Parking Eye judgement out

[LurkingHusband]

here

Interesting, and expected.

my OH recently got one of these (from parking eye) for parking in the car park of a retail park from 2am-5am, it was pitch black every shop was closed.
I have advised him to ignore it.

Can you summarise please. There's 124 pages and I've a 2yo jumping on my head

Summary is ParkingEye's charges against Beavis are valid, and a court will enforce them.

Completely vindicates the caution advised by some posters here, when the "throw them in the bin brigade" demonstrated their - repeated - ignorance.

Bad news for the cunts who abuse BB spaces in private car parks. You can (and hopefully will) be charged. And taken to court if you don't pay.

6-1 judgement too ... not much dissent.

Is there a summary anywhere?

Sorry - just seen it.

Summary here.

But it was more fun to post the judgement. Slows down the hard-of-thinking i.e. the ones shouting "Ignore it" loudest

I'm not a lawyer. But I am a very fast reader.

I think I preferred your summary. The press release one is still rather long.

Passiveaggressivewueen -

Absolutly do not ignore it but also do not state who the driver was.

The MSE parking firum will help your dh with an appeal letter and whether the parking charge notice is compliant with the POFA 2012 act.

Did your dh see the signs? We're the terms & conditions of parking clear?

p38 onwards of the judgement. Not surprising really. I would definitely not ignore one of these in future.

Did your dh see the signs?
he parked in the pitch black, i doubt it.

This ruling goes against all of the money columns advice.

He would need to make that point in his appeal then. Inadequate lighting/signs etc around the car park.

But don't ignore it v

This ruling goes against all of the money columns advice.

Er, no. It's entirely consistent with the previous courts finding, and (as I said upthread) entirely expected.

A lot of people are going to find out that the law is what the law is, not what a bunch of unqualified loudmouths on an anonymous internet forum think it is. A good day for those folk that studied for years to gain a legal qualification only to have "some bloke off MSE" trumping them for advice.

It seems the money columns advice is worth exactly what people paid for it.

Assuming by the money columns advice you mean MSE, for ages they have been saying that a lot hinged on the outcome of the Beavis case.

The Court found there was a legitimate interest in charging overstaying motorists which extended beyond mere recovery of loss - i.e. they could charge PS85 rather than a normal charge for an hour's parking.
Relevant paragraph is para 100 of the judgment:
"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 PS85 is out of all proportion to its interests. The trial judge, Judge Moloney QC, found that the PS85 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 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 PS85 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 (PS85) 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.

For me, one of the more interesting comments was this:

"Objectively, the reasonable motorist would have, and often did, agree to
the charge"

It suggests the court considered that most people did pay the charge. Suggesting it wasn't exorbitant. Democracy in action.

Assuming by the money columns advice you mean MSE, for ages they have been saying that a lot hinged on the outcome of the Beavis case.

But the internet loudmouths weren't listening ....

MSE have been talking about the case this year, however it has been accepted wisdom for such a long time now that you can ignore these that many people will not be aware of the case. I'm on a thread elsewhere today where someone is asking advice about this and the vast majority of responses have been "ignore it".

MSE posters have been really useful to me. I'm currently appealing two tickets on behalf of work where the builders who had been working on a site for months got tickets when the hospital suddenly brought a parking company in.

There were signs on the public car park but none at the entrance to or inside the deliveries/contractors compound. In order to read any of the signs on the approach to the compound our driver would have had to pull up on yellow lines & got out of the van In addition there were several reasons why the PCN was not POFA compliant.

But I've also seen the other side & been really annoyed when our drivers have been blocked in or not able to park on our own private car park because peoole using the shops at the end if the road park there instead.

I'm on a thread elsewhere today where someone is asking advice about this and the vast majority of responses have been "ignore it".

What ? The ticket ? Or (more usefully) the advice ?

The ticket. However the OP has decided to appeal (it appears she has good grounds, the circumstances are not quite the same as Beavis).

However the OP has decided to appeal (it appears she has good grounds, the circumstances are not quite the same as Beavis).

Indeed, Beavis hasn't made all parking charges immediately valid. However it does allow operators to use the courts to recover them.

My hope is that this will lead to parking operators making policy decisions to enforce all BB infringements, and encourage stores to be more pro-active in policing BB usage.

No idea if it could be used to police P&C parking.

The idiot Mail reported this in terms of it being a dreadful blow to millions of motorists. Er, no. Only the ones who overstay in car parks.

The Beavis ruling is not carte Blanche for parking companies to make arbitrary rules or to charge for whatever they like. Commercial justification has to be justified. It is straight forward to prove commerical justification if the car park belongs to a commerical organisation like a retail park. It would be harder to argue commerical justification for a hospital car park if someone visiting a hospital overstays.

I have recently won a POPLA appeal. Parking firms are a bunch of chancers. If the majority of Joe Public think the charge is unfair then there is often a good chance of winning a POPLA appeal. It's the application of common sense.

It would be interesting to see if the argument for commerical justification stands up when all the shops are closed.

Objectively, the reasonable motorist would have, and often did, agree to
the charge

It suggests the court considered that most people did pay the charge. Suggesting it wasn't exorbitant. Democracy in action

That's a rather unusual interpretation. I suspect most people pay these because the letters are rather threatening and it doesn't occur to them that they can really challenge them. Or they can't be arsed with the hassle.

I've not kept up-to-date with these cases now as my charge was over 2 years ago but I got nothing but intelligent advice on MSE.