Shoel Enforcement parking ticket.. but I did park inappropriately

deburs

Hi there

I received a ticket yesterday for parking in a known private business carpark. It's a small carpark for a local solicitors, sandwich shop, florist etc. There are signs up but as you know.... everyone parks there to nip out and get a sandwich for 5 mins.. Only this time, I came back and 3 of us had tickets. One woman disputed hers there and then because there was a demarcation on the tarmac and she said that was Council land.

I was just now about to pay the £75 (within 48 hours) but I did a quick check on this and I don't know now whether to pay or not. Mine is not similar to other cases, where I overran a time or did not Pay and Display as it is just a private carpark. Should I pay this or ignore it like the Watchdog show and other forums say?

Thank you for all your help in advance. I only have 24 hours left to get it paid at £75...

Thanks

Deburs

edited: the local businesses have exemption tickets that they show in their cars. I took a photo of one.

Stephen_Leak

What do you think you did wrong? What does the ticket claim you did wrong? What's different about this case? Is it a free or pay & display car park? Is it a private car park or a council one?

Even if you pay the £75, I'll bet it'll somehow arrive too late and they'll come back demanding more. Ignore them and in a while you'll get it paid at £0.00.

Firstly, the legal stuff.

Only councils, the police, train operators and Transport for London can impose legally enforceable fines or penalties. A private company or individual can't. A private parking company (PPC) call their tickets “Parking Charge Notices”, not “Penalty Charge Notices”. In law, they’re called “speculative invoices”.

Any warning signs are usually so badly positioned and worded, that they won’t have created a fair and legally binding deemed contract between the car park owner and a driver entering the car park in the first place. See The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997 and Excel Parking Services vs. Cutts, Stockport, 2011.

All the car park owner (CPO) can claim from a driver in damages for any alleged breach of any alleged contract is what they’ve lost as a result. If it’s in a free car park or the driver paid, this is £0.00. Demanding more has been judged to be unreasonable and therefore an unfair contract penalty under the terms of The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997, which is not legally enforceable. See Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co. Ltd. vs. New Garage & Motor Co. Ltd., House of Lords, 1914 and countless cases since.

There are also now recent landmark court cases, VCS Parking Control vs. Ronald Ibbotson, S!!!!horpe, 2012, HM Revenue & Customs vs. VCS Parking Control, Lower Tax Tribunal, 2012 and VCS Parking Control vs. HM Revenue & Customs (Appeal), Upper Tax Tribunal, 2012. In these cases, the judges ruled that only the car park owner can take drivers to court. The Upper Tax Tribunal is a court of record, equivalent to the High Court, and therefore its judgement sets a legal precedent.

What should I do now?

We don’t condone not paying or overstaying in a pay car park. If you owe the CPO the original charge, then you ought to write to the CPO, offering this in “full and final settlement”. In any event, you should write to the CPO, advising them that they are "jointly and severally liable" for the actions of their agents, the PPC, and that any further actions by either of them would be regarded as harassment under the terms of The Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This ought to make the CPO call off the PPC and, hopefully, realise the potential cost of doing business with a PPC.

Don’t appeal to the PPC. They always reject them. What’s in it for them to let anyone off? Actually, there is something in it for them: information. They need to know the identity of the driver of the vehicle involved at the time, because that’s who the alleged contract was with. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to make do with harassing the registered keeper.

With windscreen notices, an appeal letter will tell them your name and address, and maybe who was driving at the time. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to buy the details of registered keeper from the DVLA. With postal notices, they’ve had to do this already. But they still need to know the identity of the driver.

They sometimes say that they have the right to ask for this information. This doesn’t mean that you have to tell them.

However, even if you’ve written and told them who the driver was, it just means that they can now harass the driver instead of harassing the registered keeper.

How will they do this to me?

The PPC, then a debt collector and then a solicitor will send you a series of letters. The debt collector and solicitor are usually also the PPC, but using different headed paper. These letters will threaten you with every kind of financial and legal unpleasantness imaginable to intimidate you into paying.

But, they can't actually do anything, for the same reason that a blackmailer can't sue anyone who didn’t pay them.

What should I do then?

Continue to ignore everything you get from the PPC and their aliases. It does seem odd to deal with something like this by ignoring it. Eventually, they will run out of empty threats and stop throwing good money after bad.

Plushchris

Is 48 hours a reasonable time? Doesnt seem like it to me

deburs

Hi Stephen

Well this is not a Pay or Display or 'Free' carpark. It's a small area of land next to some businesses and the landowner employs Shoal I presume. It's marked Private for businesses only and they have their Parking Signs up.

So I am actually 'in the wrong' aren't I? I can't offer to pay the CPO (thank you so much for explaining all the terms) anything. So annoying because normally I drive around waiting for a 20 mins free Council spot to become available but this day, I decided to do the 'wrong thing'

HO87

I'm assuming that this is in the Portsmouth area or some part of S. London?

Whilst we do not condone parking in restricted areas or deliberately avoiding paying for parking where it is charged for it is highly doubtful that the signs posted in this car park made the necessary legal offer for you to have entered into any contract (and then allegedly breached it - hence the ticket). I say this on the basis of the wording of signs that Shoal have used in the past. They may, of course, have changed them but I doubt that they will have bothered.

On that basis the standard advice here is to ignore the ticket and any correspondence you received from them. That means not replying by phone, email or in writing to any letter of demand you receive from them. The chances of them issuing proceedings is slim in the extreme - and their record at county court is poor (from their perspective) because they have been spanked in relation to their use of clamps.

Shoal Enforcement are well-known here having been deprived of their membership of the British Parking Association's Approved Operator Scheme at the tale-end of last year following the conviction of one of their staff for obstructing police - having clamped an unmarked police vehicle at Gunwharf Quays during a royal visit.

As they are no longer members of the AOS they are technically no longer permitted to make application for registered keeper details at the DVLA. I suspect, as others do, that despite the DVLA stating that a private parking company can only obtain registered keeper details if they are members of the AOS, that Shoal will nevertheless do so (in order to chase the "debt" they will claim you owe them). It would be interesting to see if they do so and I wonder if, in due course, you can let ius know if you receive any letter at the address where the vehicle is registered. This assumes that you stick to the advice and ignore all of their contact.

If you have a photograph of the any of the signs in the car park that would be really useful. As stated above I strongly suspect that regardless of what the signs threaten it is more than likely that their wording is not legally sufficient to oblige you to do anything - least of all paying them £75.

Stephen_Leak

Plushchris wrote: »

Is 48 hours a reasonable time? Doesnt seem like it to me

It's just another ploy to "railroad" the victim into paying.

deburs

Edited for more info. I did park inappropriately because the small amount of workers in these businesses use this private carpark rightfully (they display exemption tickets) and I was not. That's why I am thinking I can fight this?

bargepole

deburs wrote: »

... Mine is not similar to other cases, ....

Yours is similar to all other cases where the ticket was issued by a Private Parking Company (PPC). What you have is a speculative invoice, with no legal backing. Ignore everything they send you, and in the remote chance that they try to take you to court (only 49 cases last year out of 550,000 unpaid tickets - you do the maths), come back here and we'll sort out a defence.

deburs

No it's definitely private land. It's full of rubbish and a real mess at the back, it's used for deliveries and workers who park there.

deburs

I'm in Totton, near Southampton

deburs

Thank you so much for spending your time to post.