Parking Eye/Welcome Break vs. Me!

nigelbb

The argument that you needed to rest for more than 2hours due to safety reasons is a non starter. Welcome Break do not forbid you from staying longer than 2 hours but instead charge you £11 for up to 24 hours parking. Clearly the charge is large enough that it is intended to act as a disincentive but it is there if you really want to stay. Of course the signage is inadequate & it would more reasonable to bill you only £11 rather than £100 if you overstay as this £11 is all you really owe. http://www.welcomebreak.co.uk/about-us/parking

spacey2012

Nope, with you saying around midnight, just thought they might have cked up on the dates, camera images from one date and pcn from another, they do do it.

Coupon-mad

Just to add to those here pleading with you to email POPLA with added information for your appeal! We have seen several posters grab victory from the jaws of defeat by doing this in time. You just need those magic words about loss and about landowner contract/no standing, as in the POPLA appeals you have now read. If you really want to go to town with it, search the forum for 'MSA' as a keyword which will show you 'Motorway Service Area specific' POPLA appeals which have stronger wording about the DFTransport requirements for signage in these car parks (statutory requirements).

If you get to update your newspaper story when you win, make sure you state that PE always lose when people use those two points (to help others!) and that the advice is easily found on helpful online forums. And lots of us come from the Meridian area too...

Welsh_Exile

nigelbb wrote: »

The argument that you needed to rest for more than 2hours due to safety reasons is a non starter. Welcome Break do not forbid you from staying longer than 2 hours but instead charge you £11 for up to 24 hours parking. Clearly the charge is large enough that it is intended to act as a disincentive but it is there if you really want to stay. Of course the signage is inadequate & it would more reasonable to bill you only £11 rather than £100 if you overstay as this £11 is all you really owe. http://www.welcomebreak.co.uk/about-us/parking

A good point - who gets the £11 though? If not ParkingEye then what business do they have claiming anything?

Half_way

Please read the advice regarding your POPLA appeal/challenge if it is completed correctly then it should be a walk in the park.
Theres also the added bonus of some more bad reporting from ITV alerting people to the issue of un enforceable penalty's and what these things really are.

superbuilder

Hi, I have discovered that I can in fact upload more details to POPLA but it says as evidence and not further reasons to appeal. That said, I am going to upload and see if they will consider it. Please can someone have a look and see if it sounds OK. I have pretty much copied another one on here as the same reasons stand but modified it a bit to reflect my actual circumstances! Does anyone perceive this to be a problem as the same legal arguments stand here. Also, ITV news came and I was on today but Welcome Break still stand by Parking Eye!!!

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Dear Sir/Madam,

I write in regards to POPLA reference XXXXXX.

I would like to add the following reasons to my appeal that I submitted to yourselves on January 15th 2013. My initial appeal was fairly emotional as I was under a lot of stress regarding the matter then and therefore not very well reasoned. There are three additional points that I would like you to consider.

1. The charge is not a genuine pre-estimate of loss.

The Department for Transport guidelines state, in Section 16 Frequently Asked Questions, that:

"Charges for breaking a parking contract must be reasonable and a genuine pre-estimate of loss. This means charges must compensate the landholder only for the loss they are likely to suffer because the parking contract has been broken. For example, to cover the unpaid charges and the administrative costs associated with issuing the ticket to recover the charges. Charges may not be set at higher levels than necessary to recover business losses and the intention should not be to penalise the driver."

At the time of the alleged overstay it was dark, extremely quiet and very poor weather conditions so there would have been no losses to Welcome Break at all as there were plenty of spaces for other customers to park. I contest that £100 is not a reasonable or genuine pre-estimate of loss. In fact, had I not allegedly overstayed, Welcome Break would have lost close to £20 of my business in their service station so the loss would have been greater had I not been there in the first place.

Parking Eye has submitted that the charge is a genuine pre-estimate of the losses incurred in managing the parking location. The entirety of the parking charge must be a genuine pre-estimate of loss in order to be enforceable. I require the parking company to submit a breakdown of how these costs are calculated. All of these costs must represent a loss resulting from my alleged breach only and not a generic submission.

Parking Eye submits that that the pre-estimate of loss will depend on the losses to themselves and the landholder. They submit that this will vary on the time of the day, the day of the week and even upon the weather. Parking Eye submits that the losses incurred by them include, but are not restricted to:
Erection and maintenance of the site signage
Installation, monitoring and maintenance of the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems
Employment of office based administrative staff
Membership and other fees required to manage the business effectively including those paid to the BPA, DVLA and ICO
General costs including stationery, postage etc.

A POPLA Assessor has stated in a recent adjudication, in which the appeal was successful, that these all appear to be general operational costs, and not losses consequential to the alleged breach. They are not contractual losses, but the day to day costs of running their business and which would have been incurred irrespective of any breach that may have occurred. Parking Eye has admitted in other cases (several before the county court that they failed to win) that their estimate of cost in each case is actually £53, including operating costs. The letter also states that the 40% reduction for early payment within 14 days must be greater than or equal to £53 in order for them to operate as a business which indicates that their charges must include an element of profit. They also state that the full charge of £100 is only payable if a motorist ignores all Parking Eye correspondence or loses an appeal at POPLA, but this is quite untrue as in their original Parking Charge Notice they stated that the parking charge would be discounted to £60 if paid within 14 days of the date issued but after this date the full parking charge would be owed, i.e. it would be owed irrespective of making any appeal to either Parking Eye or POPLA.

It would, therefore, follow that these charges cannot be a true pre-estimate of loss and that they are punitive, have an element of profit included and are not allowed to be imposed by private parking companies.

2. Signage

I believe the signs and any core parking terms that Parking Eye are relying upon were too high and too small for any driver in a moving vehicle to see, read or understand when driving into this car park in the dark. Upon entering this Motorway Services Area motorists are bombarded with a whole range or signs, adverts and directions all supplying far more information than can possibly be read and fully understood from a moving vehicle when all any driver is actually looking for are the directions for finding where to buy fuel or where the toilet facilities are and where they can get something to eat and drink. Further to this, my companion and I ended up in the lorry park area first which proves that the signage is so indadequate at midnight that something as simple as a car park cannot be found let alone sings that imply a contract is taking place! Parking Eye states that they have other signs displaying their terms at various locations throughout the car park. However, none of these are lit to a decent degree and there are many parts of the car park where it is quite possible to walk into the building and back to the vehicle without seeing a sign, especially in the dark.

Parking Eye needs to show evidence and signage map/photos on this point - specifically showing the height of the signs and where they are at the entrance, whether a driver still in a moving car can see, read and understand them when deciding to drive in. I believe the signs failed to properly and clearly warn and inform the driver of the terms in this car park as they failed to comply with the BPA Code of Practice appendix B. I require Parking Eye to provide photographic evidence that proves otherwise.

As a POPLA Assessor has said previously in an adjudication
“Once an Appellant submits that the terms of parking were not displayed clearly enough, the onus is then on the Operator to demonstrate that the signs at the time and location in question were sufficiently clear”.

Parking Eye needs to prove that the driver actually saw, read, understood and accepted the terms, which resulted in a conscious decision being made by the driver to park in exchange for paying the extortionate fixed amount Parking Eye is now demanding, rather than simply the nominal amount required for an overstay.

The idea that any driver would accept these terms knowingly is perverse and beyond credibility. Also, as this was a Motorway Services Area, which is specifically designed for drivers to rest, operators of Motorway Services Areas and their agents must comply with the requirements of Government policy. These provisions are reflected in the Traffic Signs Agreements into which they enter with the Highways Agency.

The Highways Agency, on behalf of the Department for Transport (DfT), published a policy on the provision of roadside facilities on its network. That policy is 'DfT Circular 01/2008: Policy on Service Areas and other Roadside Facilities on Motorways and All-purpose Trunk Roads in England'.

''Signing within roadside facilities
100. All traffic signs and markings within roadside facilities should conform to the standards laid down in the TSRGD 2002 as amended or replaced from time to time.''

I require Parking Eye to show proof to the POPLA adjudicator that the DFT/Highways Agency has granted special authorisation for Parking Eye’s 'traffic signs' in this particular Motorway Service Area, to be exempt from this policy requirement. It will not be enough for Parking Eye to claim that their particular signs placed in this Motorway Service Area are in Parking Eye’s own opinion, not 'traffic signs' when clearly they can indeed be interpreted as such and - unlike other adverts and signs on site - are not intended to direct pedestrians.

I require Parking Eye to provide evidence of date of erection of all signage and to prove that their signage complies with the standards laid down in the TSRGD 2002 and with BPA Code of Practice and BSI Standards.

As Parking Eye is arguing that the driver entered into a legal contract with them based entirely on signage, I put Parking Eye to strict proof to provide POPLA with an unredacted, contemporaneous copy of their evidence that each sign was illuminated for the purpose of 'after dark' reading and to provide mapping of the signage.

3. ANPR Accuracy

Parking Eye is obliged to ensure their ANPR equipment is maintained as described in paragraph 21.3 of the British Parking Association's Approved Operator Scheme Code of Practice. I require Parking Eye to present records of the dates and times of when the cameras at this car park were checked, adjusted, calibrated, synchronised with the timer which stamps the photos and generally maintained to ensure the accuracy of the dates and times of any ANPR images. This is important because the entirety of the charge is founded on two images purporting to show my vehicle entering and exiting at specific times. It is vital that Parking Eye must produce evidence in response to these points and explain to POPLA how their system differs (if at all) from the flawed ANPR system which was wholly responsible for the court loss by them in Parking Eye v Fox-Jones on 8 Nov 2013. That case was dismissed when the judge said the evidence form Parking Eye was 'fundamentally flawed' as the synchronisation of the camera pictures with the timer had been called into question and Parking Eye could not rebut the point.

So, in addition to showing their maintenance records, I require Parking Eye in this case to show evidence to rebut this point. I suggest that in the case of my vehicle being in this car park, a local camera took the image but a remote server added the time stamp. As the two do not have a common "time synchronisation system", there is no proof that the time stamp added is actually the exact time of the image. Without a synchronised time stamp there is no evidence that the image is ever time stamped with an accurate time. Therefore I contend that this ANPR "evidence" from Parking Eye in this car park is just as unreliable as that in the Fox-Jones case and I request that Parking Eye provides proof to the contrary.

I respectfully ask that my appeal is upheld on these grounds and look forward to hearing from you.

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Thanks in advance...

Coupon-mad

Yes to those 3 points (perfect!) but you also need the one about PE not owning the car park, having no standing to pursue charges - and forcing them to produce their landowner contract. You'll find it in every example in this link.

How to win at POPLA: (from the NEWBIES sticky thread)

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/62180281#Comment_62180281

HTH

superbuilder

Thanks coupon-mad...I have added that bit now and shall upload my new submission now. I'm the sort of chap that gets the bit between my teeth very easily and I am outraged by how they prey upon their "customers". If POPLA uphold the appeal or if I have to go to court for victory, I am planning to counter sue for stress and aggrievation. It would be great if some kind of class action could be actioned from members here who have had successful appeals/court wins...

Coupon-mad

superbuilder wrote: »

Thanks coupon-mad...I have added that bit now and shall upload my new submission now. I'm the sort of chap that gets the bit between my teeth very easily and I am outraged by how they prey upon their "customers". If POPLA uphold the appeal or if I have to go to court for victory, I am planning to counter sue for stress and aggrievation. It would be great if some kind of class action could be actioned from members here who have had successful appeals/court wins...

You can't do a class action in this country but there's no reason why you couldn't send a Letter before County Court Claim (Google it!) to Welcome break and PE, as jointly and severally liable for your costs, and damages for distress. If it were me I would be sending that now, as soon as you have submitted this extra evidence (give POPLA a few days then email or phone them to check they have 'added it to your case file' as they have done in the past which has saved lots of 'ranting, emotive appellants' from a loss!).

There is a poster currently suing PE after winning at POPLA - the important thing being to send them a LBCCC nice and early and to include their client in the claim. Get some comms exchanged while you await the POPLA verdict in March, then if you still feel fired up, bung in an MCOL claim for a couple of hundred in damages/costs, once you have won at POPLA. It only costs a small fee which you can add to the claim. But you'd need to word it strongly because MSAs only 'have' to offer a two hour break, so you would have to be convincing about other issues (signage, contract, etc.).

You may want to join pepipoo.com forum and send Biker Paul a message as he's the one suing PE. Could find out what he did. Read his thread first which can be Googled, includes the words 'Parking Lye' in the thread title so that thread is easy to search for on pepipoo.

If the TV are interested in the outcome, DO tell the whole world (well England & Wales) how to beat PE at POPLA with the 'magic words'!!!

Guys_Dad

For what it was worth, last autumn I wrote to Norman Baker's department re ticketing people who needed to rest and taking more than a couple of hours, drawing a parallel with the continent where rest areas are freely provided and drivers encouraged to use them.

The reply I got supported the status quo, saying that a charge for staying more than 2 hours was perfectly valid.

I am so surprised that ROSPA, the AA, RAC and other major organisations have not made much more of this than they appear to have done.

Given that governments of all colours have given a carte blanche to PPCs to enrich themselves at the expense of inevitable road casualties, your anger needs to be more widespread than just the PPCs.

Personally, I was appalled at the reply I received.