New Private Parking Code

[anonymous-user]

Apologies if this has already been discussed in SP&L, however it seems the government has eventually put some thought into this and produced a consultation on a standardised code of practice.

Apologies for being behind a paywall;

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/31/privat...

[Pica-Pica]

No such thing as a ‘Private Parking Fine’, despite what the Daily Telegraph headlines says.

[spikyone]

Pica-Pica said:

No such thing as a ‘Private Parking Fine’, as the Daily Telegraph headlines says.

No, but arguing the toss over what they're called isn't helpful and leads people to ignore them and treat them as less serious than council parking fines.

There's a non-paywalled government release here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/crackdown-on-pr...

There are a few things I don't much like about this:

• It appears to be making Blue Badges a requirement for use of a disabled bay on private land whereas currently you need only prove you are entitled to a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act
• It allows charges for genuine errors in keying in a registration, seemingly in cases where the person making the error has made payment. A proper automated system could easily detect when an incorrect registration has been entered (most car parks use ANPR), and the onus ought to be on the car park provider to use a system that doesn't permit keying errors if they insist on registrations being provided.
• There is apparently nothing to help motorists where signage is poor - I have experience of fighting a charge on this basis (not my own) and signage was missing many months after the parking company withdrew from the POPLA process
• It allows charging for breaching "no return within x hours", which is fundamentally flawed - I could easily borrow my other half's car and visit the same car park as her without even realising I'd contravened any "rules".
• It legitimises Parent & Child spaces which are a purely commercial decision by the car park owner

I also wonder who will be the arbiter of whether mitigation is legitimate. Without a statutory appeals body it's rather meaningless to allow it; private parking companies currently reject appeals that they should be accepting and the IPC's "independent" appeals process was frankly a waste of everyone's time.

[S11Steve]

The draft document to download is here - https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/projects...
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It's my current bedtime tome....