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you didn't even know you where challenging the fine / demand but still won. Brilliant
No.
She didn't know she had been given a fine.
When she found out, she challenged it, and won.
@neal - not arguing, just keen to see if there are instances where Beavis has been overruled.
Not as far as I know.
Would be big news if there was I reckon.
Thers's a perfectly simple solution when using an ANPR car park. Put a post-it note over your number plate as you leave. No evidence.
Take it off when you get to the public highway of course...
why not go the whole hog and fit false number plates. covers you for speeding and RLJ'ing too.
Back to the LCD argument again. Because people can't play fair, everyone has to pay for it.
I remember I visited my doctors, it has about 5 spots in their carpark and you need to punch in your registration at reception to prove you've had an appointment
I had a new car and got one of the letters wrong...ended up being sent a 60 quid fine.
Parking eye clearly knew that it was a genuine mistake, but because they are chancing scumbags they tried it on anyway.
Suffice to say they didn't get a penny.
Time to make all car parks pay on exit with barrier control unless free. Pay and Display is too much of a money spinner these days.
[quote=theotherjonv ]aracer - that could work in a free for two hours but then you get a fine place, like a supermarket for example. Apart from - the firms would have no incentive to run a parking enforcement company for a tenner here and there particularly as most people would still have to be chased for the tenner.
Except that the parking isn't there to benefit the company issuing "fines", it has another purpose. They would simply have to change their business model slightly to one which wasn't so evil. Meanwhile people might have to be chased for the £10, but I'm betting it wouldn't take much chasing, they could spend a lot less on employing lawyers.
These firms (according to the courts) have a right to make a living as well as enforcing the parking.
That wasn't [b]exactly[/b] what the courts said. I've refrained from commenting on Beavis as I don't know the full details and don't want to give bad advice, but as there is plenty of that already here, I'll point out that I do know the judges in their ruling pointed out that that the ruling only applied to the very specific circumstances, the parking companies can't rely on it as a catch all, there are still plenty of arguments which can be used (including the one about unfair penalties provided it's used right). Certainly plenty of cases have been lost by parking companies since Beavis - it doesn't mean it's been overruled, simply that it doesn't apply in all cases.
I don't like them either but the question wasn't whether you like PPC's, but do they ever take anyone to court / how do you get off the fines?
And it still doesn't work on private land.
That might have been the original question, but as always the discussion has moved on, in this case specifically to the moral question of overstays in free car parks. No it's not an argument which applies to you, but the point that the parking companies aren't incentivised to actually prevent people stealing your spaces does.
[quote=theotherjonv ]why not go the whole hog and fit false number plates. covers you for speeding and RLJ'ing too.
Back to the LCD argument again. Because people can't play fair, everyone has to pay for it.
and once again it is Parking Eye who are the LCD which prompts such behaviour - the suggestion (even if not totally serious) was certainly that its use would be limited to car parks controlled by unscrupulous companies.
These firms (according to the courts) have a right to make a living as well as enforcing the parking.
That wasn't exactly what the courts said
Long but here's what the supreme court said:
"99. In our opinion, while the penalty rule is plainly engaged, the £85 charge is
not a penalty. The reason is that although ParkingEye was not liable to suffer loss
as a result of overstaying motorists, it had a legitimate interest in charging them
which extended beyond the recovery of any loss. The scheme in operation here (and
in many similar car parks) is that the landowner authorises ParkingEye to control
access to the car park and to impose the agreed charges, with a view to managing
the car park in the interests of the retail outlets, their customers and the public at
large. That is an interest of the landowners because (i) they receive a fee from
ParkingEye for the right to operate the scheme, and (ii) they lease sites on the retail
park to various retailers, for whom the availability of customer parking was a
valuable facility. It is an interest of ParkingEye, because it sells its services as the
managers of such schemes and meets the costs of doing so from charges for breach
of the terms (and if the scheme was run directly by the landowners, the analysis
would be no different). As we have pointed out, deterrence is not penal if there is a
legitimate interest in influencing the conduct of the contracting party which is not
satisfied by the mere right to recover damages for breach of contract. Mr Butcher
QC, who appeared for the Consumers’ Association (interveners), submitted that
because ParkingEye was the contracting party its interest was the only one which
could count. For the reason which we have given, ParkingEye had a sufficient
interest even if that submission be correct. But in our opinion it is not correct. The
penal character of this scheme cannot depend on whether the landowner operates it
himself or employs a contractor like ParkingEye to operate it. The motorist would
not know or care what if any interest the operator has in the land, or what relationship
it has with the landowner if it has no interest. This conclusion is reinforced when
one bears in mind that the question whether a contractual provision is a penalty turns
on the construction of the contract, which cannot normally turn on facts not recorded
in the contract unless they are known, or could reasonably be known, to both parties.
100. None of this means that ParkingEye could charge overstayers whatever it
liked. It could not charge a sum which would be out of all proportion to its interest
or that of the landowner for whom it is providing the service. But there is no reason
to suppose that £85 is out of all proportion to its interests. The trial judge, Judge
Moloney QC, found that the £85 charge was neither extravagant nor unconscionable
having regard to the level of charges imposed by local authorities for overstaying in
car parks on public land. The Court of Appeal agreed and so do we. It is higher than
the penalty that a motorist would have had to pay for overstaying in an on-street
parking space or a local authority car park. But a local authority would not
necessarily allow two hours of free parking, and in any event the difference is not
Page 44
substantial. The charge is less than the maximum above which members of the BPA
must justify their charges under their code of practice. The charge is prominently
displayed in large letters at the entrance to the car park and at frequent intervals
within it. The mere fact that many motorists regularly use the car park knowing of
the charge is some evidence of its reasonableness. They are not constrained to use
this car park as opposed to other parking facilities provided by local authorities,
Network Rail, commercial car park contractors or other private landowners. They
must regard the risk of having to pay £85 for overstaying as an acceptable price for
the convenience of parking there. The observations of Lord Browne-Wilkinson in
Workers Bank at p 580 referred to in para 35 above are in point. While not
necessarily conclusive, the fact that ParkingEye’s payment structure in its car parks
(free for two hours and then a relatively substantial sum for overstaying) and the
actual level of charge for overstaying (£85) are common in the UK provides support
for the proposition that the charge in question is not a penalty. No other evidence
was furnished by Mr Beavis to show that the charge was excessive."
Again, I'm no fan of the PPC's, having been done by them in the past in days of clamping particularly. But that's where the industry changed and you now have in POPLA a pretty good appeals service for small matters like the mis-typed number plate above. My sister used them on a similar matter and it was virtually painless.
Follow the rules, don't overstay, and they're no issue. Continuing to consider them the problem nowadays avoids the point that the majority of complainers are those that can't or won't.
Follow the rules, don't overstay, and they're no issue. Continuing to consider them the problem nowadays avoids the point that the majority of complainers are those that can't or won't.
Actually I'd see them following exactly the same procedures as local council fines, with appeals treated in the same way. Rather than a tough shit regardless approach. As I mentioned above I've not had a ticket from a private operator for quite some time, I did however last year entered a 2 instead of a Z when paying for parking in a council space using the Registration plate an id . Which I appealed and the council accepted, parking was paid for, no overstay, no losses incurred, no businesses lost parking.
Your set of circumstances seems a right ball ache and it's hard to see a cost effective way for you to deal with it other than a parking charge/management company. Just be wary of who you contract as it'll not be good for business if your employees and customers find themselves on the tough shit regardless end of the stick.
Follow the rules, don't overstay, and they're no issue.
and herein lies one of the fundamental problems of the ANPR system parking eye uses.
It clocks you going in to the car park, and leaving, not the actual time parked.
You'd be aggrieved if you paid for a set amount of parking, lets say an hour. You took 59 minutes. you've paid for that. However imagine the car parks busy and it takes you time to get out, indeed it took a while to get a space so you were in the carpark for 1 hour 15 but parked for your paid for time.
You receive an invoice for £60 for an overstay in that situation. Is that right?
This happened in Stockport over christmas so its not a made up example..
The ANPR system parking eye uses has been proven time and time again to be deficient. Pay on exit, with an exit barrier is absolutely the fairest way but parking companies won't adopt this system as its been proven to massively reduce the amount of invoices (fines) issued
POPLA ruled on my side when I appealed against Parking Eye who charged me £100 for overstaying 20 minutes when in fact it was 2 separate visits (first time I'd taken taken a wrong turn and only turned around).
There is a need for parking control firms but there are far to many incidences of people being wrongly charged and the firms ignoring the appeals.
Fair points; but that is the kind of situation that IMHO POPLA should overturn - albeit might be harder to prove, as opposed to people just 'saying' that there was a queue on exit.
But how does pay on exit help there, if you try to leave within 2 hours but the queue for the exit is long then you'll be into 3 hours anyway. And if it's pay on foot then you only get a short period to leave - have fallen foul of that before.
ANPR works because it is unmanned, no ticket machine infrastructure, no need to go round collecting money...... the argument is not really about ANPR but the level of charge for overstaying. IMHO people would accept ANPR happily if the fine was smaller, but then it's not really the deterrent any more.
[quote=theotherjonv ]IMHO people would accept ANPR happily if the fine was smaller, but then it's not really the deterrent any more.
As discussed above, there doesn't really need to be much of a deterrent for a 15 minute overstay. If they're still charging £60 to those they do need to deter then they have a deterrent.
Though that of course would be assuming that the idea is to deter people from overstaying when their business model is exactly the opposite.