Brief cases: couple given £100 charge in hospital car park

Hi BM – strangely, in a way, I do support some form of parking control at this hospital as it is 100metres from a main line computer station. Handing this over to a private parking company…….I totally disagree with though.

John C

“abolish all hospital car park charges for patients and bona fide visitors”

I think the NHS budget is for treating patients, not for parking cars.

Hi Wavechange – just to clarify, Parking Eye did not actually in the end take any further action. However they did suggest that they would even after Kingston Hospital agreed that the charge was incorrect. I did send ‘Parking Eye’ a very ‘to the point and uncompromising’ response to their later threat in which I made it clear that I was not going to pay and that I would be seeking costs should they continue to Court action. The signs have now been changed but Parking Eye still runs the car parking.

Hi John – Thanks for your post. I suspect that most people would have just paid up in your position.

There is no parking regulator, as far as I know. The House of Commons Transport Committee looked at the possibility ten years ago, but no action was taken:

“81. The existing institutional framework for parking enforcement should, if correctly managed and extended, provide adequate scrutiny of local authority parking management without the establishment of a ‘parking regulator’. But the local authorities, the Government, the parking adjudication services, and the private sector need to cooperate now to drive up the standards of performance. If they cannot manage to demonstrate real progress within a reasonable time scale then alternatives will need to be found. In those circumstances, the advantages of a ‘parking regulator’ might need to be considered further.”

It is vital that signage is adequate and car park users are made well aware of changes. Apparently a significant proportion of penalty charges are successfully contested, suggesting that parking needs to be managed better.

Occasionally the press picks up on reports from the parking appeals services that adjudicate on local authority parking enforcement actions to the effect that a very high proportion of parking appeals go uncontested by the local authority suggesting that the penalty charge notices were issued without justification. There might be other reasons for not contesting an appeal [like time and cost of representation at the hearing] but it makes you wonder how many penalties get paid unnecessarily.

I think those private sector operators that are members of the British Parking Association are subject to a degree of compliance with a code of practice and subscribe to an ‘independent’ appeal process, but such membership is not compulsory so far as I am aware. The name “Parking Eye” suggests that this firm relies heavily on CCTV observation of parking activity rather than manual patrolling. This reduces the costs and raises the yield to the organisations that employ them, produces a higher ratio of penalties as there are fewer unseen contraventions, and minimises the likelihood of personal engagement which might otherwise lead, on the one hand, to conflict, but, on the other hand, to a caution rather than issue of a ticket.

I agree with you john whole heartly,All this money dose not go to the N H S it just go to private companies.

Absolutely right. There can be little confidence in the rule of law when penalties are disproportionate to the contravention; after all, wrongfull parking is not a criminal act, rarely deliberate, and has no lasting harmful effects on society. “Let the punishment fit the crime” The whole mentality of parking enforcement seems to have lost sight of the objectives of parking provision as a service, and the avoidance of unsafe and disorderly parking, and turned into a form of institutionalised persecution with deterrence as its prime objective. There should be more tolerance of minor transgressions and first-time infractions – after all, to a very large degree, this is a law-abiding country and the heavy imposition of extortionate penalty charges is not justified. Although much maligned for their actions at hospitals and shopping centres, I am not convinced that the private sector parking organisations are much less reputable than the municipal ones which without a shadow of doubt have misused the superiority of their legal position to generate money unnecessarily.

My real concern about this unfair incident was that the very people being hit, were likely demographically to be the elderly and infirm. The signs were missing explaining the new system from the blue badge bays, and it was possible to ‘walk’ several routes from ‘blue badge bays’ into the hospital departments without any signs whatsoever being visible about the new system. (I have video evidence of this – much to the delight of the ‘Hospital security’ people who threatened to have me arrested) Most people get scared by these charges and just pay up. I may perhaps have a stubborn streak about injustice.

Apologies. I’m totally wrong here for now. I hadn’t keot up with the Beavis v Parking Eye case where the judges quite incredibly ruled that because the penalty was the same as the local authority’s penalty then it wasn’t actually a penalty. Barry Beavis is an Essex chip shop owner and needs everyone’s support to take his case to the Supreme Court.

I was under the impression that while the Court of Appeal upheld the parking company’s right to levy charges for non-compliance with their parking rules, and to set charges at a level that would recover their costs and losses due to over-staying as well as acting as a deterrent, it did not make a judgment on whether or not the £85 charge in that case was proper. I hope there will be a further appeal to the Supreme Court on that point which is really at the heart of this matter.

Realistically, there cannot be a range of charges depending on whether the overstay was two minutes, five minutes, half-an-hour, or whatever, but it nevertheless does need to be proportionate to the company’s revenue impairment on an averaged and equalised basis, and – more to the point – it should not be extortionate and purely a profit stream. I would argue that there should be no profit element at all in the excess charging structure, all commercial surpluses being derived from turnover through the payment system.

When the enforcement of car parks had to be done manually it was often not cost effective to patrol some places routinely, random patrols being sufficient to maintain adequate compliance. Now, with digital enforcement using CCTV and ANPR [automatic number plate recognition], every technical infringement can result in the generation of a parking ticket. This is indiscriminate enforcement that to my mind offends against our tradition of justice; camera enforcement that might be justifiable on the public highway [for safety reasons] is out of place on private land, especially at hospitals where it is heavily in the interests of the NHS and the public transport authorities to facilitate private travel as the alternatives would require massive extra costs and subsidies.

When hospital car park Chargers were introduced at first this was challenged by various consumer organisations. It did go to Judicial Review with the outcome that as it was not a direct NHS Service then it was acceptable for NHS authorities to impose charges. Where hospitals are built under Private Finance Initiatives the car parks normally fall under the remit of the Contractor as it is their responsibility to maintain them.

One plus of charging is it does deter abuse from people who used to dump their car for a day and go off to work. However charges in many places are unreasonable. My local hospital charges £1.90 for 3 hours this grates with me as 1) I rarely have the correct change so loose 10p on many visits. And 2) many of my visits last less than one hour which most local authority car parks do have!

The hard part for me was when my son was in intensive care at Leeds to find the daily charge to park was £16.00. I was given one free pass to come and go but the rest of my family had over an hours journey each day and had to pay through the nose to park. When someone is critically ill what you do not want is to worry about finding the daily cost of parking which just added to he cost of getting there which was over an hours journey. Fortunately for us he survived due to the splendid care he was given. But the cost of car parking and lack of relative accommodation placed a service pressure on our lives wondering in my case where I would find the money for hotels.

The government in 2014,did issue guidance advising Trusts to be a little more flexible and sensitive to people’s needs with regard to parking but as yet I gave to see it put into practice and the example given here of extortionate fines and threats of police action just proves that point!

Makes me wonder what the police would do apart from make an arrest under the Terorrism Act (I don’t think!!).

Wasn’t the point that after getting the free ticket from the desk you have to return to the car with the blue badge and display it otherwise a penalty notice will be issued [Sara’s point 5]? In this day and age it should be possible to register with the hospital in advance and download an exemption ticket [showing the vehicle registration mark] so that you have it ready for when you arrive. And why on earth cannot cars with blue badges be parked free-of-charge in any bay and not just the specially marked ones, especially if the disabled person can get in and out of the car safely and easily? – some non-wheelchair-accessible spaces couild be nearer to the required entrance than the wheelcair-accessible ones. While permanent and severe walking disability is one of the key eligibility criteria for a blue badge, there are other criteria [blindness for example] so it should not be assumed that all blue-badge holders will need to unload a wheelchair. Indeed, I walked over to Tesco’s today to collect an order and I noticed on the approach that there were about forty cars with blue badges parked in the disabled parking bays but in the store I saw only two wheelchairs in use. Many of the disabled parking spaces were over fifty yards away from the store entrance and there were many much closer undesignated spaces available. This is irrelevant in Tesco’s case because there is no parking charge and no enforcement but it shows how the least fortunate in society have become so conditioned to having to park is specific places for no good reason that they even do so at the supermarket. Obviously, the hatch-marked spaces between cars make it easier to open the doors fully and get in and out easily, and that might account for the preference of those spaces, but there were other spaces adjacent to kerbs, at the end of rows, and alongside the covered walkway that might have been suitable.

[N.B. It is often not appreciated that any occupant of the vehicle can be the blue badge holder and that the badge is not associated or identified with any particular vehicle.]

John, the disabled bays are very close to the desk when we have parked there. However, with a blue badge you can, of course, use the ordinary bays, take your blue badge with you, and only collect an exit ticket when you leave. Therer were other disabled bays close to the entrance outside the pay car park where you just had to display a blue badge.

Hi Malcolm,

The act of ‘displaying’ the blue badge had ceased at that time – however, the signs didn’t tell you this. They had not put the signs up all around the car park at all the disabled areas explaining that the system had changed. Therefore you would park and enter an area of the hospital completely unaware of the changes. It was no longer a pay and display car park – however the signs were still up saying that it was.

LawrieA – A Blue Badge holder is disabled and is entitled to park on double yellow lines. This is not allowed where loading/unloading is not permitted or there are signs forbidding parking for some reason – e.g. access for emergency vehicles is needed.

LawrieA, nor can you park on double yellow lines where you might cause an obstruction. A blue badge is not a permit to park anywhere you like.

A Blue Badge holder can use their badge on a car driven by another person, which is why we often see fit people getting out of cars parked in bays for the disabled and on double yellow lines.

When ferrying Blue Badge holders in my car I prefer to drop off the disabled person and park the car somewhere else. That frees up bays for the disabled and avoids me having to leave my car where it might cause a nuisance. I’m not the only one who does this and wish that others would do the same.

John, you can threatem them with court action for harrasment if they continue. Do you subscribe to Which? Legal? – I’m sure they can advise you.

This was also the case at Kingston Hospital where despite having the charge removed by the Hospital itself, ‘Parking Eye’ still sent out further demands. My reply to ‘Parking Eye’ was pretty much to the point, but probably wouldn’t have won many diplomatic awards. ‘Parking Eye’ did later come around to my way of thinking that to pursue me might not be in their interests.

I am a firm supporter of ‘Which? Legal Services’ and recommend them to everybody.

I hope that any hospital that you might need to attend is not near to a shopping or business area. If it is, the fact that there are no parking fees will be irrelevant because the car park will be full of commuters, patients and hospital visitors will find parking to be almost impossible. This was the case when the hospital that I attend did not have charges. At least now there is a reasonable possibility of finding somewhere to park.

I am sure we would all like to condole with you. It is such a pity that your family’s feelings during your mother-in-law’s last months were overshadowed by a parking penalty.