Sensible questioning or costly barrack-room lawyering: which?

Cark

Point taken, Nosferatu. I have been attempting to provide detail, rather than needing to answer follow up questions due to lack of same. .As using the keyboard these days is tiring, I, like you, would prefer stuff to be short.

beamerguy

I don't believe that M&S notice that they have nothing to do with the car park. ECP appears in many M&S food halls.  I wonder what M&S would do if at the 11th hour, 80 mins shopping, that people just left their trolleys full of frozen goods and just walked out ???   A point as a reality check with the CEO

If they are the sole occupier in this corner plot then the CEO will have contact with the landowner.
Both landlords and retailers are in a very vunerable position nowadays and loyal customers are needed by M&S right now because M&S are struggling

Marks & Spencer Group Plc
Mr Steve Rowe	Chief Executive
Email	steve.rowe@marks-and-spencer.com

Coupon-mad

M&S have often cancelled these, you just have to speak to the Manager.  Mention that you are a protected person under the Equality Act 2010 (due to your stroke and slow recovery/ongoing symptoms) and this is discrimination and harassment and you KNOW that either M&S or the retail park site agents CAN cancel this.

Fruitcake

You are doing all the right things. It seems like you have a good egg at the planning department so fair play to him/her.
 
The cynic in me says the fact that the planning department can't find a request or approval to change the parking time at this site, but can at the other supermarket, makes me believe none was ever made and the scammers have unilaterally reduced it without permission. Perhaps they did it knowing that it would be rejected if they did apply for a change so just changed it anyway.
If it were me I would take that stance and say, in your opinion the scammers have changed the times in breach of the original planning order, and put them to proof of the contrary. This is an attempt to obtain monies by deception.

Complaints to the CEO should include the above, and additional complaints should be made to the BPA and DVLA, plus of course the planning department and your MP.

D_P_Dance

I rather like his/her style Nos, it is a tad verbose I agree, but it contains everything you need to know.  Not like some of the plebs we have toi deal with here.  Am I allowed to say pleb?  I am not an MP?

Cark

At risk of repetition. . . many thanks again to everyone. There's been help, advice and encouragement in abundance here, and it hasn't gone unappreciated. Some quick thoughts in response to individual posts:

@beamerguy: thanks for the additional confirmation of Mr Rowe's official status and corporate email address. I'd intended to email on Friday but couldn't put the words together. Typing is difficult anyway. Like many a stroke victim, my 'keyboard memory' has been impaired -- the knack one's fingertips appear to have in finding the correct keyboard letter without you consciously doing so yourself. Writing and rewriting takes a lonnnnng time and emails, forever, because I cannot grasp the complexities of the spellchecker's  change/ignore options. I've instead spent the weekend doing nothing other than yielding to the post-stroke fatigue, as my wife insists I stop trying to fight it. Hope that explains why I've left off emailing Mr Rowe until tomorow morning. I haven't given up and handed over money to the knuckle-draggers.

@ Coupon-mad. Good point. If only it could have happened that way. But when my wife and I revisited the store to find out what rules, laws, regulations etc we had actually broken, the store's management was unavailable. The large sign it had stuck up outside, distancing itself from its paying customers, made that plain. We were not too surprised; M&S is fast approaching the end of its own shelf life, and higher management (like Mr Rowe) must have been thrilled to have Euro Car Parks helping them turn every car park into a profit centre.  It'd just be a bit too embarrassing for them to have to admit that.) I know nowt about The Equality Act, so thanks for raising it. However, I couldn't plead a special case, because I don't feel special. Angry, yes. But not special. II got off lightly with my stroke: am still mobile, still fairly rational, and still here.

fruitcake. Thank you for the encouraging words. And yes, the planning people have been outstanding. One of them spent most of Friday going through the site's history from the very first planning application for the very first store at that location -- a Co-operative Society branch, and then through all subsequent planning applications and consents in regard to Marks & Spencer. She found no restrictive covenant on the duration of free parking which M&S must, at a minimum, provide. Nor was there ever a stipulation that if M&S wished to alter the parking duration, it must seek Planning approval first. So  . . . if M&S wanted to cut free parking from 2 hours to  1 hour 30 minutes, it could go ahead and do so.

@ D_P_Dance: Thanks for making me laugh. I appreciate both your post and the fact that your first name definitely isn't Andrew.

Coupon-mad

must have been thrilled to have Euro Car Parks helping them turn every car park into a profit centre.  

No, the parking firm get the monies.  There is no profit for the retailers at all.  They are just deluded.

I know nowt about The Equality Act, so thanks for raising it. However, I couldn't plead a special case, because I don't feel special. Angry, yes. But not special. II got off lightly with my stroke: am still mobile, still fairly rational, and still here.

I am not wishing to call you a special case but you ARE someone who meets the definition of disability under the EA and always will, until such time as the symptoms disappear.  You have referred to 'post-stroke fatigue' and finding it hard to grasp complexities sometimes so it is hardly surprising that you understood there was 2 hours free, especially if there used to be.  

Also you might sometimes take longer to shop and make 'purchasing decisions' than able-bodied people who are not recovering from a stroke (if I may say so as a possibility) so you needed more time.  Legally, it was your right.

Are you saying it was actually a pay & display car park?

Or that the free stay time was less than you thought?

People like you with 'protected characteristics' MUST be allowed a reasonable adjustment of time.  Therefore, if (say) the free stay time is now 1.5 hours, then a 'reasonable adjustment' for visitors like yourself is to double it, to 3 hours:

https://www.wake-smith.co.uk/news/council-car-park-case-settled-a-victory-for-blue-badge-holders/

NB:  That article is good case law but it talks about Blue Badge holders (only) as it's about Council PCNs where that is the only indicator of need recognised.   With contract law, it is different and has nothing to do with whether a person has a Blue Badge or not, as to whether they qualify for a reasonable adjustment on private land.

You do qualify for reasonable adjustments, I promise you.  It's NOT just for people with mobility impairments.

Cite the Equality Act and ask M&S Head Office to make a reasonable adjustment, cancel this PCN and put your VRM on the staff/visitor/disabled shoppers 'white list' so you never get another unfair PCN there.

 

beamerguy

Whist I agree with coupon-mad above, I disagree that these supermarkets take no profit from the scam
It will not be the CEO who takes on the scammers, he will have a member of staff in control and with the competition with parking companies to "grab a site", incentives are on the agenda.
Who that person is will be up to the CEO to discover ?

D_P_Dance

I suspect that seasoned negotiators like Tesco and Asda do not come out of this out of pocket.

Cark

Coupon-mad said:

must have been thrilled to have Euro Car Parks helping them turn every car park into a profit centre.  

No, the parking firm get the monies.  There is no profit for the retailers at all.  They are just deluded.

Thank you again, Coupon-mad, for you rencouragement. I'm grateful to you for a much greater understanding of UK legislation (the Equality Act) than I have, and all your kind thoughts.

Though not an expert on the way these things work, I do not, however, believe that supermarket chains of the likes of Marks & Spencer Food Halls, Tesco and Asda etc are of a mind to freely allow third parties to come along and exploit the locations they occupy by taking over the control of the store car parks.

I rather suspect that what has happened where I'm concerned is that a financially troubled Marks & Spencer, once a household name of shining repute, has brought into its management (financial and otherwise) individuals of a mind-set that the founders of the company would've found abhorrent: "profits before people: c'mon, let's screw the customers" (a bit like the banks did when profit chasing was at its height a few years back).

It's my belief, from reading up on news stories found online from various parts of the UK, that Marks & Spencer decided at some stage last year that a too-good-to-refuse-offer had been made to it by a London-based private limited company Euro Car Parks, viz:

hey, you have lots of car parks representing lots of potential revenue streams which you aren't maximizing, this at a time when you need as much money coming in as you can get. The Board, the shareholders want that.  So. . .  we'll pay you, M&S, the equivalent of many £100s per week (clear profit to you)  so as to monetize your customers, and all you need to is quietly conspire with us in looking out for the frail and the fallible so as to financially exploit them to the fullest. It's a gamble for us -- that the money we make from your customers won't be as much as the money we're paying you --  but hey: it's no gamble for you.

Just take the money and run, Marks & Spencer. If the frail and the fallible amongst your customers don't like what we're doing to them with our threats and debt collectors, you can always claim that none of it has anything to do with you.

I felt like saying the above in my earlier email today to CEO Steve Rowe, buthadn't the energy to find the words and fit them together together, still less type 'em all out. Besides. I may be old but I'm not stupid enough to be overtly adversarial towards Mr Roweat this stage.