Is there a place for private parking enforcement?

s555

Firstly, I am not defending the actions of the various "enforcement" companies discussed here. I too am a recent victim, receiving a demand for £150 for an 11 minute "overstay" when 15 minutes of the stay was spent finding a space and later queuing to leave.

However, I do wonder if the anarchy that will ensue if we all ignore these tickets will eventually be to our detriment.

The particular car park in my case is close to a commuter train station. If there was effectively no penalty for parking there, it would become the new (free) station car park. If I decided to go and buy a new TV or Sofa at the retail park in question, I may be unable to find a space due to them all being filled with the cars of train users. That is bad for me and worse for the businesses trading on the estate.

Surely, a fine of less than £40, halved for prompt payment, for a true and deliberate overstay is not unreasonable? I say this without prejudice to my personal case, of course!

It seems that legislation that limits fines but also gives those fines some teeth would be in everyone's interests. Of course, there would have to be a number of checks and balances to ensure these were genuine cases and not scams.

Discuss / flame away!

peter_the_piper

I hope you did not pay!! If not continue to ignore.
yes, there is a place for charging for parking, if I read your post correctly, none on here would disagree. To be fair the landowner has a right to make money from parking fees, its the daft enforcement of some made up rules which exercises most. I've said before that a sensible fee for staying longer, say £10 would be paid without much of a quibble,
its the extortion which we disagree with.
The law makers thought that what they did was to make the rules equitable to both registered keeper/driver and landowner, however as always the parking companies bend the rules to suit themselves, knowing full well that in reality most are not legally entitled to charge for themselves.

trisontana

Of course they are not fines

esmerobbo

I agree that companies have a right to the use of their car parks for their customers.
It has always been the case that a company could stop abusers using their car park, however most have gone the lazy way and called in a PPC.
I don't see abuse as much as it is claimed. We have a very large retail park here 1850 car spaces, there is nothing else except industrial areas and a hotel close by all with ample car parking.

A PPC infest this car park paying special attention to disabled bays. There is never a shortage of parking even over Xmas and bank holidays, so why are they needed.

I shall tell you because the PPC pay the landlords £250 per month too police the car park. So the PPC have to issue charges just to pay the fee so they will look for any excuse to issue a charge.

There lies the problem they must issue charges, so it is not about car park management it is about revenue raising.

Further down the road there is a large Asda no PPC nothing again no problems, however at Xmas when it goes mad they bring in TCP to manage the car parking, they don't issue charges just point the cars in the right direction and marshall them around, it works fine.

So why don't these companies employ someone to manage the car parks? Most of them have people in them anyway collecting trolleys, if they saw someone parking incorrectly a simple request to do it right would almost always work.

As P-T-P says above if they did penalise people a realistic figure would probably be accepted by most especially if it was donated to a charity. However the crazy figures some of these companies charge is ridiculous.

A retail park here charges £75 raising to £100 I could park on DYL for 3 days for that!

daveyjp

No need at all. If it is a large car park and there are problems with non users there are plenty of entry barrier options on the market.

peter_the_piper

We have a small car park on our business which butts onto the main road. We sometimes get visitors(not customers) parking to go to houses nearby. New visitors are asked to park in corner out of the way, regulars park in corner anyway. Broken down vehicles go where they can. We had a lorry and trailor break down and covered the forecourt for hours, good source of income for the day as it was quiet, company paid days takings(or what would have been a days takings)

s555

peter_the_piper wrote: »

I hope you did not pay!! If not continue to ignore.

Of course not. That message was received loud and clear!

peter_the_piper

If you had titled it "Parking Management" we would all have agreed with the need, its when they say Enforcement we know what they are in it for.

bargepole

Near me, there are 4 supermarkets.

Morrisons, near the town centre, suffers from non-customers using it to park and walk into town. They used to have an exit barrier where an employee would check the shopping receipts. Stupidly, they got rid of this and brought in ECP. Result: many genuine shoppers get ticketed for trivial reasons, and the managers spend a lot of time sorting out complaints.

Sainsbury's, in the main shopping complex, have an entry barrier which spits out a plastic card, you get that validated at the checkout and use it to pass the exit barrier. The disabled bays say "Please keep these bays free for disabled users", wording which they changed after I wrote to JS HQ pointing out they couldn't use the words "fine" or "penalty". It works well.

Asda, out of town next to the motorway, use TCP and have someone in a high-viz jacket patrolling the car park. Lots of fake tickets issued, lots of complaints - no reason for anyone to park there unless they were shopping at Asda.

Tesco, near the next motorway junction, have no PPCs and no threatening signs. Everyone gets on with it, there are plenty of disabled bays which never seem to be full, sure the odd chav may park there when popping in for 40 B&H and a scratchcard, but so what.

So to answer the original question - no.

[Deleted User]

s555 wrote: »

If there was effectively no penalty for parking there

What do you mean :huh:

There is effectively no penalty for parking there.

Surely, a fine of less than £40, halved for prompt payment, for a true and deliberate overstay is not unreasonable?

If you reversed into my garden fence, and I sued you for the damage, would you consider it reasonable, for the Judge to award me 20 to 40 times the cost of the damage?

s555

Reversing in to fence analogy: no I would not consider that fair. However, if I and a hundred other people did it every day and you ended up having to employ someone to stop us doing it, your costs would be higher than the cost of the fence. Your costs plus legal fees would be fair. These may or may not be 20 times the cost of a fence panel.

I am not saying 150 quid for an overstay is fair. What I am saying is these places sometimes need some rules about who can park there and for how long. And people often break rules if there is no penalty. Having a penalty of £1.50 isn't going to dissuade anybody. £40 dropping to £20 is enough to discourage abuse and would be in line with many council parking fines.