Car lease company paid private parking company's parking charge & sent me the invoice to pay them.

Exodi

I still think this should be moved to the Parking board, even if it's now about the lease company instead of a PPC.

There is a big difference in attitudes to these parking charges between forumites of the different boards.

Many don't realise how predatory these companies are, considering them like any other business, so probably thinking posters are being opportunistic in suggestions to avoid payment. In the OP's circumstances, it sounds like he's innocent in any case.

The same thing happens on the debt-free wannabe board, where posters are guided to wriggle out of debts on technicalities (e.g. related to CCA requests). In reality, similar to PPC's, debt purchasers are often predatory and will regularly and knowingly pursue unenforceable debts through questionable methods. Forumites do not take sympathy on such opportunism, so lose no sleep assisting people in wriggling out of debts.

But if you posted the same debt question onto the Savings & Investment board (for example), people might tell you to pay your debts.

Fruitcake

I don't see why a well run company cannot publish a list of standard charges.

I recently made use of a solicitor who did the conveyancing for a property purchase. They gave me a list of actions versus costs prior to me engaging them that included for example,

Mining and wells search
Chancel searches (Of which I had never heard before that moment)
Flood plan searches
Nearby planning and building regulation searches
Road works and road closure searches

Each search had a separate fixed charge against it. I see no reason why a reputable vehicle lease company would not already have a list of charges for the most common events that hirer/lessees are likely to encounter, including a fixed charge for passing hirer/lessee details to an unregulated private parking company. Whether that charge is reasonable is another matter, but at least a hirer would (should) know in advance. 
Anything outside the standard list should be explained if it is not already itemised.

There is however a data protection issue with that, so the contract should include a clause that in the event the lease company does receive a parking charge notice to keeper, by signing the lease agreement, the lessee agrees to their personal data being passed to the unregulated private parking company. Without that clause. they could leave themselves open to breaches of data protection law. This is something else the OP could bring up with the lease company.

With regards to the lease contract as it currently stands because it does not including specific wording about parking charge notices from unregulated private parking companies, it could be argued that Lord Denning's "red hand rule" from J Spurling Ltd v Bradshaw is also relevant where he stated, 

"I quite agree that the more unreasonable a clause is, the greater the notice which must be given of it. Some clauses which I have seen would need to be printed in red ink on the face of the document with a red hand pointing to it before the notice could be held to be sufficient."

It is not obvious from the contract term shown by the OP that it includes parking charge notices from unregulated private parking companies. If the lease company intended it to be so, then according to Lord Denning, it should have been highlighted so prominently that the OP could not have failed to notice it.

In any case, the Consumer Rights Act Section 71 gives the OP the right to presume the contract does not include parking charge notices from unregulated private parking companies.

I think the case of Thornton v Shoes Lane could also apply where their Lordships determined that "a clause cannot be incorporated after a contract has been concluded." In the OP's case, the contract was concluded when they signed the lease agreement, and terms including payment of parking charges from unregulated private parking companies cannot later be included.

Furthermore, for a contract to be valid, it must contain three elements; offer, consideration, and acceptance. The lease company's contract does not offer the lessee anything (of value), therefore there is nothing to consider, therefore there there can be no acceptance.


A notice to driver was never given, let alone one that meets the strict requirements of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act (PoFA) 2012, therefore the vehicle driver could never be held liable. It should not be presumed that the hirer (day to day keeper) was the driver. The appeal case of VCS v Edward applies.
The above Act does permit the parking company to hold the registered keeper liable in certain circumstances as long as they give the keeper a PoFA compliant Notice to Keeper (NTK). We don't know if they did, but let's presume it was the case.
The driver cannot be held liable as already determined, and the lease company does not know the driver's identity unless the driver tells them, or a lease company employee was present at the time of the alleged event who could identify the driver.

The keeper (lease company) can be held liable for the parking charge, as can the lessee, but the latter only applies if the keeper complies with the PoFA by providing the parking company with the lessee's name and address for service, and charging an admin fee if it was permitted by their contract with the lessee. Job done, liability transferred, the keeper cannot then be held liable.

The parking company would then send a Notice to Hirer to the lessee who would then have the right to deal with it, although motorists do not yet have access to an independent appeals service.

In the OP's case, the lease company did not transfer liability to the hirer, and the hirer was never given a NTH, therefore the lease company remained liable for the charge. It could be argued that they then admitted liability for the charge by conduct, because they paid it, having made no attempt to transfer liability despite it being a requirement of their trade association, the BVRLA to do so, and a requirement of the PoFA, a law that has been around for over thirteen years. Vehicle owners, drivers, and keepers should be aware of the law, especially those whose trade is dealing with vehicle rentals on a daily basis.

Reputable hire/lase companies routinely follow the law and pass hirer details to unregulated parking companies when they receive a NTK from an unregulated private parking company. Some charge a fee for doing so, some do not. In most cases where a fee has been charged, this is refunded to the hirer if they can prove that the parking charge has been cancelled either by appeal or by the landowner. This is how a reputable vehicle lease/hire company should be run, and is how the BVRLA expects such a company to be run.

There is much to ponder, let alone the question whether the parking charge was lawfully issued in the first place, but I think the OP has much on their side to recover the monies taken from them by their lease company.

MobileSaver

Jenni_D said:

Remember that the people actioning these requests are already employed, so their costs are already borne - the lease company isn't having to employ additional people just to cope with this task.

I'm sorry but that's just a spurious claim presented as fact. You have absolutely no idea of the basis on which someone having to respond to hirer's inactions is employed. An obvious example is a small company may have a part-time administrator who does so many hours a week and now has to do more hours to deal with all the speeding and parking driver requests.

Regardless of how they are employed, having to deal with a hirer's actions or inactions outside of the normal process of hiring a vehicle is an additional cost of certainly time and almost always money. Whether a company wants to make a reasonable profit from that is their own business choice and it's not for you or anyone else to be telling them that charging actual costs is financially beneficial.

MobileSaver

Okell said:

Or they could choose to treat it as an inevitable business overhead.  It's up to them how they treat it.

As someone who has hired vehicles on more occasions than I care to remember over the last 30 years and never once caused a third-party to have to contact the hire company on my behalf, I'm not surprisingly in favour of the current approach of only charging admin fees to those who caused the extra work. (Again noting that in the OP's case it appears they weren't at fault but the hire company weren't to know that.)

As you say, companies could choose to (or be forced to if new legislation banned admin fees) simply treat such things as a business overhead and so raise prices across the board but this then hurts us all in the wallet so would not be my preference. (You only need to look at landlords being banned from charging certain admin fees and seeing how much rents have increased since to see how badly that can work out.)

Jenni_D

MobileSaver said:

Jenni_D said:

Remember that the people actioning these requests are already employed, so their costs are already borne - the lease company isn't having to employ additional people just to cope with this task.

I'm sorry but that's just a spurious claim presented as fact. You have absolutely no idea of the basis on which someone having to respond to hirer's inactions is employed. An obvious example is a small company may have a part-time administrator who does so many hours a week and now has to do more hours to deal with all the speeding and parking driver requests.

Regardless of how they are employed, having to deal with a hirer's actions or inactions outside of the normal process of hiring a vehicle is an additional cost of certainly time and almost always money. Whether a company wants to make a reasonable profit from that is their own business choice and it's not for you or anyone else to be telling them that charging actual costs is financially beneficial.

I'm sorry but that's just a spurious response presented as making any sense ... this is a CAR LEASING COMPANY! It's almost certainly not a small company with a part-time administrator! 🙄

Now try and present a lucid response to @Fruitcake's post above. Or is that too hard for you?

@Exodi is right ... it is clear that you're one of those who really doesn't understand the Private Parking arena and the scam tactics employed. Lease companies simply paying their PCNs without doing what they are legally and contractually (per BVRLA guidance) required to do just perpetuates the scam. This thread really should be moved.

Undervalued

MobileSaver said:

Jenni_D said:

Remember that the people actioning these requests are already employed, so their costs are already borne - the lease company isn't having to employ additional people just to cope with this task.

I'm sorry but that's just a spurious claim presented as fact. You have absolutely no idea of the basis on which someone having to respond to hirer's inactions is employed. An obvious example is a small company may have a part-time administrator who does so many hours a week and now has to do more hours to deal with all the speeding and parking driver requests.

Regardless of how they are employed, having to deal with a hirer's actions or inactions outside of the normal process of hiring a vehicle is an additional cost of certainly time and almost always money. Whether a company wants to make a reasonable profit from that is their own business choice and it's not for you or anyone else to be telling them that charging actual costs is financially beneficial.

Absolutely.

With all due respect, I think Jenni_D's argument on that point is nonsense and I think most accountants would agree. 

The lease makes clear that penalties etc (yes, I know this isn't a "penalty") will be paid and passed on with a £25 handling charge. If that term is unacceptable then the driver should have chosen a different company with terms that are more to their liking.

Yes, I accept that there is room for debate as to whether the slightly clumsy wording also covers these kinds of charges. IF it doesn't then clearly it shouldn't have been paid and passed on.

Suppose for a moment this related to an actual legal penalty / criminal offence which the OP was later able to appeal and get overturned on a technicality. What would have happened?

The lease company would still have paid the penalty and passed the amount on, plus the £25 handling charge. The OP them manages to get the penalty overturned and refunded. Would they then be able to insist the lease company refunds the £25 as well? Debatable but probably not I would imagine as the lease company has still provided the "service" that was agreed as part of the lease.

Jenni_D

Re. that last point ... I recall reading that this very matter has already been tested, and that it is indeed the case - the admin charge refund is due as it was applied due to an event/penalty that didn't actually exist, so was applied under "false pretences". (Not the correct term, but I'm sure you get what I mean). And in this case it is the same - the OP (per their post) did not breach the parking contract therefore the PCN was invalid.

MobileSaver

Jenni_D said:

MobileSaver said:

Jenni_D said:

Remember that the people actioning these requests are already employed, so their costs are already borne - the lease company isn't having to employ additional people just to cope with this task.

I'm sorry but that's just a spurious claim presented as fact. You have absolutely no idea of the basis on which someone having to respond to hirer's inactions is employed. An obvious example is a small company may have a part-time administrator who does so many hours a week and now has to do more hours to deal with all the speeding and parking driver requests.

Regardless of how they are employed, having to deal with a hirer's actions or inactions outside of the normal process of hiring a vehicle is an additional cost of certainly time and almost always money. Whether a company wants to make a reasonable profit from that is their own business choice and it's not for you or anyone else to be telling them that charging actual costs is financially beneficial.

It's almost certainly not a small company with a part-time administrator! ... it is clear that you're one of those who really doesn't understand the Private Parking arena and the scam tactics employed.

You've completely missed the point that it doesn't matter whether this is a small company or a massive conglomerate; to suggest that having to deal with driver identity requests doesn't represent a cost to the business is simply ludicrous and doesn't stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.

I completely get the problems surrounding private parking companies but this is a contractual issue between a consumer and a hire company. The fact that a parking company is involved is a red herring, it would be a similar issue if the police towed the OP's car away in error.

One problem here is that you and Fruitcake are focusing on the parking company which is clearly an emotive issue for you both and consequently are both letting your heart rule your head; one example being the provably untrue claims you both made around the use of the word "offence".

Fruitcake's post seems to mainly be a suggestion of how he would do things better but then admits "anything outside the standard list should be explained if it is not already itemised" which rather makes a mockery of insisting that every possible scenario should be specifically itemised.

born_again

MobileSaver said:

Okell said:

Or they could choose to treat it as an inevitable business overhead.  It's up to them how they treat it.

As someone who has hired vehicles on more occasions than I care to remember over the last 30 years and never once caused a third-party to have to contact the hire company on my behalf, I'm not surprisingly in favour of the current approach of only charging admin fees to those who caused the extra work. (Again noting that in the OP's case it appears they weren't at fault but the hire company weren't to know that.)

As you say, companies could choose to (or be forced to if new legislation banned admin fees) simply treat such things as a business overhead and so raise prices across the board but this then hurts us all in the wallet so would not be my preference. (You only need to look at landlords being banned from charging certain admin fees and seeing how much rents have increased since to see how badly that can work out.)

FCA already have regulations on Admin fee's that can be charged. So the odds on them being scrapped are not good. As they are now ruled as being fair for the work involved.

Has Op actually posted the Admin fee?

sheramber

born_again said:

MobileSaver said:

Okell said:

Or they could choose to treat it as an inevitable business overhead.  It's up to them how they treat it.

As someone who has hired vehicles on more occasions than I care to remember over the last 30 years and never once caused a third-party to have to contact the hire company on my behalf, I'm not surprisingly in favour of the current approach of only charging admin fees to those who caused the extra work. (Again noting that in the OP's case it appears they weren't at fault but the hire company weren't to know that.)

As you say, companies could choose to (or be forced to if new legislation banned admin fees) simply treat such things as a business overhead and so raise prices across the board but this then hurts us all in the wallet so would not be my preference. (You only need to look at landlords being banned from charging certain admin fees and seeing how much rents have increased since to see how badly that can work out.)

FCA already have regulations on Admin fee's that can be charged. So the odds on them being scrapped are not good. As they are now ruled as being fair for the work involved.

Has Op actually posted the Admin fee?

The leasing company paid them £60 & sent me an invoice of £90 (admin fee £25 + £5 VAT + £60 PP's fine first post