Private Parking Fine for Leaving the Site

RobbieCD

Dear All

I have read many situations posted on the forum regarding private parking fines received for various reason, however not similar to my particular case.

A friend and I both parked in the same retail car park in Reading, waited for others to arrive and visited an onsite store. We returned to our cars approximately 35 minutes later to find that parking charge notices had been issued for LEAVING THE SITE. Apparently, according to the kind General Manager who is prepared to act as witnesses on our behalf and tried to desperately to locate the attendent, this is a new rule, which has been recently introduced. The car park does not have cameras, therefore is it the responsibilty of the company to prove this actually happened?

Can anyone assist? Should I appeal? If so, how?

By the way, regardless what happens, I have learnt an immense amount on the forum so many thanks to you all.

Kind regards

Half_way

its not a fine, ignore, what company issued the ( un enforcable) charge notice?

taffy056

This is a quite common method of scamming money money off motorists, so don't be a mug here these are not fines or penalties, they are just invoices that can be ignored. Who is the parking company ?

Stephen_Leak

There have been lots of cases for people leaving sites before. It usually happens at retail sites, as they don't like people parking and then not shopping with them.

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. Private parking companies (PPCs) 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 with 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 CPO can charge for parking and take drivers to court. The Upper Tax Tribunal is equivalent to the High Court, and therefore its judgements set legal precedents.

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 take anyone who didn’t pay them to court.

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.

In the meantime, read this ...

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=16231

RobbieCD

Thanks for the replies.

The company is UKCPS LTD who are based in Leeds.

prowla

What - they want to (ahem) "fine" you for leaving the car park???

RobbieCD

taffy056 wrote: »

This is a quite common method of scamming money money off motorists, so don't be a mug here these are not fines or penalties, they are just invoices that can be ignored. Who is the parking company ?

Hi

The company is based in Leeds and called UKCPS Ltd.

taffy056

RobbieCD wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.

The company is UKCPS LTD who are based in Leeds.

With UKCPS we suggest you don't reply to people offering help via PM unless they have a few hundred posts. The reasoning is that Peter Haswell their office manager trolls this site trying garner info from posts.

They do try in a limited amount of times to take people to the small claims, out of thousands of invoices I think they tried about 25 times last year. If you get a claim from Northampton mcol please come back for advice.

pogofish

RobbieCD wrote: »

I have read many situations posted on the forum regarding private parking fines received for various reason, however not similar to my particular case.

Eh?

There are many, many identical cases here and your particular "case" is absolutely no different to any of them, nor any other private parking case TBH.

As advised above, you just IGNORE them totally from now-on and do not enter into any exchange with them unless they take you to court, in which case you will be directed to the best place to prepare a defence.

Also be aware that UKCPS staff haunt these boards and have been known to try PMing people to get more info. Don't respond to them.

Coupon-mad

UKCPS do occasionally try a Court case but it's rare. Like here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/52382351#Comment_52382351

So ignore them and don't post any identifying info on here, nor respond to any private message from someone with few posts, offering to 'help'.

UKCPS employee Peter Haswell (we call him a Hasbeen!) trawls these forums.

By the way there are LOADS of forum cases like yours, just try Googling the words 'UKCPS leaving site'!! Lots and lots of results from here and from CAG and pepipoo forums as well!

But if the General Manager is saying that he can vouch for you not leaving the site you would have even more of a defence than most, not that you will need it as you are most likely to just get the usual letter chain. Also if they watched you leaving the site they shoud have stopped you as they have an obligation to minimise their losses. This was stated by a judge in a recent case similar to yours where the motorist won (of course).

Why on earth didn't the General Manager attempt to get the fake PCN cancelled anyway? Does he feel he can't, if not why not? Why is that, why does he feel powerless against an AGENT of the occupier/landowner, seeing as surely the car park is there for his customers and those of other stores onsite?

Is he under the impression they are some sort of parking authority? He needs to wise up and if his company contracted the firm he should TELL them to cancel the fake PCN. If it's the landowners who contracted the PPC then he should TELL the landowner what has happened to one of his customers (and get the fake PCN cancelled).

It bothers me that onsite retailers are so PATHETIC over this issue when it's obviously going to lose them custom!