APCOA running NHS car parks- should I complain or ignore parking charge notice?

mluk1234

I took my disabled dad for a long procedure last week at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow (Greater London). I parked at what I thought was a disabled parking space, displayed the blue badge properly as required. When my dad finished his procedure and we got back to the car around 4 hours later (still within time limit imposed), to my horror I saw a parking chargeicon notice stuck on the windscreen wiper. I was astonished and dad was very upset. The guy parked next to me told me he was here yesterday and saw another car given a parking chargeicon notice- apparently he said where I parked was meant to be the exit!

I have uploaded an image on Youtube to show where I parked that day. Since I am relatively new to this website I am not allowed to post a link but if you go to Youtube and type in ''NHS hospital car park run by APCOA'' you will see the image I took.

It shows the space has a ''disabled'' sign on it and I didn't see anything else obvious to me that it was the exit. Coincidentally when I was waiting for my dad in the hospital that day I read an article from Daily mail newspaper. It can be seen online if you search for ''Daily mail, Parking cowboys hit cancer victims: Now scandal of 'disgraceful' fines spreads to NHS hospitals''.

If APCOA really want patients to know it was an exit, surely they could have cleaned up the disabled sign and repaint clearly something like ''Exit only, no parking'' on the ground?

My key question is : Should I complain to the NHS or should I just ignoreicon it?

Thanks a bunch for your thoughts.

DUTR

This is your link , the car park is more than likely not run by the NHS, they look after healthy stuff, car parks are franchised out for others to manage.

That said, it doesn't look like a parking space when compared to the one next to it.

bod1467

That is a VERY confusing sign ... it has a disabled person sign (wheelchair) AND a direction arrow on it!

OP - I have PM'd a board guide to move this to the parking sub-forum. I see you already have a thread there. In the meantime, check out the NEWBIES guide referenced in my signature.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

DUTR wrote: »

This is your link , the car park is more than likely not run by the NHS, they look after healthy stuff, car parks are franchised out for others to manage.

That said, it doesn't look like a parking space when compared to the one next to it.

It is because the paint has not properly been maintained, there is both a parking sign (disabled) and the exit marks, they've clearly redesigned the layout at some point.

Should be easy enough to defend on the basis that the signs are not clear, post in the parking tickets forum for the skinny on how to go about this.

mluk1234

This is your link, the car park is more than likely not run by the NHS, they look after healthy stuff, car parks are franchised out for others to manage.

That said, it doesn't look like a parking space when compared to the one next to it.[/QUOTE]

I heard these people are cowboys thus I am hoping the Chief executive of the trust could do something about this. In my mind I question if APCOA is employed by the hospital, shouldn't they have a duty of care to maintain the signage to be clear? In addition, if they want to be clear about this, isn't it extremely easy to just make sure they remove the disabled sign and repaint clearly something like ''Exit only, no parking'' on the ground so everyone can see it?

Crabman

I've moved this thread over to the Parking Tickets board

Coupon-mad

mluk1234 wrote: »

This is your link, the car park is more than likely not run by the NHS, they look after healthy stuff, car parks are franchised out for others to manage.

That said, it doesn't look like a parking space when compared to the one next to it.
I heard these people are cowboys thus I am hoping the Chief executive of the trust could do something about this. In my mind I question if APCOA is employed by the hospital, shouldn't they have a duty of care to maintain the signage to be clear? In addition, if they want to be clear about this, isn't it extremely easy to just make sure they remove the disabled sign and repaint clearly something like ''Exit only, no parking'' on the ground so everyone can see it?

My key question is : Should I complain to the NHS or should I just ignore it?

Neither - we don't tell people to ignore these. Why not simply do as other NEWBIES do and win at POPLA appeal? Successes such as reported by all these people:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4911394

This whole thing is hardly difficult to beat, seeing as the template first appeal is pre-written in the Newbies sticky thread (2nd from top of this forum). And the second appeal is also shown in post #3 of the same Newbies sticky thread, in a link called 'How to win at POPLA'. It's why such threads are at the top, one click away with a quick 'forum jump' either by using the 'go' button bottom right of this page, or by clicking the trail link at the top of this page, where my signature tells you to click.

mluk1234

Thank you everyone. I will check on the other posts for guidance to write to appeal. Reason I was a bit sceptical about POPLA was that I had called them already and the guy was extremely unhelpful- he said even if I took pictures of the parking with a disable sign it doesn't mean I could win my case and that he couldn't give me an indication of how likely I can win it.

Redx

they cannot give out information like that over the phone, its not an advisory service like the CAB, plus they never accept any BB issues despite the EA 2010 applying

just do as CM says and appeal it in the normal manner using the NEWBIES sticky thread for guidance, plus forum help from other members here

if done correctly you will beat this and cost the PPC money for the popla appeal