Parking Code of Practice Consultation - remember remember the 5 September - it closes next week!

Coupon-mad

Do your personal wishes override the Minister’s instructions?

No. They aren't my wishes.

I was asked to communicate that they can process responses more efficiently from the survey portal and to please encourage people to use it.

So in the first post, I encourage that because it was a request from the horse's mouth.

Swamping them with emails isn't good advice - nor is "Absolutely no need to do the full-blown version. Just pick out the questions you want to answer on the PDF version below, & email your response".

I replied to try to stop that idea gaining traction. That's all. I firmly believe there is a need to do the full version if at all possible and I'm trying to make that easy for those who need it.

grassmarket

Coupon-mad said:

Do your personal wishes override the Minister’s instructions?

No. They aren't my wishes.

I was asked to communicate that they can process responses more efficiently from the survey portal and to please encourage people to use it.

So in the first post, I encourage that because it was a request from the horse's mouth.

Swamping them with emails isn't good advice - nor is "Absolutely no need to do the full-blown version. Just pick out the questions you want to answer on the PDF version below, & email your response".

I replied to try to stop that idea gaining traction. That's all. I firmly believe there is a need to do the full version if at all possible and I'm trying to make that easy for those who need it.

Who is this “horse’s mouth”? Please provide your source -  as did I. And why are they contradicting the explicit instructions in the Ministerial Foreword? If you’re saying the ‘how to reply’ section of an official public Consultation is false, or that our replies won’t count - we need to know. 

As for making it easy - there’s vast amounts of detailed instructions in this thread, about how to reply to each question.

Do the thousands of ordinary motorists who’ve fallen victim to unfair parking charges really have to know all this stuff - just to give their personal views?

Can’t people be allowed to make up their own minds? 

Please - let everyone express themselves in their own words, in their own way. You can choose to do the full works, but others don’t have to. 

Surely the most important thing is for as many people as possible to get their views across - in whichever way they choose? 

Isn’t that the best way to provide as much democratic & compelling data as possible - to back up the new Code & prevent another legal challenge? 

BlueonBlue

The average person isnt up to speed at all.
 Like yourself the fact you didnt know peoples data costs £2.50  a pop is very common knowledge on here.

Coupon-Mad has the bigger picture .

I imagine she puts more time into fighting for the best public outcome that we can get .... than most.... if not anyone in the uk.

patient_dream

Coupon-mad does a cracking job on here, without her, this forrum would not be the same.

Regarding the £2.50 collected by the DVLA is well outdated and should be increased to an amount in line with inflation.  A minimum of £10 would be in order

Considering the millions collected by the DVLA it is a pot of money that Rachel Reeves could use instead of draining the pockets of the public. Maybe Reeves does not know there is a huge pot of money just waiting for her to take??

grassmarket

As MSE Admin said, in ‘Safe & Pleasant Community”
“please try to be patient and give other users the benefit of the doubt. The Forum is intended to be a place for people to request and share help and insight.  If you feel like you need to offer an alternative view or think someone's post may be inaccurate, please bear this in mind and respond respectfully.”

The Parking Forum has long been awash with people who are NOT like that. Sadly many ‘regulars’ are ready to put ordinary users down at the 1st & every subsequent opportunity.

From prior experience I would not include CM in that category. But it is disrespectful to dismiss email responses as “half-baked” (as CM did) & it is unhelpful to say ‘we all know what the Keeper Fee is’ & to dismiss the query as irrelevant. It may be “common knowledge” to regulars on here - but most of us don’t live our lives on here every day. 

And so far CM hasn’t backed up their claim that a “horse’s mouth” told them email responses are not wanted - which (if true) would contradict the explicit advice from the Minister.

No doubt CM is putting in the hours & tiredness can lead to impatience. But if superior knowledge just leads to a superior attitude - it just puts ordinary users off & defeats the whole point of the Forum. 

So please - show a little forbearance everyone & just encourage others to do the Consultation in whatever way is best for them. 

ChirpyChicken

If you wish to do the consultation like that, thats fine, but we should encourage people to do the consultation in the best possible way with as much information as possible,.
 

Brie

Calling all people concerned about debt......

@MummyRivett
@soolin
@I_Love_comps
@enthusiasticsaver
@BlueJ94
@sourcrates
@elsiepac
@Smudgeismydog

I'm shouting out to you as ambassadors on the debt and budgetting boards to see if you have anything that you might add to this discussion about reform of the parking charges industry. 

As you very likely are aware the basic premise is that if you park somewhere that a private parking company controls (local Tesco, a country pub, your work parking lot, airports) there's a possibility you might receive a parking charge notice because you supposedly do something wrong.  Stay too long, stop at the wrong place, leave the parking lot instead of going in to a shop etc etc.  All based on the "fact" that you have agreed to a contract that may (or may not) be posted somewhere near or on the premises in question.  The PCN then escalates with various fees which if not paid can result in a CCJ.  Between the time of the parking and the CCJ the registered keeper of the vehicle (not necessarily the driver) receives escalating threatening letters demanding payments.  

As we know as debt advisers in our various guises people who are in debt crisis don't react well to threats.  They bury their head or they have mental health meltdowns to the point of suicide.  I have seen numerous cases of people who don't understand how they got a CCJ, why that causes them more problems and how the situation might be avoided.  

Can you please try to rally your various organisations into responding to this survey?  And can you provide some evidence, even anonymous, of how these threats of legal action affect our clients?

My basic line in responding to the survey was that it's a system that massively penalises those on lower incomes, and takes no account of disabilities or those simply having a bad day due to difficult children, illness, pregnancy.  Add to that the signs that we all supposedly read are either illegible, missing or out of date.  Or on a pole 15 feet above the ground which you are supposed to read in detail while driving.  

I know that you likely all know others who might contribute to this conversation or respond to the survey (which I'm sorry to say is a bit of a bagger) so please pass the word along.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/private-parking-code-of-practice

ChirpyChicken

Thanks @Brie

grassmarket

ChirpyChicken said:

If you wish to do the consultation like that, thats fine, but we should encourage people to do the consultation in the best possible way with as much information as possible,.
 

Agree we should encourage as many people as possible to do the consultation - in whichever way suits them best. 

If that’s email - fine. If that’s answering just a few questions they feel strongly about - fine. 

In his Foreword, the Minister gave us an email address & PDF - as well the online version. It’s up to us which we choose to use. 

If he didn’t want us to use them - he wouldn’t have provided them!

Which do you think Govt would prefer: a good democratic turnout or a handful of forensically researched responses? 

As it happens I did do the online version - but it almost made me lose the will to live. So much is irrelevant/unknown to the average motorist. 

So - I’d like every motorist on this forum to know there is an easier way to make their voices heard - to express their frustration with current private parking practices without this huge commitment of time & energy that the full Consultation seems to demand.

Not everyone can afford that level of commitment, but they do still have as much right to be heard as the rest of us. 

Coupon-mad

Brie said:

Calling all people concerned about debt......

@MummyRivett
@soolin
@I_Love_comps
@enthusiasticsaver
@BlueJ94
@sourcrates
@elsiepac
@Smudgeismydog

I'm shouting out to you as ambassadors on the debt and budgetting boards to see if you have anything that you might add to this discussion about reform of the parking charges industry. 

As you very likely are aware the basic premise is that if you park somewhere that a private parking company controls (local Tesco, a country pub, your work parking lot, airports) there's a possibility you might receive a parking charge notice because you supposedly do something wrong.  Stay too long, stop at the wrong place, leave the parking lot instead of going in to a shop etc etc.  All based on the "fact" that you have agreed to a contract that may (or may not) be posted somewhere near or on the premises in question.  The PCN then escalates with various fees which if not paid can result in a CCJ.  Between the time of the parking and the CCJ the registered keeper of the vehicle (not necessarily the driver) receives escalating threatening letters demanding payments.  

As we know as debt advisers in our various guises people who are in debt crisis don't react well to threats.  They bury their head or they have mental health meltdowns to the point of suicide.  I have seen numerous cases of people who don't understand how they got a CCJ, why that causes them more problems and how the situation might be avoided.  

Can you please try to rally your various organisations into responding to this survey?  And can you provide some evidence, even anonymous, of how these threats of legal action affect our clients?

My basic line in responding to the survey was that it's a system that massively penalises those on lower incomes, and takes no account of disabilities or those simply having a bad day due to difficult children, illness, pregnancy.  Add to that the signs that we all supposedly read are either illegible, missing or out of date.  Or on a pole 15 feet above the ground which you are supposed to read in detail while driving.  

I know that you likely all know others who might contribute to this conversation or respond to the survey (which I'm sorry to say is a bit of a bagger) so please pass the word along.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/private-parking-code-of-practice

Good call. Thankyou.

As the new official MSE Guide says (and as the regulars here know) I'm on the Steering Committee shaping the new statutory Code of Practice.

I was asked to pass on to motorists that the MHCLG would prefer responses using the survey. I passed it on in the first post here.