Parking stories in the News/media

Jenni_D

And I bet they won't get Carmageddon.

Coupon-mad

Clive Betts, Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, is at it again.

He's the Chair of the - embarrassingly weak, IMHO - Committee that sat there in 2021 (almost to a man/woman) collectively grinning, nodding and plainly swallowing everything that the BPA, IPC, ParkingEye and Debt Recovery Plus (ex-clamper Stewart Clure) said, treating them as if they were authorities or some sort of expert 'enforcement' group.

The Committee had no idea that most people who get private PCNs at so-called 'private' car parks (e.g. residential ones, where the Committee were calling for even higher charges) are the residents, staff or other authorised users who have been set up to fail by complicated permit schemes that act against their interests.

They believed and repeated that "Philip Boynes, Chief Executive of Parkingeye, told the committee that as it currently stands the proposed framework “will remove 62% of the most professional operators” from the sector, potentially leaving landowners in the hands of less scrupulous operators."

Really?  The most professional ones will go will they?  Balderdash.  More likely the dodgier ones, and after all, in recent years the numbers of PPCs getting DVLA data has increased by c50% -  so there are a lot of bandwagon-jumpers that no-one will miss. The rest that fall by the wayside will hopefully include some of the worst (and the word 'professional' isn't a word we'd attribute to any PPC right now).

The Committee also accepted utter twaddle leading them right up the garden path into believing that litigation ("use of CCJs" the clueless Committee called it) is a last resort.  Jeez...pull the other one, it's got bells on.  CCJs are what they want, and the litigation race is what the +£70 funds.

'BULK LITIGATION' is the stated aim of DCB Legal but did any of the Committee grasp that CCJs are the preferred destination of many of the moneymen? No...

They also lapped up every damn word that was spouted about 'debt resolution' (= imaginary codswallop) and that PPCs are there to 'protect' residents, when we know that isn't what actually happens in practice.  That 'evidence' session in late 2021 was excruciating to watch - no-one grilled the industry AT ALL and they looked so out of their depth that they were asking the industry for the answers and took them as gospel.

And he echoed the PPCs' bleating that 'people don't pay us so we have no choice but to sue' and actually put that - PPCs should be supported by the Code and people are 'educated' to pay up - in his 2021 letter to the then Levelling-Up Minister Neil O’Brien.

Almost all the "issues" in that letter just credulously repeated stuff that the industry had told them, without anyone questioning any of it, except for one comment from RACF's Steve Gooding, who pointed out that +£70 was a hugely disproportionate add-on for an aggressive reminder letter or two, after a 29 pence soft trace.

Anyway here's the latest from that Committee, where they are still pushing to support the industry's OWN 'concerns':
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/17/levelling-up-housing-and-communities-committee/news/194517/car-parking-charges-and-use-of-parking-apps-levelling-up-committee-writes-to-government-ministers/

"Clive Betts, has written to Transport and Levelling-Up Ministers on a series of car parking issues, including the Government’s Private Parking Code of Practice, the National Parking Platform, and concerns that some motorists are being digitally excluded from the phasing out of pay-as-you-go parking meters."

29/3/2023

• Letter to Transport and Levelling-Up Ministers

Good on him for recognising that people are being digitally excluded.

Sadly, it's about the only thing he appears to have recognised about what is happening to consumers at the hands of parking operators and the likes of Debt Recovery Plus.

Hopefully the DLUHC is taking a much more informed and wider view than that Committee.

B789

Makes you wonder if any investigative journalists would be interested in looking into how "influenced" Mr Betts is by the PPC lobbyists. Wouldn't be the first time he's been "investigated" by national newspapers:

In 2003, Betts was suspended from the House of Commons for seven days for irregularities involving the employment and visa of Jose Gasparo, a Brazilian student with previous experience as a male escort. The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on 10 July 2010 that Betts' partner and parliamentary assistant, James Thomas, had tried to edit this fact from Betts' English Wikipedia page in an attempt to cover it up.

Betts was found guilty of breaching the MPs' code of conduct, with the Standards and Privileges Committee stating that he had acted "extremely foolishly" and had risked damaging public confidence in the integrity of Parliament. Particular concerns involved his failure to disclose Gasparo's background to parliamentary authorities and the fact that Betts had knowingly photocopied an altered document on Gasparo's behalf.
 Betts gave an "unreserved apology" in a personal statement to MPs when the report was published.

In 2003, Betts was subject to criticism for his accommodation expenses after he had previously campaigned for an increase in MPs' entitlements on the ground of "hardship". It was reported by The Times that Betts had "flipped" his designated second home to Yorkshire before buying a "country estate" there, before "flipping it" back to London and taking out a larger mortgage on his flat there. Betts denied wrongdoing, arguing the Yorkshire property had been "two dilapidated listed buildings" and that when he became a whip he had to declare his main residence as his London flat.

In 2004, he was criticised by the British Medical Association for going to Portugal with 15 fellow MPs on an all-expenses trip paid for by the fast food chain McDonald's. Betts responded that if MPs had a "puritanical" attitude about food then people would ignore what they said. He faced further criticism in 2010 after it was reported that he was one of eight MPs who were renting out a "second home" in London while claiming for the cost of renting a '"third home" in the city at taxpayers' expense. Although legal, critics argued the "loophole" was allowing MPs to increase their income after the rules on parliamentary expenses were tightened.

Betts employs his partner as his Senior Parliamentary Assistant on a salary up to £45,000. He was listed in articles in The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian which criticised the practice of MPs employing family members, on the lines that it promotes nepotism. Although MPs who were first elected in 2017 have been banned from employing family members, the restriction is not retrospective – meaning that Betts' employment of his partner is lawful.

Coupon-mad

It would not surprise me at all if the BPA and/or IPC have been lobbying Clive Betts whinging that they want 'much needed clarity' and insinuating that the delay in the Code is all the Government's fault.

He does look to be a weak link.

BTW no news yet about a date for the Public Consultation.  It is coming.  The Govt are committed to it, but the BPA's published expectation of March has proved a bit premature.

Coupon-mad

Looks like there's a new PPC lobbying wing (is it connected to the IPC?) called “Keep Parking Fair” 

https://twitter.com/KeepParkingFair which is as laughable as it sounds.

Among other things, such as re-tweeting ludicrously implausible photos such as that one of a white Bentley parked across 2 disabled bays (mocked up by someone with a Bentley in the parking industry, one wonders?) they are trotting out the misleading 99.7% statistic.

They are chatting rubbish that "99.7% of motorists are compliant" and the implication is that everyone who gets a PCN is asking for it and should be clobbered with a higher penalty than ever.  Especially the people who they call 'repeat offenders' who are actually repeat victims.

Of course, the truth is that statistic is actually based on one firm's data about PCNs per PARKING EVENT, and does NOT (except in PPC cloud cuckoo land) mean that 0.3% of the driving population are some sort of rogue group, running up 12 million PCNs per annum.

This lobby group has also written to Council Leaders and 300 Councillors, and is now writing to MPs with a 'briefing' asking MPs to support them that parking changes should remain at £100/£60 and that the current regime is no longer 'broken' (according to this lot):

"We've begun writing to MPs asking them to support our campaign to keep PCNs at the £100/£60 level, and to maintain the current debt recovery system, explaining why this is vital to protect private businesses, public services, and motorists. "

They are spouting rubbish about High Streets becoming the 'Wild West' without PPCs to protect them!  I mean even that phrase is a joke from an industry often referred to as cowboys...

But this isn't a laughing matter.

The danger here is that it is already hitting home with more credulous people and that will include some less well-informed MPs.  I suspect this laughable 'carmageddon' alarmist crap is what has possibly got at Mr Betts because everything in his letter matches these tweets.

Their propaganda has also already been printed as if it is true, here:

https://parliamentnews.co.uk/car-park-owners-accuse-government-of-siding-with-irresponsible-drivers-by-staff-reporter

Someone has been busy.

patient_dream

Coupon-mad said:

Looks like there's a new PPC lobbying wing (is it connected to the IPC?) called “Keep Parking Fair” 

https://twitter.com/KeepParkingFair which is as laughable as it sounds.

Among other things, such as re-tweeting ludicrously implausible photos such as that one of a white Bentley parked across 2 disabled bays (mocked up by someone with a Bentley in the parking industry, one wonders?) they are trotting out the misleading 99.7% statistic.

They are chatting rubbish that "99.7% of motorists are compliant" and the implication is that everyone who gets a PCN is asking for it and should be clobbered with a higher penalty than ever.  Especially the people who they call 'repeat offenders' who are actually repeat victims.

Of course, the truth is that statistic is actually based on one firm's data about PCNs per PARKING EVENT, and does NOT (except in PPC cloud cuckoo land) mean that 0.3% of the driving population are some sort of rogue group, running up 12 million PCNs per annum.

This lobby group has also written to Council Leaders and 300 Councillors, and is now writing to MPs with a 'briefing' asking MPs to support them that parking changes should remain at £100/£60 and that the current regime is no longer 'broken' (according to this lot):

"We've begun writing to MPs asking them to support our campaign to keep PCNs at the £100/£60 level, and to maintain the current debt recovery system, explaining why this is vital to protect private businesses, public services, and motorists. "

They are spouting rubbish about High Streets becoming the 'Wild West' without PPCs to protect them!  I mean even that phrase is a joke from an industry often referred to as cowboys...

But this isn't a laughing matter.

The danger here is that it is already hitting home with more credulous people and that will include some less well-informed MPs.  I suspect this laughable 'carmageddon' alarmist crap is what has possibly got at Mr Betts because everything in his letter matches these tweets.

Their propaganda has also already been printed as if it is true, here:

https://parliamentnews.co.uk/car-park-owners-accuse-government-of-siding-with-irresponsible-drivers-by-staff-reporter

Someone has been busy.

I'm all for fair parking but not SCAM parking.

AND THIS ......
"We've begun writing to MPs asking them to support our campaign to keep PCNs at the £100/£60 level, and to maintain the current debt recovery system, explaining why this is vital to protect private businesses, public services, and motorists. "

This is surely from the toilet paper library of the BPA

They are a bit late writing to MP's, I doubt there is one MP who has not heard of the great parking scam already, especially the OSNER SCAM approved by the BPA

Umkomaas

Short spot on this morning's BBC Morning Live with Matt Allwright covering, inter alia, car tax, council parking and private parking tickets. Pretty anaemic stuff, but started to cheer those challenging private parking charges as 'Weekend Warriors'.  Not particularly helpful in my view as too alike the pejorative term 'Keyboard Warriors'.

B789

patient_dream said:
...I doubt there is one MP who has not heard of the great parking scam already, especially the OSNER SCAM approved by the BPA

Do not put so much faith in MPs of any flavour. Far too many of them are not as "honourable" as we led to believe. Also, far too many of them, just like Betts, are easily swayed by powerful lobbying groups. Yes, they may have heard about some cowboy operators but you assume that it has lodged in their perception to the same extent that it is in ours.

What is interesting is the "99.7% compliant" quote from the PPCs. Let's just look at some numbers and compare to what we see here on this forum.

We have read that there are around 22,000 to 30,000 parking charges (let's just call them PCNs for now) made every day. Let's just stick with the lower figure for now... That means that they are claiming that there are over 2.2m parking events on private land managed by them every day.

We see on average around, maybe 10-15 new requests per day for assistance on this forum. That is less than 0.06% of those PCNs come here for advice. How many of those PCNs are successfully challenged at appeal? I've seen numbers of circa 25% at POPLA and around 4% at IAS. How many are successful at the initial appeal?

Assuming that around 10% (probably a generous figure) are successful at initial appeal, with another 25% at secondary appeal, that still leaves over 14,000 a day that lose their appeals. Assuming that 75% of those end up paying the full PCN (no discount due to having the audacity to go for a second appeal), that would mean an income for the PPCs of over £1,000,000 a day! The other 25% of them paying a discounted sum of around £60 adds another £210,000 a day. So, by using conservative numbers, that's the PPCs raking in over £441,000,000 a year.

How many victims do we successfully assist in winning their Claims, disregarding those that win their initial or secondary appeals? Of the 10-15 new requests we see here daily, I'm assuming around 75% of them are beyond the appeal stage. So, that means that around 4,500 victims/year that we see here and we know that over 99% of those are successful in either winning or getting a discontinuance, that means that we successfully deprive the scammers of less than £0.5m a year (of their original £100 PCN). That's just over a 0.1% hit that they take.

Please feel free to point out any gross errors with my assumptions. I am being extremely conservative with my numbers because it has already been stated elsewhere in the media that the PPCs are already a "billion pound a year industry".

This forum is a thorn in their side but probably looked on as a small cost to doing business their way. Relying on a majority of MPs being able or even wanting to do much about it, is probably just wishful thinking. Thanks to @Coupon-mad for the sterling work she puts in on the Steering Group for the upcoming PPCoP but with the likes of Betts and many of his cohorts easily influenced by the massive funding of the PPC lobby, it is in danger of being watered down.

It would seem that I have woken up today feeling that my glass is only half full. 

Coupon-mad

I share your concern.  Lobbying can be powerful and there are plenty of credulous MPs.

FrankCannon

...... with wide and deep pockets, like Hancock, Kwarteng and Brady ?