Brighton Station car park £90 Parking fine.

[Lord Bracknell]

We are in danger of missing the point about car parking at stations - especially major stations, such as Brighton.

Because demand for such car parking is so high, it needs to be regulated, in the interests of people who want to use the railway. Regular commuters can buy car park season tickets. Occasional rail passengers want to be able to park a car in the station car park, for the duration of their train journey - which will vary from person to person.

Pricing is the mechanism for ensuring fair access to the facility for those who need it.

If you charge for car parking, you have to have someone to manage the system. The ranters who object to this happening - seemingly on the grounds that the car park managers are a private company - are undermining the point of station car parks. They are there to provide a service to rail users. If the rules are more widely abused than they are, it is railway passengers who suffer.

As a matter of public policy, rail use should be encouraged. It reduces road congestion. Everyone benefits from this. Good luck to the station car park managers, I say. They are doing an essential job that needs to be done properly. This includes chasing the folk who abuse the parking rules.

 

[LadySeagull]

No-one is disagreeing with you, Lord Bracknell. We have not said do not pay a fair amount to park. Manx Shearwater's post came in just before yours and explains the position as far as those of us who also post on the MSE parking forum are concerned. So I will post it again on this page as peeople may miss the point, as it's now gone to page 5 with all the discussion:

Hi, I can only see one or two people advocating not paying ANYTHING, as the tickets are unenforceable. Myself, Lady Seagull, Westdene Seagull and others are not recommending that people do not pay for parking full stop.

Companies that offer parking services are entitled to make a living from it, so any charges they make for parking should be paid.

Where they fall down, is where they issue a 'penalty' or speculative invoice to give it it's correct title, for some petty 'contravention' of their terms. Such as parking slightly over a white line, leaving site to visit another shop, or anything else wher they or the landowner suffers no financial loss as a result. For example overstaying by 2 mins in a free car park with loads of spaces with a 2 hour limit.

They have no legal standing to charge £60 (or whatever) for things like this. THAT'S what we object to.

 

[thony]

(and it is NOT a fine, you called it fine, it is just a scam 'charge').

Point taken... but I actually thought I'd worded this carefully. I used the phrase "penalty charge" for the current situation, but perhaps better would have been "excess charge". My use of the word "fine" was only in the phrase: "if they wanted to avoid a fine" - ie, until checking (and sometimes even AFTER checking), you may not know whether a fine can be legally charged.

 

[LadySeagull]

It isn't a penalty or excess charge either (they are both terms used by Councils).

It's a parking charge notice = scam.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Yes, but ...

To achieve effective regulation of a station car park, if a £60 charge is excessive, what level of charge do you think would be the right one to set, to discourage non-payment of the correct fee?

 

[Manx Shearwater]

Technically, it is an invoice inviting you to settle.

The amount they are asking you to settle is an alleged civil debt - an amount that one private party claims the other one owes them. Until such time as a judge decides it in a small claims court the debt remains 'alleged'.

You are under no legal obligation to pay any invoice which you disagree with. In the absence of a court judgement there is no legal obligation to pay it.

The judge would use contract or trespass law to determine if the charge is fair and reasonable. Under civil contact law, the only redress for breach of contract is liquidated damages (or a genuine pre-estimate of such). This is actual financial losses incurred. Anything above that would be deemed a contractual penalty, unenforceable under contract law.

If I parked in car park where parking fees applied and for whatever reason overstayed or forgot to pay, then if I received a subsequent demand for an amount relating to the underpayment (plus costs associated with pursuit of that charge) I would advise anyone to pay it, as the likelihood is that a judge would uphold such a claim in a small claims court, and besides it is reasonable to expect that a parking company is entitled to mitigate their losses as a result of my parking.

However, all too often, these companies like to make up some ridiculous charge, based on people's ignorance of the difference between a genuine council penalty charge notice (which is both covered by legislation, and punitive by nature - designed to deter people from parking where they do) and these private parking tickets. They are milking a situation of people's lack of knowledge in order to make a profit.

That I cannot agree with.

If there WAS legislation introduced with regards to private parking, and such legislation ensured they recovered the actual financial losses incurred, then I wouldn't have a problem with that. I can't see how it work though.

 

[Garage_Doors]

I do not think anyone is advising ignoring paying a reasonable fee for the services rendered.

Ladyseagull gives the impression you can, post #44, when talking about a main line commuter railway station:

if barriers are up and there's not enough info in clear enough signs everywhere to tell you it's a P&D car park, it's not unreasonable to have an honest belief that you can park for free.

At a main line commuter railway station

 

[Manx Shearwater]

Yes, but ...

To achieve effective regulation of a station car park, if a £60 charge is excessive, what level of charge do you think would be the right one to set, to discourage non-payment of the correct fee?

To comply with contract law it needs to be in line with liquidated damages. So the charge would be:

Parking fees unpaid + £2.50 fee to DVLA to get RK's details + sundry costs, a few quid for envelopes, stamps and someone's time to print out a letter and post it.

Maybe a tenner?

If they did this then they would also be able to enforce in a small claims court (recovering any court fees also) and they'd win (although there are other issues such as being able to identify the driver, and holding sufficient proprietary rights over the land to be able to form a contract with the driver, but let's not complicate things!). However at present this doesn't fit their business model. While there is still a large percentage of people who simply pay up without realising that they are not legally obliged to pay these things, the parking companies are happy to pocket these profits, and let the others go, safe in the knowledge that trying to pursue via a court is pointless (as they know they'd lose).

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Main line railway stations need the barriers removing (as they have done at Brighton and at other stations, such as Lewes). Barriers slow down entry to the car park. Queuing for the car park causes people to miss trains.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

To comply with contract law it needs to be in line with liquidated damages. So the charge would be:

Parking fees unpaid + £2.50 fee to DVLA to get RK's details + sundry costs, a few quid for envelopes, stamps and someone's time to print out a letter and post it.

Maybe a tenner?

But a tenner is LESS than the car parking fee for a day's parking.

Some people like to leave their cars in a station car park for a whole week.

 

[Manx Shearwater]

But a tenner is LESS than the car parking fee for a day's parking.

Some people like to leave their cars in a station car park for a whole week.

Fair enough. The formula is the same, the amount will differ depending on the price of the parking. I suggested an example based on a standard short stay in t acar park of maybe up to five quid, but the formula holds for any amount.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Years ago, I heard a presentation by the Metropolitan Police Superintendent responsible for on-street parking enforcement in central London (this was before it became the councils' responsibility). He said that some folk from outside London who regularly came to the capital for a week-long business stay had worked out that the CHEAPEST way to get a whole week's secure parking in central London was to turn up on Monday morning, park on double yellows in the vicinity of Piccadilly Circus, get their car towed away to the police car pound, where it would be safely looked after until Friday and, at the end of the week, simply turn up and collect it and pay whatever the fine was. The savings, compared with standard car parking charges in central London, were quite significant.

 

[BigGully]

Good luck to the station car park managers, I say. They are doing an essential job that needs to be done properly. This includes chasing the folk who abuse the parking rules.

Naive I say .......

I doubt whether the private company share your principled view, re: increased rail travel and less congestion etc. all very noble.

They want to maximise their profits, no less, no more.

There is no incentive for them to be fair and considerate to their customers, its a nice little earner throwing around 'fake' fines.

If they shared your view, why not employ the appropriate number of staff and appropriate business model that could ensure that cars parked within the preferred time limits.

But why should they ??

They quite like the idea of sending out scam letters, that then produce significantly more income than if they acted reasonably.

Put a man in a kiosk with a barrier, have contact at entry and exit and we the car users pay the appropriate charge, it was always the way, but they are lazy scoundrels, its a nice little earner which deserves to be condemned.

 

[BigGully]

Years ago, I heard a presentation by the Metropolitan Police Superintendent responsible for on-street parking enforcement in central London (this was before it became the councils' responsibility). He said that some folk from outside London who regularly came to the capital for a week-long business stay had worked out that the CHEAPEST way to get a whole week's secure parking in central London was to turn up on Monday morning, park on double yellows in the vicinity of Piccadilly Circus, get their car towed away to the police car pound, where it would be safely looked after until Friday and, at the end of the week, simply turn up and collect it and pay whatever the fine was. The savings, compared with standard car parking charges in central London, were quite significant.

Your now not telling us that the clampers in London are value for money !!!!

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Naive I say .......

I doubt whether the private company share your principled view, re: increased rail travel and less congestion etc. all very noble.

They want to maximise their profits, no less, no more.

There is no incentive for them to be fair and considerate to their customers, its a nice little earner throwing around 'fake' fines.

If they shared your view, why not employ the appropriate number of staff and appropriate business model that could ensure that cars parked within the preferred time limits.

But why should they ??

They quite like the idea of sending out scam letters, that then produce significantly more income than if they acted reasonably.

Put a man in a kiosk with a barrier, have contact at entry and exit and we the car users pay the appropriate charge, it was always the way, but they are lazy scoundrels, its a nice little earner which deserves to be condemned.

I'm the last person to applaud the privatisation of public transport. But it remains a service that is worth supporting, because of the benefits it delivers to the public at large.

There is a limited amount of land that has been made available for parking in the vicinity of Brighton Station. It was allocated for that purpose by the public authorities (the council and the British Railways Property Board - which is STILL a nationalised organisation, btw) that were responsible for disposing of the former railway land adjacent to the station. Yes, it's regrettable that the public interest in that land has diminished, because of political decisions over the years. With that diminishing public interest, we have lost the obvious solution - which is to make the management of parking in public spaces like this subject to the same laws on enforcement that apply to the public highway.

I can't see this changing, though.

 

[BigGully]

I'm the last person to applaud the privatisation of public transport. But it remains a service that is worth supporting, because of the benefits it delivers to the public at large.

There is a limited amount of land that has been made available for parking in the vicinity of Brighton Station. It was allocated for that purpose by the public authorities (the council and the British Railways Property Board - which is STILL a nationalised organisation, btw) that were responsible for disposing of the former railway land adjacent to the station. Yes, it's regrettable that the public interest in that land has diminished, because of political decisions over the years. With that diminishing public interest, we have lost the obvious solution - which is to make the management of parking in public spaces like this subject to the same laws on enforcement that apply to the public highway.

I can't see this changing, though.

I am pro privatisation, so I guessed this was against your core beliefs.

You say these unenforceable charges are an effective and fair way to regulate those using their car parks, tagged on to the environmental issues.

But to me, it quite clearly has absolutely nothing to do with those issues. its a lazy way to maximise income.

Again why not implement a business model to reduce those that park outside of their agreed terms without issuing these fake fines, old man in kiosk etc.

They churn out fake fines, add a bit of postage and the cheques pour in, more often than not disproportionate to the actions of that customer.

Accept it if you wish but please do not give them a moral platform as well.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

The opportunity to manage station car parking properly was lost when the train operating franchises were handed out (at huge cost to the public purse). In exchange for this public funding, the government could (I say should) have imposed a strong regulatory regime on the train companies and they could have included station car parking within that regime. Sadly they didn't.

Meteor used to be owned by the train company. They flogged it off to the VINCI Park group some years ago.

 

[BensGrandad]

Could the station or indeed any private property like a hospital overcome this by displaying a number of notices stating that by failing to pay a parking fee or the correct fee you are agreeing to pay a surcharge of £50 or whatever thus you are entering into an agreement with the parking authority, would this be sufficient and hold up in court. Therefore if you park whether paying the correct amount or not you are agreeing to that condition.

 

[BigGully]

Could the station or indeed any private property like a hospital overcome this by displaying a number of notices stating that by failing to pay a parking fee or the correct fee you are agreeing to pay a surcharge of £50 or whatever thus you are entering into an agreement with the parking authority, would this be sufficient and hold up in court.

They would have sort advice, so this is unlikely to work.

The issue here is not how they might implement and then uphold disproportionate penalties but how they might deliver an efficient and fair parking fee policy.

It can be done but they are quite happy to receive these extortionate charges, for very little outgoings and without losing significant initial revenue stream from their parking bay.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Could the station or indeed any private property like a hospital overcome this by displaying a number of notices stating that by failing to pay a parking fee or the correct fee you are agreeing to pay a surcharge of £50 or whatever thus you are entering into an agreement with the parking authority, would this be sufficient and hold up in court. Therefore if you park whether paying the correct amount or not you are agreeing to that condition.

Since when has a hospital been "private property"?

When hospitals like the RSCH or the Princess Royal expand (or get built), the local council requires them to operate an approved parking scheme, if only to avoid hospital users cluttering up the nearby streets. The ridiculous thing seems to be that enforcement of the parking scheme on-site is something that the public authority is kept away from. As I said in relation to station parking, it would be far better if parking management at sites where there is a strong public interest could be backed up with the full force of the law (including enforceable fines for non-payment or over-staying).

In such a scenario, the public authority would, of course, have a role in setting the charges.