Excel make it into Private Eye (again)

HO87

Excel's much discussed escapades in Ebbw Vale have now made it into Private Eye magazine - though it won't make it onto the PE website until tomorrow at the earliest.

It would seem that Simon Renshaw-Smith yacht-owning MD of Excel was slightly displeased at the MP for Bleanau Gwent. Said MP, it is reported, has advocated that an entirely independent appeals service is set up to deal with private parking not the BPA offshoot that is set to unveil itself in the Autumn. Not that the BPA and its old boys club will escape all involvement. The same Welsh member is recommending that it should be completely funded by the "industry"

Our friend SR-S then accused the MP of "a totally unfounded witch-hunt, which has whipped the media into a frenzy" and went on to metaphorically spit his dummy out about a BBC film crew who had gone on site allegedly without warning or authority.

The car park landowners clearly agree, because they are reported to have instructed Simon to refund charges levied against disabled motorists and to install better signs.

Meanwhile the dispute with the local authority over Excel's installation of ANPR cameras - and the the new signs - without planning permission continues.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, Mr Renshaw-Smith sits on the board of the British Parking Association and consequently, one presumes, supports the BPA CoP and the minimum standards it contains with regard to signs. Just like the signs at the Peel Centre in Stockport which remain in place despite being ruled by a judge last year as being ineffective in relation to setting out the terms of a contract.

Coupon-mad

I do hope that Watchdog cover this issue and tear into Excel properly tomorrow night, whether it's about this car park or the Martin Cutts one!

Watchdog please bring on Tim Cary solicitor again, he is a real legend and your clip with him and his paper aeroplane is permanently at the top of this forum board.

And if you talk about FAKE private 'tickets' please don't let a PPC pretend they are anything other than unsolicited invoices. NOT parking tickets, NOT 'PCNs' (despite the deliberately misleading acronym) and NOT penalties or fines!

And if you talk about disabled bays on private land, ask the PPCs why they are BREAKING the Equality Act 2010. Not only by harassing disabled people (illegal under the Act) but by discriminating against genuinely disabled people who ARE protected by the Act but have no Blue Badge.

Ask a PPC if a person just diagnosed with cancer or other longterm debilitating condition, can park in a private disabled bay without a Blue Badge?

A PPC will say NO, would issue a fake 'PCN' and then would bombard the registered keeper with threatograms (see second top thread for pics).

The law says YES, of course a disabled person can use a reasonable adjustment!

Looking forward to Watchdog again, don't let this busy forum down! :T

robredz

These sharks deserve all the odium and woe that is coming to them

Coupon-mad

robredz wrote: »

These sharks deserve all the odium and woe that is coming to them

Yep and of course it's not just Excel, not just one bad apple - the whole PPC tree is rotten through and through.

Their industry is clearly nothing at all to do with parking control - if it was they would soon go out of business once they sorted out parking issues everywhere!

And yet the Government is thinking of allowing the old boys' club the BPA (made up of PPCs) to set up an 'independent appeals procedure' and to allow PPCs to be able to chase people who were not even in the car, for their made-up 'charges'. What other private industry can do this?

The BPA is not and has never been a regulator and yet it seems to have hoodwinked the Government into thinking that their PPC members' invoices are 'akin to PCNs' when they are far from it, they are made up speculative invoices, at the very most they are just a private contract like any other. The idea has been put forward by the BPA that registered keeper liability under the Freedoms Act will be 'closing a loophole across the parking industry'.

No, it would surely be unravelling hundreds of years of law of contract - a private company CANNOT have formed a contract to pay, with a registered keeper who was not even in the car. This is nothing like the same as the statutory powers of a Local Authority or the Police - their tickets are completely different thing, closer to a protection racket in fact.

But pseudo-statutory powers are about to be conferred on PPCs and ex-clampers, anyone who wants to issue a fake parking ticket and joins the old boys' club, the BPA, will have carte blanche to bombard a registered keeper of any car about any made up 'charge'. How easy would it be for firms to just collect car reg numbers and issue scatter-gun fake PCNs for no reason...oh wait, that's what already happens in car parks all across the Country now!

If this guy had joined the BPA he'd have been all right then? Can you spot the difference between him and a PPC? I can't!

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/crime/s/1487708_conman-slapped-150-fake-parking-tickets-onto-cars-in-sale-and-timperley

Only in the UK could this happen, surely. Only in the UK could a private industry get away with this. :mad:

give_them_FA

Yes. It is a thoroughly corrupt country we live in.

taffy056

Unfortunately Watchdog won't be doing anything in the Ebbw Vale car park as it has been covered albeit not very well by the BBC Welsh consumers affairs programme X-Ray , the problem up there is clouded by the MP IMO as well as he is advocating appeals to the company and is calling it fines etc. wish he would just say what Watchdog has said on the subject.

esmerobbo

Linky!

http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/plcdev/files/124/original/DVLA-BPA-Cutts19Apr2012.pdf

treeboa

And yet the Government is thinking of allowing the old boys' club the BPA (made up of PPCs) to set up an 'independent appeals procedure' and to allow PPCs to be able to chase people who were not even in the car, for their made-up 'charges'. What other private industry can do this?

this does really make you wonder how many mp`s are on the board or sleeping partners making a nice little earner from it, its not as if this shower of charlatans have not been proved more than once to have more than a couple of grubby little fingers in money making scams

Kite2010

That is a good read

give_them_FA

sounds like they have a good source... unlike most of the Press....

sounds a bit muted for Private Eye though, usually Mr Hislop is a lot more caustic.. is he mellowing in old age

vax2002

The Old PPC's will be swept away like flies once the even bigger old boys club deals with the tarnished image.
Once private parking looks above board, in will pile the real big hitters, the multi national companies who will price the bandits out of the parks.
Make no mistake, these new bits of legislation are not to help the PPC, they are because some has sat up and taken notice of all these millions and millions of pounds to be extracted.
Why do you think they have turned a blind eye to the VAT fraud, PPC's commit every day, that is one huge hook they can real them all in on in one go.
Make no mistake, small time parking scammers, your time is about to come, a new gang are riding in to town and they own the sheriffs backside.