Should I just pay the £85 ParkingEye fine?

triin27

I have spent several hours reading this forum and now realise how stupidly I have acted in regard to a £85 parking fine I received on 14 Aug from ParkingEye. I did a quick online search at the time and came across advise to ignore the letters which obviously must have been couple of years old.

I have now received a "letter before county court claim" dated 5 Oct. The parking was entirely my fault, I stayed in a shopping centre car park for 10 hours which I though was free but is actually limited to 4 hours. There are numerous signs around the car park but because across the road there is another free car park without any limitations it didn't even occur to me to read any of them.

I understand that I could wait for the court date but to be honest I really have no case to put forward. My case in highly similar to ParkingEye v Beavis, I overstayed for a long period and didn't do any shopping on the day. I really see no way the ruling could be in my favour. Would it make sense in my case to just pay the fine rather than deal with the hassle of going to court with little prospect of winning? I am quite stretched at the moment financially so I would need to pay the fine in installments but would the best way to go about this by filling in the "reply form" that came along with the LBCCC? Or should I approach ParkingEye in some other way?

Fruitcake

Do Parking Lie know the identity of The Driver? If not, you might want to change your original post to only tell what The Driver did. The Driver and The Keeper are two different people.

A lot will depend on what date The Keeper received the NTK, and whether the signs meet the requirements of the BPA CoP.
If The Driver thought they were in a different, or free car park, then perhaps the signage was inadequate and may not therefore have been entirely the fault of The Driver.

twhitehousescat

£8.50 an hour for parking , hell in central london I would take there offer up every day of the week!