A certain woman who was fined almost £2000 for paying her car parking charges only five minutes late has had her fine cancelled by the parking company, Excel Parking, following publicity. This according to a recent BBC news report.
I have mixed feelings about this news, not at all because justice has been done, but because this is in all likelihood very selective justice.
The reason this company has cancelled the fine is precisely because of this publicity.
However this is jut one of many private parking injustices around the country....
The scope of private parking fines.
£3.2 billion in parking fines have been issued since 2019, that's around £500 million a year.
A staggering 9.7 million parking tickets were issued by private parking firms between April and December 2023.
And OK I got these stats from a piece in the Daily Mail, and this may be a filthy rag of a paper but I actually agree with their sense of outrage here, these companies are just out of control.
I've been caught out myself, twice.
Once because there were two sections to a carpark and I accidentally parked in the private section, and secondly because I was picking something up from someone who worked in a Toby Carvery, so I parked in their car park, which, it turned out, was managed by a fucking private car parking firm. It was pissing it down with rain so I didn't even think to check.
But the 5 minute parking rule is just taking the piss.
These firms say they do this to stop people parking for say 10-15 minutes, but that's ridiculous. I've parked in London before, and the first 15 minutes even in some busy stretches is free.
What they did to this woman, and what they do to other people is just outrageous, it's sheer profiteering of people who are in a rush or who simply can't actually pay because of poor reception around their car parks.
The DVLA is complicit...
They get a kick back from the private parking firms.... they've made £32 million since 2019 from charging private companies £2.50 every time they request your data to fine you!
New laws coming....
Not anytime soon, the government tried clamping down on these practices in 2022 by introducing a new code which was going to cap parking fines at £50 (the average now is £100), but the Parking Companies somehow challenged this code.
I think technically a code isn't legislation anyway, there's no way you can actually enforce it, so I think we need ACTUAL legislation, and that can't come soon enough.
The private parking companies are up there with scummiest corporations. Give me a council car park any day!