Useful advice on parking 'fines'

Further to your article about Gresty Road parking 'fines' (5th April), I have some more information that may also be useful for readers.

I received a £100 'fine' by post back in February, reduced to £60 if I paid within 14 days, after having parked in the Crewe Alex (Cheshire East Council owned) car park and forgotten to pay.

Rather than pay the fine, I lodged an appeal using a service from:

http://privateparkingappeals.co.uk

I paid an £18 fee to have them do this on my behalf. You can appeal yourself if you want; there is a lot of info. on the web about successful strategies, and the process was very simple, if lengthy.

After paying the fee, the appeal people write to Parking Eye, who are acting on behalf of the council to monitor the car park, appealing the ticket using various legal arguments as to why the 'fine' is not valid.

In my case, Parking Eye rejected that first appeal, but then have to provide a 'POPLA' code, which allows a further appeal to the POPLA regulator.

privateparkingappeals.co.uk appealed to POPLA using more legal jargon, and approximately four months after receiving the original fine letter from Parking Eye, POPLA found in my favour and the fine has been voided today.

In my case, the reason I had not paid for parking was simply an oversight – I usually pay online before I leave home, but forgot one day but the reason why you have not paid is unimportant.

In my case, there were many legal arguments used to appeal the fine, but the one that won was that Parking Eye need to prove that the council have granted them authority to pursue fines on their behalf, by producing the contract that specifies this, but presumably as the contract contains
sensitive commercial information, Parking Eye are unwilling to do that.

Ultimately, Parking Eye are not acting at all in the spirit of the law, and, rather than charging for the direct costs of unpaid tickets (e.g. £4 to cover the original ticket cost, plus some reasonable charge for sending a letter to someone), they are charging ridiculous amounts in 'fines' and using aggressive tactics to get people to pay without challenge.

But it seems that the process of fighting these fines is not difficult – either challenge it yourself (search online for tips), or use an online appeal agent like the one I used.

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