private car park fine-at work

susieb1967

I work at a hospital , car parks covered by first management group( FMG).
I pay a night rate permit, which obviously covers me for parking at night. However I recently changed my hours and am working some day shifts also. When I first went on days I asked a car park security chap if I could park in a particular place he confirmed that I could. The next shift I worked (3rd April) I got a ticket for £15 (£25 if not paid within 7 days).
Was a bit cross about it and rang up car park security who said I would have to take it up with FMG. Duly ( and stupidly) forgot about it.
Today I have had a call off my manager saying that if I dont pay it then the hospital trust policy will have to be followed- I could get disciplined. My manager has also said that they are 'being kind' to me by trying not to let FMG get the debt collectors involved!
I am fuming and upset at being rung at home and I feel stupid for not acting on it sooner as I could have probably appealed the ticket.
Should I just make it all go away and pay the £25, or do you think it is still worth appealing ?

bargepole

The short answer is, you'll probably have to pay the £25 if you want to go on working there, although it's already well established that these private car park operators have no legal powers to fine you, and use threats of debt collectors etc. to try and scare people into paying up.

Personally, I wouldn't want to work for any organisation where I had to pay to park at my place of work, and especially not for some jumped up snot nosed "manager" who says he's doing me a favour by holding off the private car park scammers from invoking their unlawful debt collectors. When they start threatening you with "company policy", they've definitely lost the argument, and it's time to tell them into which part of their anatomy to stick their petty parking ticket. But that's just my view.

Belnahua

Go straight to the union, they're wonderful in our hospital and have management on the rack within minutes!

ticketcollector

Get Unison involved, fun, fun fun!!!

loofer

bargepole wrote: »

T... although it's already well established that these private car park operators have no legal powers to fine you, and use threats of debt collectors etc. to try and scare people into paying up.
...private car park scammers from invoking their unlawful debt collectors...

Hi any chance you could shed more information on this.

Many people, including me, aren't aware of this.

What can and can't they do? What bit of law can we quote if we ever get fined/clamped by these companies? How do we distinguish between those that are allowed to fine/clamp and those that aren't?

Links would be helpful.
Thanks

Hintza

I like the answers above .

However your real sin is not tackling it at the time. So if you can't get any quick answers it might just be prudent to pay and then fight it from the moral high ground.

But with my sod em all hat on tell them to get stuffed, your manager's line would just irritate me so much...arghhh.

tomstickland

Even if you do pay it, I suggest you instigate some action into investigating why a verbal agreement from one member of staff was incorrect, causing you a fine.

bargepole

loofer wrote: »

Hi any chance you could shed more information on this.

Many people, including me, aren't aware of this.

What can and can't they do? What bit of law can we quote if we ever get fined/clamped by these companies? How do we distinguish between those that are allowed to fine/clamp and those that aren't?

Links would be helpful.
Thanks

Essentially, only tickets issued by the Police or Local Councils are enforcible in law.

With private companies, the driver enters a contract when he parks on their land, agreeing to pay a penalty as specified in the notice they must display.

But, if the ticket is unpaid, they can only write to the registered keeper (they buy access to the DVLA database for that), and if the RK declines to nominate a driver, there is naff all the parking company can do - they will threaten taking it to court, but on the rare occasion that has happened, they lost.

Recently, BP has been using a dodgy outfit to try and extort "fines" from people staying more than 20 mins at their Gatwick South petrol station, with little success.

You can get the full story on this at www.pepipoo.com in their "parking tickets" section.

vaio

bargepole wrote: »

Essentially, only tickets issued by the Police or Local Councils are enforceable in law.

With private companies, the driver enters a contract when he parks on their land, agreeing to pay a penalty as specified in the notice they must display.

But, if the ticket is unpaid, they can only write to the registered keeper (they buy access to the DVLA database for that), and if the RK declines to nominate a driver, there is naff all the parking company can do - they will threaten taking it to court, but on the rare occasion that has happened, they lost.

Recently, BP has been using a dodgy outfit to try and extort "fines" from people staying more than 20 mins at their Gatwick South petrol station, with little success.

You can get the full story on this at www.pepipoo.com in their "parking tickets" section.

All true but also all completely separate from the hospital staff rules which might (for instance) require that you only park on site if you have a valid ticket.

Failure to follow the hospital staff rules could result in disciplinary action so think carefully before you do anything, having the moral high ground is fine but maybe losing your job will take the edge off it.

Horace

Recently there was a private clamping company in Birmingham whose MD was recently jailed for blackmail - she was clamping cars etc, and charging people £300 to get them back.

If your employer wanted you to work different shifts then they should reasonably have made arrangements for you to park. My advice, is that you speak to your union forthwith.

vaio

Horace wrote: »

Recently there was a private clamping company in Birmingham whose MD was recently jailed for blackmail - she was clamping cars etc, and charging people £300 to get them back.

If your employer wanted you to work different shifts then they should reasonably have made arrangements for you to park. My advice, is that you speak to your union forthwith.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment I suspect you’ll find that employers have no duty to provide parking, if they do it’s a bonus.

In this case they do actually have parking available, the issue is the OP didn’t have a valid ticket