Forget getting a hot meal at Strensham both directions after 19.30 onwards.£10 meal voucher gets you Macky D’s open 24 hours.
Reading is just as bad,not many options in the evening.
Right guys, as others have pointed out the law changed in 2012, when the Protection of Freedoms Act came into force.
This act made private clamping illegal (can still be clamped by the vosa, customs, dvla etc), but gave some more powers to the private parking companies. Mainly, that if the driver doesn’t play ball they can legally chase the registered keeper.
BUT… that doesn’t make their ‘speculative invoices’ any more legally binding than they used to be.
What it does change though, is the way you need to handle tem. DON’T just ignore them. If you do, and the parking company decides to take you to court, it’s going to look very bad in court if you have made no effort to resolve the issue.
Start by appealing the parking charge notice to the parking company. You don’t need a fully blown appeal at this point, just a basic appeal giving the reasons why it isn’t applicable. These need to be legal reasons, not personal circumstances.
They will reject your appeal (after all if they allow it they’ve lost their income), but must supply you with a POPLA code.
Then, you launch your full blown, legally based appeal to POPLA. They will allow the appeal and the parking company will cancel the ticket.
Go to PePiPoo for advice, they’ll guide you though the appeals.
So why will POPLA allow the appeal?
Well legally, the most the parking company can claim for in court would be a ‘genuine pre-estimate of their actual loss’.
They can only claim what it would cost to put them back in the same position they were in before you parked there.
So what have they lost? It was free parking for 2 hours. If you left at 2 hours and never parked there for that extra 10 mins, someone else could have parked there, for free, for 2 hours. Therefore, their only legal claim is for exactly £0.00
Next up, their £100 (reduced to £60) fine has been deemed illegal under the Unfair Contract Terms act. It is illegal for a private company to issue fines or penalties. As above, they ain’t legally entitled to claim for anything other than the cost of their actual loss. They aren’t allowed to make a profit from it.
del949:
I honestly can’t get my head around the fact that, if you choose to park in excess of the free 2 hours then surely that is deemed as agreeing to their displayed terms and conditions and as such you are liable to the charges outlined.
Always assuming the signing etc. is in order and clear.
In such cases surely it wouldn’t be a ‘speculative invoice’ but a genuine bill for services supplied.I am really surprised that these MSA operators haven’t gone to court on a test case.
I’d suggest you read the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.
In particular, the bit that says:
Unfair Terms
5. (1) A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer.
(2) A term shall always be regarded as not having been individually negotiated where it has been drafted in advance and the consumer has therefore not been able to influence the substance of the term.
As you may have guessed, an Unfair Contract term is illegal.
That’s why you should stand up to these parking companies. Their whole business model relies on harassing people into paying up for something they aren’t legally obliged to pay for. These parking companies are parasites, they know fine well that everything they do is legally shakey. They just turn the pressure onto people who know no better in the hope they’ll pay up.
Harry Monk:
So don’t bother looking down your nose at me from your high horse.
Seems like your horse is higher Harry 
I ain’t looking down my nose.
Harry Monk:
speedyguy:
I can only assume maybe wrongly that Harry would be liked to be paid by his customers for the service he provides to make a profit but doesn’t like to pay someone else as a customer for the use of theirs ?I don’t choose to stop anywhere, the Law requires me to.
£25 is a ludicrously exaggerated cost for providing a lorry-sized strip of tarmac for 12 hours, but then all Motorway Service Operators are owned by banks and banks are masters at ripping off peasants like myself, ever since Henry VIII stole the portion of land which was rightfully my birthright from my ancestors all those years ago.
The law requires you stop Harry because it was found that many accidents especially fatalities were due to truckers too busy chasing the next groat to have a rest, consequently falling asleep and ploughing into innocent motorists, I was chatting to an accident investigator about 1 fatal accident and truckyboy had driven straight from Italy to the NW with only the ferry break on his taco, The legislation is there because drivers cannot be trusted to be sensible or plan their journeys?
I know exactly who owns the MSA operators etc, but the price they charge seems a quite reasonable business expense compared to a car sized NCP or council car park space for the day in a town or city which many people pay.
You know the costs of the new service areas Harry your not daft
£40 million for the new Gloucester services a family business putting a percentage of profits (but not off you 
) into a charitable trust and offering free parking presently.
£80 million for Cobham 2 years ago, It doesn’t grow on trees ?
Looking at Roadchefs latest results, they ain’t exactly much of a percentage on turnover and they are up for sale,
Only a few years ago an MSA operator went bust.
If people are ‘daft enough’ to pay a speculative invoice maybe it serves them right for not paying a legitimate parking charge?
It’s not a legitimate parking charge. Read cieranc’s two excellent posts, above yours.
speedyguy:
Looking at Roadchefs latest results, they ain’t exactly much of a percentage on turnover and they are up for sale,
Looking at Starbucks latest results they aint making a penny !!
Mike-C:
Looking at Starbucks latest results they aint making a penny !!
As a Limited Company, my trading figures are publicly viewable online, I made a trading loss of £35,000 last year. It’s called “having a good accountant”.
Harry Monk:
Mike-C:
Looking at Starbucks latest results they aint making a penny !!As a Limited Company, my trading figures are publicly viewable online, I made a trading loss of £35,000 last year. It’s called “having a good accountant”.
I’m with ya !!! Speedyguys prices above highlight something straightaway even if his keen eye for figures missed it…family business pays 40 mil to open a services, one of the hedge fund conglomerates pays double for the same thing !! 
Talking if the new Gloucester services,it would have been built years ago,but locals objected the scheme assuming it would be an eye sore.
There are no houses nearby for a view to be spoikt.
The HS2 train now has a legal battle.
They have found newts on the proposed route.
I am not joking.It will cost £40,000 to sort it out.
Japan has had the Bullet train for years,France has the TGV for years.
UK plans a new train,and the tree huggers will cause mayhem to stop it.
Mike-C:
Harry Monk:
Mike-C:
Looking at Starbucks latest results they aint making a penny !!As a Limited Company, my trading figures are publicly viewable online, I made a trading loss of £35,000 last year. It’s called “having a good accountant”.
I’m with ya !!! Speedyguys prices above highlight something straightaway even if his keen eye for figures missed it…family business pays 40 mil to open a services, one of the hedge fund conglomerates pays double for the same thing !!
Speedyguy was also an owner operator and I still see figures fiddled everyday 
I just thought I’d throw the ‘headline’ figure out there they ‘quoted’.
Just out of interest on MSA prices do you think the land prices are comparable around the M25 with Gloucester or maybe the proposed Sheffield MSA which has got over 200 objections so far with some as far away as Devon etc, what the fooooook it has to do with them I don’t know apart from the ‘ancient woodland’ whines 
I’m surprised the haulage industry don’t object unless it provides FREE UNLIMITED parking
Oh and Gloucester has very short easy slips, Cobham had to build an underbridge carrying at least 8 lanes of M25 over it, that probably cost more than a tenner.
Anyway back to Ceriacs point over pricing, approx £22 quid to park over 2 hrs plus a bit of admin etc I think about £50-£60 would be a fair price to pay for “deprivation” of income/theft or however you want to dress it up.
Just because it’s not a physical product doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be paid for, many services are refer back to my NCP post.
I’m sure Harry pays business rates if he owns a yard (it’ll be making a loss though if his accountant’s involved) you could consider that a “parking” fee.
I see a proposal has come in from a trucker to use the HGV levy add a way to fund FREE truck parks but it seems to have been quickly blown out of the water as “private industry” not the taxpayer/govt should provide and pay for it.
I agree with the very short exit slip road to join the M5 from Gloucester MSA.
One day there will a bad crash.With the roadworks in the lanes adding to the risk getting out.
France has free parking but some truckstops have barriers in place to stop EE drivers eating and cooking from their kitchens fitted on the side of the trailer and refuse to spend one Euro in the truckstop.
They will not even buy a coffee or beer.
On a footnote,the Red Lion at Northampton is planning to purchase more land and expand the parking area.
Their curries are good and about seven choices of burgers.