ParkingEye v Beavis at the Supreme Court: What’s Happening This Week

Marktheshark

Parking Eye presenting themselves as some charitable knight knight in shining armour that is protecting share values of retailers out of shear good will and suffering theses losses as a burden.
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Oh the Irony.

marleyboy

mo786uk

ManxRed wrote: »

I'll say it again then, the landowners should be the ones funding the parking controls, not the genuine customers/mistaken recipients of tickets.

In your opinion of course.

How many tickets are for willful overstayers and how many are for mistakes? It doesnt matter anyway because it will have nothing to do with the ultimate argument. A similar theory was put forward in the bank charges case when it was argued people who accidentally incurred overdraft charges shouldnt have to fund other customers' free bank accounts.

I suspect the SC is highly unlikely to be too fussed about how PE make their money and whether they would prefer money was made with an alternative strategy - they are of course there to focus on the specific point about penalties.

bazster

mo786uk wrote: »

I dont see how you can argue it is not a space maximisation scheme when quite clearly PPC do deter people from parking too long.

You haven't a shred of evidence that there's any problem with space at this car park, and none has ever been presented in court. For all you know the landowner and PE trumped the whole thing up as a money-making wheeze.

Making money is all very well but not if you then try to justify it by claiming (without evidence) that it's really done to prevent carmageddon.

bazster

mo786uk wrote: »

Perhaps, but fundamentally many land owners and customers would argue that without PPCs it would be a lot harder to go down to certain shops - that is the case in my town centre anyway.

Most retailers at the Chelmsford site say that the "scheme" (which is ostensibly there to help them) is harming their business and they wish PE would bu99er off.

The only people who want it are PE and the landowner. The retailers and the customers don't.

Umkomaas

The Carmageddon Theory.

Parking Prankster has been doing a bit of investigation:

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/carmageddon.html

bazster

mo786uk wrote: »

I suspect the SC is highly unlikely to be too fussed about how PE make their money and whether they would prefer money was made with an alternative strategy - they are of course there to focus on the specific point about penalties.

That's what we thought about the Court of Appeal too, and it's precisely what they didn't focus on.

Ralph-y

Carmageddon?


ParkingEye's argument is that without them there to issue parking charges at much higher levels than council charges, chaos would ensure; motorists would be unable to park; the car park would be full of commuters; retailers would suffer. They therefore argue there is a social need for them to pay the landowner £1,000 a week so that they can issue parking charges.

They have never provided any evidence to back this up, so The Prankster decided to investigate the matter.

The ParkingEye v Beavis case concerns Riverside Retail car park, Chelmsford, a car park owned by British Airways Pension Fund, managed by Savilles, and sited in the centre of town close to a rail station. The car park allows parking for free for two hours. After that, the motorist must leave.

The Prankster found a similar car park, Avonsmeads Retail Park in Bristol (BS2 0UG). The car park is owned by British Airways Pension Fund, managed by Savilles, and sited in the centre of Bristol 500m from Bristol Temple Meads rail station. The car park allows unlimited parking with no restrictions whatsoever.

The Prankster decided to investigate to see if parking chaos was rife at this car park.

An initial perusal suggested otherwise. There were plenty of free spaces. Determined to get to the bottom of the matter The Prankster visited the the establishments on the retail site and asked questions of the store managers.

Costa Coffee stated they never had a parking problem. "There are plenty of spaces as you can see." They never had a customer complaint about parking.

The Cinema manager declined to comment, but perhaps looked pointedly at the huge amount of available parking.

The Hollywood bowl stated there were no problems even at weekends and busy times. They informed The Prankster that Savilles wanted to put cameras in with a 2-3 hour limit a while back. The retailers had all pushed back because it would have hurt their businesses. The bowling alley, cinema Costa Coffee, McDonald's and Greggs all opposed the cameras and so manage to get Savilles to change their mind.

Krispy Kreme said there was no problem. They might get a lorry driver sleeping at 11pm when the car park was otherwise empty but they were always gone in morning. They would oppose any time limit.

McDonald's had no parking problems. The park was busy at weekends but there were always plenty of spaces

Marks and Spencer said there was never a problem. There might be one or two non customers parking, "who knows", but they would be adamantly against a limit because it would hurt business

The only problem The Prankster identified that was there were "boy racer" meets every few months. Of course, that is not solved by cameras. The retailers use security to move them on.

So to summarise; a similar car park is in a similar position owned by the same people and managed by the same agents. Parking is free with no limit and no enforcement at all. Despite there being no space problems the landowner tried to enforce a camera regime of 2-3 hours, presumably so they could trouser £1,000 a week. This was robustly resisted by the retailers because it would have hurt their business. None of the retailers thought there was a problem which needed fixing, even though occasional users (eg sleeping lorry drivers) may not be customers. Even at the busiest times there are no problems. No retailers reported complaints from customers. Carmageddon has not ensued.

There is a specific problem with the occasional boy racer meeting, but this cannot be solved by ANPR. Instead it is solved by security moving them on.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster


my hero :T

Ralph:cool:

ColliesCarer

mo786uk wrote: »

.......I suspect the SC is highly unlikely to be too fussed about how PE make their money and whether they would prefer money was made with an alternative strategy - they are of course there to focus on the specific point about penalties.

I think you may be missing the point.

How PE make their money is fundamental to the question of whether or not the charge is a penalty.

If it was a tariff(i.e. consideration) and PE put up exit barriers and charged £85 to anyone staying for longer than two hours the case would not be being heard.
But in that scenario the car park would have to be registered for business rates and PE would have to pay VAT on the revenue from the tariffs

The_Slithy_Tove

bazster wrote: »

That's what we thought about the Court of Appeal too, and it's precisely what they didn't focus on.

However there was a lot of talk early on this morning about whether it was breach of contract/trespass, in which case damages and no VAT, and whether it was part of the contract to pay £85, even though the lower courts were going down the former route.

It was interesting how they brought up the case of VAT and business rates if the latter case. Mr Kirk didn't go into it when his turn came, largely because (I guess) their lordships had already asked the parties to provide written statements on their views around this.

It would be interesting if the outcome of all this forced PPCs to go down the contractural charge route. As well as the VAT and business rates issues, which will scare many of them, your average PPC's ability to write a sign which really does offer an unambiguous contract in a manner which can be deemed to be accepted (driving past a cluttered sign at 30mph does not do so) is fairly lacking. And then there's the Unfair Contract thing, which will, no doubt, be ruled on in due course.

Interesting times.