Private parking speculative invoices to be capped at £50

[BankFodder]

Private parking fines to be capped at £50

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

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Drivers will also need to be given a grace period for lateness, as part of a crackdown on parking firms.

 

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Minister for Levelling Up Neil O'Brien said: "Private firms issue roughly 22,000 parking tickets every day, often adopting a system of misleading and confusing signage, aggressive debt collection and unreasonable fees designed to extort money from motorists.

"[Our] new Code Of Practice will set out a clear vision with the interests of safe motorists at its heart, while cracking down on the worst offenders."

Under the proposals, the cap on parking fines in private car parks will fall by 50% in most cases, benefiting millions, the government says.

 

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The government also said it planned to make it easier for drivers to challenge their ticket if there are genuine mitigating circumstances.

This could include having a valid ticket but failing to display it correctly, or keying in your number plate incorrectly by mistake at a parking machine.

Philip Lovell, who faces up to £2,000 pounds in fixed penalty notices, knows first hand the frustrations of the current system.

He joined a gym in Manchester last year where he is entitled to use the car park for free , but for the first few months he didn't realise he was meant to enter his registration number at the machine and instead entered his postcode.

He is now facing eight fixed penalty notices of £170 each, with the threat it could rise to £250 each.

"I tried to explain to them what happened but there just to seems to be a ruthless pursuit and inflexibility," he told the BBC.

"There's no one to speak to [on the phone], all I can do is write to them which I have done numerous times."

 

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Currently there are two parking trade associations, the British Parking Association (BPA) and the International Parking Community (IPC), each of which has a Code of Practice their members must abide by.

However, the government says the lack of a single set of rules leaves motorists "vulnerable to bad private parking practices such as deliberately poor signage and unfair parking fines".