The legal bottom line for private parking fines

Thebarroomlawyer

I've been doing some work around parking charge notices and needed to research the general public perception. There's lots of helpful advice about these matters but there seems to be a distinct absence of talk about the legal position, so I thought I'd add to that. I don't claim to be any kind of expert in this area of law, but I can say say unequivocally that as far as the law is concerned, any PCN that you receive is basically an indication of a disagreement between two people. If your ticket is from a private company, you have not broken any laws at all! They say you owe them money and you say you don't.

Essentially, there is no debt - it does not exist in law until the Courts have made that determination. If a private parking company wishes to take the matter to Court, their only options are to pursue a claim against you for trespass to land or for breach of contract. And this is the important thing here - the only damages available in contract law or in trespass are compensatory and not punitive. In simple language, that's to say that they can only claim damages up to the amount that your trespass or your breach of contract cost them.

So, for example, if you stay in your parking space for an extra half hour and that means the company have been deprived of the £2 that they could have earned from another vehicle, that is the sum that they can claim for. Similarly, they can only claim in trespass for their losses (or sometimes they can claim that they are owed any amount of money you have gained through trespassing on their property).

If they were to use contract law, they would probably argue that it was a term of the contract that if you outstayed your ticket, the charge would rise to £40/£50/£60/£whatever; but if they were ever foolish enough to proceed to Court, they would have to provide evidence that your breach of contract actually cost them that sum, and not just the £2 they could have charged somebody else. A contract term will be invalid unless it was a genuine pre-estimate of the loss your breach would cause them.

The other important thing to remember is that you are protected by s.40 of the Administration of Justice Act (1970) which makes it unlawful for anybody to harrass you about an alleged debt. This means, for example, that if they make inaccurate claims that they have official authorisation to enforce payment, or if the frequency or tone of their letters causes is calculated to cause alarm, distress or humiliation, they will be in breach of that Act, and you can report this to the police (who will need to decide whether it is in the public interest to prosecute). The more intimidating their letters are, the more often they send them, the more likely they are to be in breach!

So my advice would always be to reply once and tell them that you disagree that a charge is due. Advise them that the issue is a matter for the civil court system, and that you would be pleased to see them in Court. Tell them that further letters will be filed and used to prove that they have breached the Administration of Justice Act. And then put the PCN to the back of your mind! They might back off immediately, or it might take them some time - but either way, they're almost certainly never going to issue Court proceedings because it would never be worth it for them - and also because they know they're scamming, they know they haven't got a leg to stand on. These companies are get their rocks off on scaring decent people - don't be afraid and they don't win

trisontana

You have got off to a bad start by calling it a "fine".

kirkbyinfurnesslad_2

Your advice is very poor and should not be followed in the slightest

Stroma

But these companies issued more than 12000 times last year, and once the MOJ sorts out their figures that will be higher this year. Think you should look at this in more depth as you are wrong on many of your assumptions.

Annie1960

By far the simplest thing to do is appeal to PCN, fail, get a POPLA code and win (using arguments in the Newbies thread). Problem solved!

Thebarroomlawyer

trisontana wrote: »

You have got off to a bad start by calling it a "fine".

Yes, you're right - the word 'fine' should have been in inverted commas. Thanks

As for my advice, yes, it's just that - my advice, my opinion, and there's no need to be offensive! I completely acknowledge that it might not suit everybody.

As for the statistics, I don't doubt the statistics for how many times these companies issued proceedings, but I would imagine that even the figure quoted is a tiny percentage of the number of PCNs issues. And I would also imagine that when proceedings are issued, they get away with it quite possibly because they know that the average Joe will not contest them because the average Joe doesn't know the basics of contract law or of trespass.

I know that people get very stressed and feel persecuted by these 'fines' so I was simply trying to make the point that no laws have been broken, and that there is a limit to the damages that can be claimed against them. That's all. I apologise to anybody who might have felt offended by my post or who might have other views - we're all entitled to an opinion

Stroma

You must know that the small claims is an utter lottery, most cases going there are probably won because the defendants are out of their depth, I know that we try and help in about 5-10 cases a day that's on the courtserve list. And those are just Parking Eye cases, others also try court.

And those are probably understated as only about 60%-70% of courts are on the list. We know the stats of this, parking eye 750k RK details from the dvla and about 8k claims last year, yes it's minute in proportion, but we help a lot of those people on here and on pepipoo.com

I suggest you look on the parking prankster website

Thebarroomlawyer

Stroma wrote: »

I suggest you look on the parking prankster website

Thanks - just checked it out and found this - essentially it's what I said.

'...it is worth writing to the parking company explaining that the debt is denied and that you will not be paying unless there is a court ruling against you.'

bod1467

Ah right. You cherry-picked ONE item that tenuously supports your OP.

Stroma

Thebarroomlawyer wrote: »

Thanks - just checked it out and found this - essentially it's what I said.

'...it is worth writing to the parking company explaining that the debt is denied and that you will not be paying unless there is a court ruling against you.'

But the whole advice on here is that parking companies cannot force payment unless they win at the small claims. But we try and avoid that by the ADR that is place called Popla, where they accept all appeals on genuine pre-estimate of loss and other arguments where the ticketers try and go for a contractual charge.

Thebarroomlawyer

Haha! No, I'm not cherry picking, but you made me smile

It doesn't tenuously support it, it actively agrees with my point of view. Like I said, it's my opinion, that's all. There are many ways of dealing with these situations, and my approach is just one of them.

I was only trying to offer an alternaitve perspective but it seems I've stirred you and others up. Sorry! I'm going now... (and I'm sure you'll be relieved. That'll teach me to have an opinion, won't it??!)

:kisses3: