BPA tells lies to Government - here is the proof!

ManxRed

bargepole wrote: »

In the lead up to the Protection of Freedoms Act (2012), the Government carried out an impact assessment. During this, the BPA claimed that, of the 1.8 million private parking tickets issued annually, some 36,000 ended up as County Court Claims. They therefore persuaded the honourable members that the introduction of Schedule 4, Clause 56, would have the impact of reducing the number of court cases.

I've now had an answer back from the Ministry of Justice, following an FoI request, and these are their figures for 01/01/2011 - 31/12/2011:

Number of Money Claims issued by AOS scheme members = 845

Number of those which proceeded to a hearing in front of a Judge = 49

Number of above resulting in award to Claimant = 24

(These figures may be a slight undercount due to issues with typographical errors by individual Court staff, but are broadly correct, allowing for the fact that some may not relate to parking issues)

So: We can accurately calculate percentages as follows:-

Chances of a PPC ticket resulting in a Court Claim = 845/1.8m = 0.047%

Chances of actually going to Court = 49/1.8m = 0.0027%

Chances of losing in Court = 0.0013%

Keep on ignoring!

Are you legally qualified?

Are you willing to underwrite the potential costs to the OP?




Sorry, I thought I was lawabidingcitizen1 there for a moment!

Well done, excellent stats. They will come in handy I'm sure of that!

In fact I'm off to phone the Fire Brigade and send them round to the BPA Headquarters, where there is talk of several pairs of pants that have caught fire.

give_them_FA

The only amazing statistic is that they did not misrepresent the matter by even more than they did.

One question though, how did you frame your request, and what are you now going to do with the info? Sorry that's two questions

corbyboy

So is this how the Government works these days?
When they want to change the law they ask a group with very vested interests for some statistics, and don't even ask for any proof?

And on a related subject, this particular clause doesn't "legalise" what the BPA members do, does it? From what I can see it just means they can take the registered keeper to court. It doesn't mean that their punitive and disproportionate fines will automatically be enforced by court.

bargepole

give_them_FA wrote: »

... One question though, how did you frame your request, and what are you now going to do with the info? Sorry that's two questions

This was the wording of the FoI request:

According to your published statistics for the Civil Courts, there were a total of 1,174,053 money claims made in 2011 (Q1-Q4 inclusive).

Please can you supply the following additional information:

a) In how many of those cases, was the Claimant a member of the Approved Operator Scheme (AOS) as defined by the DVLA. The list of AOS members is on the British Parking Association website at http://www.britishparking.co.uk/AOS-Members

b) Of the claims issued as above, how many proceeded to a defended hearing in front of a Judge?

c) Of the hearings as above, in how many cases was judgment awarded to the Claimant?

d) For the sake of clarity, the information I am seeking in questions b) and c) should exclude undefended claims, and default judgments

I can't say at the moment what I'm doing with the info, but watch this space.

bargepole

ripped_off_driver wrote: »

.... A horse with three legs in the grand national would have better odds than this....

I backed one of those in this year's race.

give_them_FA

The only point I would make is that the number used as the divisor to assess the risk of being taken to court should not be 1.8 million, but whatever the figure is for the number that go unpaid. However that is probably in the high hundreds of thousands.

I am wondering what happened with the 800 odd cases that never made it to hearing. Many were probably deliberately intended to result in default judgment and it would be illuminating to know what that proportion was.

fivegoldstars

give_them_FA wrote: »

The only point I would make is that the number used as the divisor to assess the risk of being taken to court should not be 1.8 million, but whatever the figure is for the number that go unpaid. However that is probably in the high hundreds of thousands.

I am wondering what happened with the 800 odd cases that never made it to hearing. Many were probably deliberately intended to result in default judgment and it would be illuminating to know what that proportion was.

That's what I was getting at. The problem is, the only way to find out the actual ratio of paid to unpaid charges is via information released by the industry itself.
Of the MCOL's which didn't make it to court, it's again necessary to know how many were unpaid. I would suggest a number of people buckled at this point.

bargepole

I didn't want to make the FoI too complex, or there would be a danger they would refuse it on the grounds that it would cost too much to find the info.

The 800-odd would presumably include defendants who paid up, claims that were struck out as no cause of action, and PPCs who gave up when presented with a defence.

But the real issue here is the gross distortion of facts by the BPA. There are 216 County Courts in England & Wales, so that's an average of 3.9 cases per court annually, and 0.23 hearings per court per year.

Little wonder there's such a wide discrepancy on how Judges view these claims; they see so few of them.

give_them_FA

Maybe thanks to the public-spirited judge in Sc unthorpe they may be getting a bit of insight. Is it possible to find out how many claims an individual PPC has launched, by the way? New to this FOI stuff!

bargepole

give_them_FA wrote: »

Maybe thanks to the public-spirited judge in Sc unthorpe they may be getting a bit of insight. Is it possible to find out how many claims an individual PPC has launched, by the way? New to this FOI stuff!

You could certainly make an FoI request similar to mine, but substitute the name of a specific PPC for the AOS list.

From what we've seen on PePiPoo, the vast majority of these claims emanate from Excel/VCS, UKCPS, De Vere, and Combined Parking Solutions (Perky's mob).

The big companies - NCP, Euro Car Parks, Parking Eye, UKPC - never do court.