site for which Parking Control Ltd are demanding £60 if paid in the next 14 day. I have put an appeal in ask I bough a pizza from Pizza Hut one of the restaurants on the site

I have just had interview about the matter on BBC Radio Sussex and recorded a TV interview with BBC South East Today which will hopefully be broadcast on Friday 30th December 2011.

With every interview I have done with TV, radio and local newspapers they have asked me whether I left the site and contravened the parking regulation for the site and my reply is that I will not answer the question as to do would be to either incriminate me or I would be lying. The onus is on the parking company to prove beyond reasonable doubt that I left the site and not that I have to prove I did not leave the site. The photos they have taken only show my car parked.

Henry Smith, MP for Crawley had a private member bill in 2010 which would have allowed local council to licence the activities of private companies just like they do for the selling of alcohol and provision of public entertainment. Although Henry's private member bill ran out of parlimentary time and did not get onto the statute book, the government have agreed to include aspect of his private member bill into government legislation that currently before parliament. Please can you contact you MP asking them to support the relevent clauses of the Governments Protection of Freedoms Bill so that your local council can regulate the activties of private parking companies.

trisontana

Why go to all that trouble? If you read the many threads on here that deal with private parking companies you would realise that you don't have to "prove" anything. If you left site or not is irrelevant, all the parking company can claim off you is for the actual material loss suffered by the landowner. In this case that's a big fat zero.

You seem to be taking these parking companies too seriously. They are not the police or the council. They are just private companies with no more power than you or me to demand money off people. The best plan is to ignore the company and don't "appeal". They will soon lose interest in you.

taffy056

Easiest thing to do is ignore, if they take it further it's up to them to prove a loss, which is virtually impossible in a free car park.

The_Slithy_Tove

Richard_Nixon wrote: »

I have just had interview about the matter on BBC Radio Sussex and recorded a TV interview with BBC South East Today which will hopefully be broadcast on Friday 30th December 2011.

Did they, and the other interviewers, refer to it as a FINE? I would wager that they did (as they all do), whereas it is merely a speculative invoice. Going to an ignorant press/media does more harm than good in some ways, as they tend to use the terms fine and penalty, which gives false legitimacy to their dodgy paperwork.

You ought to contact the BBC South East and any other media outlets you contacted to ensure they do not use the false terminology when making their news items.

Alexis27

prove beyond reasonable doubt

No, on the balance of probabilities. Reasonable doubt = criminal law = gives the PPC credence.

Kite2010

Damages suffered by the landowner are zero, ignore the PPC & ignore the leisure park whom has decided to harass customers

HO87

With notable exceptions the media are largely ignorant of the truth about PPC's and their real business model - which I can assure you is utterly unique in this country. How many companies exist to create situations as a result of which people can be ajudged to committed a wrong and make their vast profits from the money they extract from those same people for these wrongs? In order to do so they mimic the paperwork, phraseology and procedures of councils and the police, in what I believe, is cynically intended to persuade their recipients that they have the authority to impose these charges.

Their tickets are not fines - and can never be so - but simply invitations to settle tortious wrongs the PPC assert to have occurred. Courts have ruled on numerous occasions that such charges are contractual penalties and are legally unenforceable. Licensing the companies that issues these "invoices" will not change the legality of them. Even David Icke would agree that they were, at best, on shaky ground.

The Protection of Freedoms Bill offers but one advantage to the PPC and that is the ability to be able to quote legislation in their simulacra parking tickets. From a legal point of view it is a real mish-mash that ultimately changes nothing and still requires the PPC to pursue matters through the county court.

Mr Smith's intention to oblige councils to licence these operators is, IMHO, desperately naive. It betrays an ignorance of what is actually afoot in PPC World and will only succeed in creating another layer of expensive bureaucracy that will simply turn PPC's into official tax-farmers keeping in mind that they are unofficial tax-farmers at the moment. His proposal alone gives a degree of credence to what is in many hands an entirely parasitic business (it could never be described as an industry by any stretch of the imagination) that it neither deserves nor could ever be justified and were it to become law would be the modern-day equivalent of Caligula deifying Incitatus.

Please feel free to direct the reporters from South-East Today and Radio Sussex here for further education. They could start by watching the video clips here (on the "stickies" page) from their colleagues at BBC Watchdog who already have a measure of the legality of PPC invoices. :wall:

cb1979

Hi best to ignore them
its up to them to prove who parked the car there,as they can only go after the driver who parked the car that day, and not the owner

But they will contact the dvla for the owners details and send you a few scary letters
Only the Police and courts can fine you,not cowboy parking companys
A member of my family recieved a ticket from the sussex house car park just up the road in july 2010,just recieved a few threating letters and they gave up

I have also had contact with Henry Smith and gave him all our info for his case file

None of these crooks are interested in appeals,they just want your money

Kite2010

The only times they will accept an appeal are:
1 - For the annual BPA "audit" where they show they do actually listen to appeals once every blue moon and that they are not scammers
2 - When the contract holder threatens to cancel the contract

jazz1989

hi so am i right in thinking that these fines mean nothing????just wondering as i am a student nurse and have been placed at crawley hospital for next 2 weeks and to avoid having to pay expenisive parking fees i frankly cant afford i was going to park at the leisure park and walk to work....if i can then great but dont want to get fines i cant pay instead of paying parking....any help before monday much appreciated.

thank you

Kite2010

They are not fines, but UKPC might fancy a shot at court if you collect lots of tickets.

All you will get is various invoices from them demanding you pay them lots and lots of money