Parking Eye - £100 "fine" for meeting someone @ Fleet servic

[Kitchski]

Though I'd get the experts opinion on this! I've searched through a few previous threads but some of info conflicts with what I'm reading.

Short story: I met with a chap at Fleet services on the M3 one evening a couple of weeks back who was giving me some car parts. You know how it is - you have a common interest with someone and get chatting. We there a fair while!
Today I receive a letter telling me I overstayed my 2hr welcome there by 31mins, and I now have to pay a £100 fine (or £60 if I pay quickly.....how nice of them!)

I wasn't even aware there was a limit! I never even left the car, we just stayed chatting next to them for a while. Seems pretty harsh given the circumstances, and the car park was largely empty. I appreciate that they need to guard against people taking the pass by leaving their cars there all day and then hitching lifts into London or something, but I'd like to appeal this as I feel I'm being bumped! I didn't purchase anything in the shops there....not sure if that harms my case or not?

I've seen that POPLA are the guys to go to, but they state I need to try and resolve it with PE first, which is the opposite of what I've been reading on here.

Any thoughts?

[Kitchski]

speedyguy said:

Not much help I'm afraid were you going North or South,

You have to drive past the attached picture to enter the NB car park and a Google streetview shows signs all over the car park.

And no you don't have to "spend a penny" whilst you are in there to get the 2 hr free parking.

Google "DfT 02/2013" page 17 I think.

Southbound. Truth be told I didn't even think to look for any signs relating to parking as it was free!

[Kitchski]

Right, first off thanks everyone for your input. Lots of good advice and (some) decent minded folk.

I feel I should explain a bit more (though there's a part of me that thinks, fk 'em) about the details of the night.

First off, this is an image from Google Earth showing the entrance to the services:



This is the entrance to the Fleet service station on the southbound M3. On approaching the services, you have two options; left labelled for fuel/lorries, and right-hand lane labelled for cars. I took the right-hand lane, and it looks like I missed the white/red sign on the nearside just as I entered the car park. The light was going down (not going to bum someone in broad daylight like a , am I?!) and you're reading instructions on the ground, checking to see no one's reversing out of those spaces on the right etc.....I'm not saying I didn't miss the sign, but I'd contest it's not exactly well-placed, or forcefully presented in any way. Not in comparison to a supermarket car park or the like. But hey ho, that's the one I'd missed. If I'd have seen it, I'd have been aware that I needed to GTFO within a 2 hour window. Not a problem - it's not my land and I'm not one to try and break rules. The sign on the left hand lane looks much larger, and not near any junctions or areas where you need to be watching for maneuvering cars - I doubt I'd have missed that to be honest. Ironically I parked just behind it, in an area completely empty of cars for the entire night as the car park was at 25% capacity of so. Again, if people were struggling for spaces, guilt would have kicked in and I'd have been prompted to leave earlier.

I chose the service station to meet the chap, because he lives in Cambridge on a boat, and was only down in Farnborough because he's an aircraft engineer. He worked on the XH558 return to flight programme, which is mainly how two hours (I got there before him and had to wait around) got eaten up in idle chat. I'm from Fareham, so I chose Fleet services as I could have a blat across the Meon Valley to get there, and it's easy for him to hit the M3 and head home afterwards. Winner.

Having been rang by the missus' and bked down the phone for staying out later than I said I would, I realised the time, promptly wished him well and we went our separate ways. So by the time I'd left, I still hadn't seen a sign of any kind! I wasn't even looking for one, as I rarely use service stations and hadn't realised they were operating systems like that. Makes sense now I think about it, as if they didn't police it somehow, people would meet there and then car-share into London, paying 1x vehicle's congestion charge/LEZ or whatever. I can understand why they've done something, I'm not contesting that.
Or put it another way - if I got busted for speeding doing 36mph in a 30mph zone, and got the 3 points/£60 fine, then I hold my hands up. It's exactly what I did a few years back. No one else was driving that car, it was me. My fault, and I'd know it.

If I had spotted the signs, and the signs had said something along the lines of "Free parking for 2hrs, then £10per hour after that" to dissuade people from taking the piss, again I totally see the logic. If I'd then had a letter in the post saying "You parked here for more than 2hrs, so we are billing you for the third full hour, plus costs so it's £15.00" or something, I would genuinely hold my hands up and say, sorry I wasn't on the ball and didn't notice the sign (however poorly placed it was). The fact that they're trying to sting me for £60 (or £100 after 14 days) seems more akin to robbery. I'm thoroughly fked off with myself for getting into the mess in the first place, but equally as fked off as the amount I'm being "fined" is clearly disproportionate to the offence committed. I'm going to appeal, and I will actually state that if the charge was more in keeping to the offence, I'd probably just pay it.

At the end of the day, I had no idea I'd done anything wrong, and if I ever do break the law/rules somewhere, and I get busted, I don't get all whiny about it. If you know what you're doing, and you get caught, it's on you. That's my view, always has been. But this is different to that, because I genuinely didn't realise I'd broken any rules. And now that it's been brought to my attention, I feel I'm trying to be taken advantage of (second time around, for those who think I was there being mucky), which would fk anybody off, obviously.

I know it seems I was there a long time, but have you ever tried removing another chap's muck from your trousers so your missus doesn't find out you're a closet homosexual? We've all been there, right? The fact that some people suggested I was there being smutty with another chap rather than just another person kinda screams 'closet' a little bit, but that's just my view.

Anyway, that's the lot. Thank you deeply (really deep) to all those providing the advice and links to where I should be heading. You're exactly the kind of people I was targeting the thread at. To everyone else, you're exactly the kind of people I was expecting would show up on PH.

Service stations costing money to run?! Oh boo fking hoo, my heart bleeds! I'm going to laugh about that one for a few weeks!

Cheers!

Edited by Kitchski on Sunday 27th July 20:04

[Kitchski]

Thanks for your advice.

caiss4 said:

These days I look carefully for signs everywhere in private car parks and I'd even go so far to say that it could affect my buying behaviour at a retail park, for example, if I considered the terms to be unreasonable.

I will too, from now on!

[Kitchski]

Cheers guys

[Kitchski]

Many thanks to those who helped. I appealed to PE, had it rejected, submitted appeal to POPLA who decided it wasn't valid and threw it out. PE emailed to say they were dropping it the next day.

As I've said, I'd have paid it if it was a reasonable sum, but it wasn't. They tried to take the piss and they failed.