Another parking ticket myth finally slain.

Man of Honour
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So the supreme court has agreed with both the crown and the appeal court in the case of parking eye vs beavis

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-34721126

https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2015-0116.html

In summary, this was the test case as to whether parking charges such as overstaying had to relate to actual losses to be reasonable and proportionate, and the judgement very clearly concludes they do not.

Given the general attitude towards parking in this forum, I doubt this will go down well, but for believers in property rights it is good to see that people don't just have the right to park wherever they want provided they don't believe it is a problem.
 
Man of Honour
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The problem with these things is fairly simple - the charges and conditions are punitive and often excessive.

Lets take this specific example - the claimant visited the retail park for 3 hours. If this retail park is like most others in the UK, it offers no way to pay for parking - you park for free. There is no pay and display. Most have a 2 hour limit. What if you wish to visit the retail park for 3 hours? How can you pay? How can you ensure the landowner is compensated?

You cannot.

You will doubtless argue, as you always do, presumably with use of the word 'strawman' 6 times, that if you don't like the rules you should simply not use the land. And in a world of black and white that's entirely the correct response.

But of course when you use a retail park like that you are not deciding to visit ABC Land Securities Ltd's carpark. You are visiting McDonalds, then perhaps Home Bargains, maybe Halfords. None of whom own the carpark...

In the retail park in Worcester there is a Pizza Hut. Inside this Pizza Hut there are enormous signs warning you about the problems they have with the carpark - it has 2 hour limit and presumably I guess for some people a family trip to Pizza Hut takes more than that, especially if they shop beforehand. So the operation of these schemes clearly adversely affects both tenant retailers and customers. There shouldn't be a need for apologetic signs warning you about the draconian parking restrictions in a Pizza Hut. People will generally respect and appreciate the purpose of regulations if they perceive them to be reasonable.

Nobody would dispute that parking on somebodies driveway or private carpark is wrong, but in the case of freely provided parking spaces for retail establishments if they made reasonable conditions for the use of the land then they'd cut out 90% of the noise from this sort of thing leaving just the genuine **** takers to deal with.
 
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Caporegime
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I live in Chelmsford. It's unlikely you could spend 3 hours at that particular retail park.

More likely he parked there and walked over the road to the leisure centre....(which does charge per hour)
 
Soldato
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Fined £85 for over staying an hour? where did they get that number from which ParkingEye says is "fair and reasonable".

Is each parking space worth £85 an hour?, let's see them put that on a pay and display and see how many people park there then. No one, because £85 is obviously an outrageous price to pay for parking and is equally an outrageous fine.
 
Man of Honour
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Fined £85 for over staying an hour? where did they get that number from which ParkingEye says is "fair and reasonable".

Is each parking space worth £85 an hour?, let's see them put that on a pay and display and see how many people park there then. No one, because £85 is obviously an outrageous price to pay for parking and is equally an outrageous fine.

You could always read the linked ruling to understand it? That's why I bothered to source it.
 
Soldato
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You could always read the linked ruling to understand it? That's why I bothered to source it.

I listened to the video and what I picked out is that the £85 is compensation for the businesses that potentially lost business because a customer may not have had some where to park because he overstayed.

Possibly there is something more I missed so I'll say no more until I know if that's the case.

They also had an angle about overstaying is a breach of contract. I bet 99% of motorists out there don't consider parking a "contract" or don't realize that parking enters you into a "contract".
 
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Man of Honour
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I listened to the video and what I picked out is that the £85 is compensation for the businesses that potentially lost business because a customer may not have had some where to park because he overstayed.

Possibly there is something more I missed so I'll say no more until I know if that's the case.

They also had an angle about overstaying is a breach of contract. I bet 99% of motorists out there don't consider parking a "contract" or don't realize that parking enters you into a "contract".

The actual judgement (2nd link), while rather wordy, does cover all your concerns.
 
Soldato
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The actual judgement (2nd link), while rather wordy, does cover all your concerns.

So it's as I said, an arbitrary number but which also includes a profit. That's it. No reasoning to how they arrive at this number, no margins on how much is covering potential losses and what is profit.

Looks like the, Lords discussed only whether he over-stayed and broke the contract and should therefore pay whatever was demanded when they should have been figuring out if £85 is a load of bull or not.
 
Soldato
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So is anyone able to provide a quick summary as the BBC article doesn't say much.

Did the ruling or Parkingeye explain why £85 for 1 hour wasn't unreasonable?
 
Man of Honour
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So is anyone able to provide a quick summary as the BBC article doesn't say much.

Did the ruling or Parkingeye explain why £85 for 1 hour wasn't unreasonable?

The ruling did. The charge wasn't unreasonable because it was similar in magnitude to the statutory penalties for illegal parking, served a useful purpose (protecting the rights of the land owner and other parking users) and allowed parkingeye to cover the costs of the service and make a profit.
 
Soldato
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Fox that's all good points but the businesses have plenty of channels to communicate with the mall owner who contracts out the parking if they feel it is affecting their business to any significant degree.

Could see this judgment coming from a mile away - if you think about the consequences the judges live far more in the 'real world' by affirming this rather than effectively invalidating any form of private parking enforcement.
 
Soldato
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£85 is just ridiculous, charge should be limited to the average price per hour for parking in the area plus a small admin / penalty fee.

The only reason for the time limits is to stop people parking for free all day and walking into town / work, the same result could be achieved by setting the limit at 4 hours but they do 1 / 2 hours to catch people out.
 
Soldato
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Okay I have had a read now.

If anyone wants to read the relevant stuff, skip to point 89 of the judgement.

I think Mr Beavis hasn't properly defended himself.

His defence (read point 93) was that the 1. "charge" was actually punitive and 2. unfair by virtue of 1999 regulations.

Some background:

The judgement states that the "parking charge" cannot be a charge nor a contract for goods and service.

picture1.jpg


ParkingEye concede this point (my question is why does this "contract" remain valid? let's be nice and interpret this labelled "charge" as not actually a charge for goods or services as the high court have)

The £85 can only be considered in the context of a breach of licence that the driver has agreed to. They continue to establish that the driver would have seen appropriate signs and that as a BPA member ParkingEye can request the registered keepers details. All fair enough for now.

For some reason now the court now uses the BPA's code of conduct to see if everything is reasonable within this code of conduct. It is written as if this industry created code of conduct is meaningful in any way.

picture2.jpg


The code of conduct states it must be a genuine pre-estimate of loss and then goes on to give an amount. How can a code of conduct know what is pre-estimate of loss without looking at the relevant case?

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Local Authority PCNs are PENALTY charge notices and so I fail to see the relevance. The argument here is that this is not a penalty.

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ParkingEye concede it is not a genuine pre-estimate of loss (in breach of the BPA code of conduct). ParkingEye did not lose anything and in fact it's entire revenue stream is based on these "charges".

It argues that these charges (not penalties) are reasonable because

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Below the court gives an explanation as to why the "charge" is reasonable.

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The high court state that because ParkingEye pay the retail site owners as well as managing the car park, the charge is reasonable for both of those goals.

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Also you can see that a charge is not penal if it's purpose is deterrence (open can of worms, note a local authority label their tickets as PENALTIES, they deter by being punitive).

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Again, local authority PENALTY charge notices are not relevant.

picture9.JPG


The BPA code of conduct is not law. Nor is this charge in complete compliance with the Code of Conduct. It MUST be a genuine pre-estimate of loss.

This ruling is complete BS.
 
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Associate
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Mr Beavis was apparently "on-site having flyers produced from one of the shops and there was technical issues with the printing and was delayed accordingly."

If I were him, I'd be sending an invoice for £100 straight to that shop - £85 costs and a little extra for profit.;)
 
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