Call for Action - submit evidence of private parking rip-offs Which? Magazine now!

The private parking industry.

This industry is currently an unregulated scam, ripping off thousands of consumers each year and clogging up the courts system with completely spurious claims.

Currently the industry is toothlessly self-regulated by two supposedly 'independent' bodies, the BPA and the IPC, both of which rely on private parking companies to fund them and therefore have a vested interested in keeping said companies 'on side'.

The worst of these, the IPC, is owned by the same two individuals who own Gladstones Solicitors, the 'roboclaim' solicitors supporting private parking companies and responsible for around 50% of the litigation flooding the courts, they also own the 'IAS', the supposedly 'independent' appeals service offered by the IPC. Judge, jury and executioner.

The business is legalised extortion. PPCs take any excuse for dispensing a ticket and then threaten to take the consumer to court for fees of around £250. If it gets to court the PPC makes their case by automated letters and statements that take no time to produce, whereas the average consumer (providing they have the gumption to fight it) can spend many hours fighting their side. I have spent at least 24 man-hours researching and preparing documentation for one such case.

It doesn't matter to the PPCs if they lose as they aren't significantly penalised for doing so and the threat of court is enough to deter the vast majority of consumers from taking them on.

There have been cases of consumers ticketed for parking in their own residential spaces, parking whilst they simply stopped to read signs telling them the parking terms, parking on land where the PPC wasn't even authorised to operate, even for waiting in a queue to get through a barrier into a car park! Many of these tickets are issued at hospitals where people are particularly vulnerable.

Please do something about this unregulated scam industry.