I could do with a bit of advice…
Back in March I was issued with a parking ticket; since I thought the ticket was completely unfair I immediately appealed against it, only to find out yesterday that my appeal was turned down and I must, “pay the full amount of £80 within 7 days” or be pursued in court! (By the time the letter arrived, 5 days had already passed since the date the letter was issued).
The (hopefully) potted history to this is as follows. I parked in the main Derby train station car park; I bought a £10 ticket at ~7.45am, stuck it on the windscreen and headed off for Birmingham. When I returned at ~18.00, I had a parking ticket stuck to my windscreen. The ticket stated I had been fined as I had no valid ticket and was not parked in a valid space.
In fairness, when I checked the ticket I’d bought main part of the ticket had fallen off the windscreen and only the sticky bit remained; however, I wasn’t overly worried about this as I’d bought my ticket by Switch and so there would a record. The non-legal parking was more perplexing; after a number of discussions with nearby construction workers and the station parking manager it transpired that the space I parked in should have had a cone in but everyone agreed that the cone was often not put back and so, not possessing any psychic powers, I couldn’t have known that I shouldn’t have parked there. The station parking manager said that he would have cancelled the ticket under these circumstances but he’d already sent it off to Borough Parking Enforcement (BPE) in Middlesex. Apparently, once sent to BPE the cancelling of tickets is not allowed!
Everyone at the station seemed to think that once I explained the circumstances all would be well with the world….. So you would be right in wondering why my appeal was refused. Well, the non-legal parking hasn’t been mentioned, so it can’t be that. It’s the failure to clearly display a valid ticket that is the issue. Apparently, “…if a ticket is purchased but not correctly displayed it is a violation of the terms and conditions. This includes tickets which are upside down…”!!!! My letter also tells me that, “It is accepted in courts that wardens would not spend their time writing out penalty charge notices to legal vehicles that are correctly displaying valid tickets.” I assume this is trying to warn me against taking this further by suggesting that any judge would agree with BPE.
So, my questions are:
Has anyone else had a similar problem? Should I just pay this and be done with it – am really loathed to do this as it seems so unfair. If I did pay it, would it be reasonable to just pay £70 (as I did pay £10 for the ticket)? Would I have a reasonable chance to taking this further, if so what could the costs be in the region of if I lost…?
Please leave advice through the commenting facility below, or email the website – no one will be held accountable for their replies and I will treat it all as informal, friendly, advice! Many thanks in advance, Emma
PARWICH.ORG 
It happened to me! My ticket fell off and into the side pocket. I too received a fine and rang and pleaded my case with the relevant authority (some years ago). They said they were still within their rights to call in the fine, but if I sent the valid ticket in they would consider it. They let me off…..(but I had to be very very very sorry…)
Hmmm….. I think that morally you are in the right, but legally you are stuffed. In an age of centralisation (eg. BPE) and elimination of any degree of local judgement and common sense, the amount of time and effort you will expend in order to gain any kind of justice, is probably disproportionate to the financial gain. My respond would be that pragmatism rules here – pay up and move on, thus saving your energy for battles which are more worthy of your time and effort. Not sure you can change this system however loud you shout. On the other hand if you feel really strongly about it, you can probably shame them into submission after a long fight!
It’s not fair, but then life isn’t is it?
And another thing – how did my wife learn how to type emoticons???
:o_=={
Technically the offence is not displaying a valid parking ticket, rather than not having one.
I agree with Graham and Amanda, yiu could spend too much time arguing this, HOWEVER firstly the letter you have received indicating Court Action was not registered so at the moment there is no proof you received it. IF you want to pursue it let it go to Court then tell them this is the first you have heard about a Court threat and a Court Case. Then it could all start over again.
Robin Page in the Mail last Sunday but one beat the Speed camera as they could not detect who was driving etc. He won but his Solicitor said oh just pay the fine, months later and a court visit and hours of stress he won, The stick on the ticket was not very sticky. However dont get stuck either. Life is not always fair. I am fighting a tax case for a female client at the moment which is not fair, against a Tax lady, someone said the other day the reason the female sex does not rule the world is because they cannot get on with each other! Unlike the boys. I am wondering if I can use that as a defence in some way.
Stuart – probably not.
emma, it has to go to court, a court must back you as you can prove you paid it with a credit/debit card not just getting a ticket which you could have obtained from someone else. a long process but you will be able to
defend yourself which is most important too.
When you fail to pay for local authority parking, there’s a criminal liability for which you can be prosecuted and fined.
In this case however (assuming the parking is managed by a private company) you are simply entering into a contract to park with that private company, so the laws of contract apply. All the company can do is sue you for breach of contract.
Significant terms of the contract (especially onerous or unusual) terms need to be brought to your attention when you bought your ticket. So if the definition of “correctly displayed” was not clear when you bought the ticket then this term could be void. It would not be sufficient for them to say that the full Ts & Cs would have been available to you had you applied to head office or whatever.
Another point you could argue would be the scale of the “fine”. Similarly to disputed bank charges you could claim that these were disproportional to actual losses incurred by the parking company, a requisite of contract law.
It wouldn’t cost you much legwork to pursue the appeal process. Any action against you would normally be held while you did this. First step would be to notify them in writing of your intention to appeal and to ask for written details of the appeal process.
I don’t agree that the judge would in any case find you necessarily liable as they suggest! In fact I’d suggest to them the opposite.